PEOPLE OF TAMILMADU (A MAIN STATE OF SOUTHERN INDIA)

We’ve been to a number of Hindu temples and a palace and a couple of mansions, seen great art and learned history galore. However, we most of us travel for the people-to-people thing. To touch a culture as it expresses itself in the now, which means touching and talking to people, whether you understand their word-language or not.

I believe most of us in the group who have come to India for the first time are more impressed than anything else by the people we’ve met. There’s a warmth and openness about them that’s hard to describe but which is almost tangible. Perhaps the most rewarding and, paradoxically, disconcerting aspect of it all, is the crowds we attract. Children, students, adults approach us, want to shake our hands: hello, where are you coming from, are you liking India, United States, wow, thank you, wow. And they find most entertaining the experience of photography. Photo photo. Here, madame, here. And they come in crowds, and what starts as two can turn into a dozen, then two dozen in a few minutes. Gives a taste of what celebrity must be like.

What follows is a joy for all of us as we share the pictures we’ve taken of them, then for them to take our pictures (many have phones or cameras) and to share theirs with us. You can see that joy in the faces here, and we fell sure that those feelings reflect the heart of this wonderful place. Many of them look poor to us, but they don’t seem to feel poor to themselves. Would that more of us had that gift.