Day of the Doll

Last year, after doing some minor world travel, I decided a nice way to follow it up would be to head south of the border to check out some Dia de los Muertos celebratio. It would make neat cultural photography. The only thing that went south was the plan itself, as Mexico, at least according to the media, exploded into drug fueled violence, with heads literally rolling. I’m usually the first to say the media exaggerates things, but in terms of being proven wrong, this seemed like tempting fate. I haven’t heard about it this year so much, so maybe it (again, perhaps literally) died down, but truth be told, I completely forgot about my former plan until a couple weeks ago.

Fortunately, it turns out LA has its own Day of the Dead celebration at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Conveniently located indeed, and, at $10 a ticket versus expensive travel costs, a bit more economical.

Day of the Accordion Player

After a warm greeting from this cheery fellow, we snaked past graves, fields, memorials, and somewhat conspicuous port-o-potties, greeted by dozens of booths. Cynicism would come easily to the right type, who might look at the booths offering cultural tchotchkes to tourists, and the fact that the most enthusiastically costumed looked like artsy LA kids, with a degree of high brow snobbery. They would have missed the point. Between the range of costumes, from the bizarre to the incredibly elaborate, were weird moments worth the price of admission alone.

Day of the Upset Undead Children

Scenes like this just disturb and confuse me, so I’ll some it up and just say: ‘Children.’ If you click on it for a larger view, you can see drool dribbling down the chin of the girl on the right, the result of a particularly enthusiastic bout of loud crying. They’re clearly a little young to hate family themed costumes- it looks like they have another five years or so to get to that point- so I’ll go ahead and go with the obvious ‘child leash’ explanation. At that age I would have hated to be on one myself, though I must confess that now I love the idea, especially on other people’s children.

Diverting a ways from snarky:

Day of the Brilliant Costumes

These two had brilliant costumes, probably the best put together I saw all day. Alone they would have been excellent, and paired off, they’re absolutely fantastic. The crisp detail on their faces was really well done, and the way the gent on the right complimented it with a single contact lens was a particularly nice touch. Also, check out the young lady’s tattoos.

Day of the Killer Tats

Well played.

The event started a bit late in the day, so other than some brief, nice afternoon sunlight, it got dark quickly. It seemed like a nice time for some silhouette shots.

Day of the... nighttime.

It’s nice to grab moments like these. I’m more the photographer who asks permission rather than sneak shots, but sometimes you simply can’t resist the opportunity. Not to say of course that the unexpected can’t happen, even when someone realises you’re taking their picture. Portraits are all well and good, but after some time I was looking for something a bit more candid. This woman had taken a seat among the graves to apply her facepaint, and thinking it made a nice little scene, I asked permission to take a few shots. She gladly accommodated, and while I was shooting, one of her children curiously wandered into the scene.

OK, it isn't day anymore

All in all, not a bad way to spend a Saturday night, and I’d recommend checking it out if you can next year. There’s also a wealth of musical performances and food which pictures won’t communicate, and so I won’t even bother. I’ll just finish with one more portrait of that sweet Day of the Dead facepainting.

Calaveras de Azúcar for sale

Calaveras y mariposas

First, a shout out to the Indian state of Karnataka: thank you. You rock. We three went to many an Indian state- Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Goa- and out of all of them, only you, Karnataka, were cool enough to let us go about our merry way without having to bribe a police officer. Maharashtra had us stopped a few times for a couple 100 Rp bribes, Goa hit us for a bribe of over 1000 Rp, and Andhra Pradesh… well, doesn’t count because cross country vehicle paperwork wasn’t an issue since the vehicle we were in was from Andhra Pradesh. That being said, I’m willing to bet that if we weren’t in an Andhra Pradesh vehicle, they would have made us pay a bribe. That’s because Andhra Pradesh isn’t as cool as you, Karnataka. Give yourself a pat on the back, Karnataka- you are one classy state.

Other than having a lot of class, Karnataka was generally characterised by having a lot of dust and being really hot. While travelling through Karnataka, we made a stop in the city of Bijapur which, as noted in our travel guide, foreigners have no business in after February- the heat gets so bad that all businesses and shops close around 1 pm. For early year travellers, however, it’s worth visiting for its Muslim tombs, including Gol Gumbaz- the ‘Taj Mahal’ of South India. It’s famous for having the second largest dome in the world, being surpassed in size only by St. Peter’s Basilica. It really is a humongous dome. The photo above shows Gol Gumbaz from a distance.

Walking towards the building, I realised that even from this distance it was easy to appreciate its grandeur and epic scale. Around the main structure, the ruins of the smaller buildings lay haphazardly around the grounds- a wall here, flooring there-, and gardens had been carefully cultivated around the area, giving it a strangely dynamic feeling of being overrun by well kept vegetation.

Kalyan started to talk to us about the ‘Whispering Gallery’ at the top of the structure, where standing inside the dome creates an effect where you can hear the whispers of an individual standing across on the other side of the building, and about the numerous and difficult to scale steps up to the top, tumbles from which were responsible for taking the lives of more than one individual, from servants to monarchs.

My anticipation grew- as I walked through the gardens surrounding the ruins and approached ever closer, I felt that even from a distance, I could begin to hear ghostly howls emanating from the Whispering Gallery (people in the gallery tend to shout rather than whisper, and the echoing has a very eerie effect), imagine people running up the stairs centuries ago, and understand Henry Hinton’s sense of wonder when he first laid eyes upon the magnificent edifice. I could almost see the ruined remains of buildings around me restored to their original states and imagine the whole area in its heyday.

That is, until I was attacked by a horde of colourfully garbed Indian children.

Remember how I was talking about an exception to India’s self-conscious photography rule?

Domestically, sure, it’s handy being white sometimes. There’s that money and power thing. There’s that low infant mortality rate at hospitals thing. There’s the ability to get waved through sobriety checkpoints in Carson that everyone is getting stopped at (true story). The underlying causes may be disgustingly racist, but still, occasionally handy!

That being said, there’s a certain disadvantage to being a tall, bald white guy in these mostly Indian tourist spots- I stick out like a sore thumb. Kalyan and Theresa weren’t quite so affected in this area. Observe:

Kalyan, though being at heart a total surf’s up California boy (without the surf’s up part), is ethnically Indian, and his friend Theresa here has cleverly disguised herself as a Southeast Asian Muslim pilgrim. No doubt a pair of clever tricks they learned from UC Berkeley. I find myself damning UC Irvine for its isolationist policies.

So between the guy who looks local and the pilgrim disguise, I guess I can understand why the kids run after the guy who looks like Dr. Venture in denim and a hemp hat. On top of this, what effect does carrying a camera have, you may ask? Apparently it multiplies the enthusiasm of the kids ten fold.

I found myself totally swarmed by Indian children. If I turned, they ran around in front of me. If I tried to back up, I found myself unable, being completely surrounded by them. They started making demands to me in English, and it seemed the only English they seemed to know involved asking me to take their picture. My only means of escape seemed clear: I started to get down and snap away, hoping their photographic hunger would soon be satiated, but nay, I was a fool- their hunger only grew. They soon grew tired of group pictures, and each child wanted an individual picture. As I tried to comply, other children would rush in to sabotage efforts of their fellows’ solo photo attempts, and immediately ask for their own solo shot afterwards. It was a whirlwind of treacherous individualism gone horribly, horribly wrong, and I was stuck in the middle of it all.

Kalyan and Theresa, not having garnered the interest of the kids, struck out for Gol Gumbaz on their own, leaving me to content with the onrush alone.

Possibly an attempt at some coordination. I have no idea what they were saying.

Unfortunately in being left alone I had lost my translator, so I didn’t have much in the means in getting the situation under control. The parents thought it was hilarious, and in keeping with the white-foreigner cool factor I had observed, broke through the kids for a little while to shake my hand and say ‘Hello, nice to meet you,’ with huge grins on their faces. The kids also thought this was hilarious.

It was an interesting experience to say the least, and fairly refreshing after other people’s rather stoic photo poses. After while, the kids began to settle down a bit. I didn’t know if it was due to tiredness or my losing my novelty, but I did manage to get them all still enough for this group shot:

After I finally managed to pry myself away from them and make my way towards the main building, they’re energy grew once again, and I found myself leaving behind their excited farewells (in the form of repeated and loud ‘bye!!!!!!’s) and aggressive waves, finally making it to the tomb. It was cool, but somehow seemed a little smaller after experiencing an enthusiastic Indian kindergarten assault.

Incidentally, regarding those black and white shots of another tomb below: it had its own set of children.