Akhil Kadidal Photography | Street Photography

STREET LIFE

A lower-class Indian family clusters around a shrine dedicated to the ancient Hindu goddess, Kali, a deity which controversially attracted the devotions of the “Thugees,” a murderous cult responsible for the deaths of as many as a million people over the course of 500 years until their destruction by the British in the 19th century.
While the presence of the shrine itself was surprising, what blew me away was the individual wearing the green saree in the left of the picture — a transgender person with a man's name (Gopi) living openly as a woman with her family. That such acceptance is possible in the lower rungs of society was revelatory.

A group of traveling “ascetics” trawl the streets looking for a handout and presumably, for someone to enlighten. Over a hundred years ago, these men would have been feted as sages or as “wise men on the hill.” Today, in Modern India, they are seen as pests and charlatans, with little to offer the world and with almost no skills for 21st century employment. Are they really wise? Who knows anymore?

A woman with albinism tends to her small patch of floor space in a marketplace, selling vegetables. In contrast to the peasants (for lack of a better word) around her, she seemed educated, even bourgeois, but perhaps ashamed of her condition for she was reluctant to remove her face mask. I had a vision of a difficult life, filled with bullying in school, ostracization and unfulfilled potential. When I asked her for her name, she answered: “Mona. Like the Mona Lisa.”

AKHIL KADIDAL