India
Music from Liquor
Yesterday Chhara playwright and documentary filmmaker Dakxin Chhara posted a short “musical documentary” to YouTube which shows an original composition by the children of Budhan Theatre. What isn’t revealed until the end of the film is that the musical instruments they are playing are entirely composed of utensils used to brew liquor. Brewing liquor is […]
Daffers
The BBC has a nice little photo essay about voting rights for Daffers [pronounced Dafirs], a DNT community. I suspect that these photos might be the same ones mentioned in this 2006 article by my friend Roxy Gagdekar:
From eking out a living as highway robbers, members of the once “most dangerous” denotified tribe - Daffers […]
2007 Chharanagar Photos
I finally finished editing and uploading my photos from last February’s shoot in Chharanagar. I did a lot of portraits this time, but haven’t yet updated the information about who is who. You can see the slideshow here (or click on the photo).
Usury
If thou lend money to any of My people, even to the poor with thee, thou shalt not be to him as a creditor; neither shall ye lay upon him interest. (Exodus, 22:25)
The key texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all very clear about the sins of lending money for interest - and yet […]
Model Minority
This NY Times story made me wonder: Do Indian-Americans really want to have a small vocal minority whose views diverge strongly from their own represent them? But then I realized, its the other way around - its this small vocal minority who want to speak for all Indians. Too bad the NY Times can’t tell […]
Municipal Corporation
It is hard to express in words how sick I felt when I heard that the community of Maninagar, about which I’ve written twice before, was once again demolished by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation. This after they had made empty promises to find homes for these formerly nomadic people who have a legal right to […]
Demolition
The photo shows a young girl in Maninagar preparing lunch. See my Maninagar photo set on Flickr.
Her home was bulldozed on February 8th.
It was 8th Feb. 2007. It was 12th time. Municipal Corporation people demolish Nomadic people’s huts in Maninagar Area of Ahmedabad city which going to be a Mega City on the death bodies […]
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
