The Wide, Wide World

One of the odder things that happened to me when I started watching more movies via DVD and streaming than in the theater was my appreciation for Indian movies, such as the well-known phenomenon of the "Bollywood film." These may be action, comedy, romance or even superhero movies that have the extremely unexpected musical number or three in them, like an old MGM musical.

From these I developed an interest in the nation of India itself. At more than a billion people, it's the world's largest democracy. Better than a century of British rule was in many ways harsh and destructive to the nation and its culture, and in many ways a prime example of racially-influenced imperialism that needed to depart the historical stage. But that same century planted the roots of a nation that values the rule of law, the rights of the individual and freedom of conscience, at least among the upper and middle classes of its society. Despite containing many different and possibly hostile cultural and religious groups, India maintains its democracy -- although it sometimes does better at maintaining a clean democracy than others.

Although we may have a stereotype of what an Indian "looks like," it's important to remember that this vast country contains all kinds of people, more even than our own wonderfully diverse melting pot. Polish photographer Magdalena Bagrianow, traveling in one section of India, found some folks who don't really match that stereotypical appearance but are as much Indian as the biggest Bollywood box office star around. This post at Bored Panda shows some of the portraits she took at the fairgrounds and on the streets of a town called Pushkar, and they are fascinating.

Of course, one of the most interesting things to me is that these are pictures taken by a Polish photographer. Around this ol' world we certainly live in different cultures and have different ideas about what matters most in life. But it's still the one planet.

Below is the first picture in the collection Bored Panda displays, a young Kalbelia woman named Suman. Bagrianow has another picture of Suman a ways down the list. Kalbelias are a tribal group of nomads who still move around quite a bit in their districts of India, although animal control laws have put an end to their traditional practice of earning money by displaying their skills at cobra handling.

Many more pictures from the journey are at Bagrianow's Instagram page.