White Desert Story - The Widows

"No man at all can be living forever, and we must be satisfied" - Maurya, Riders To The Sea.

White Desert Story - Metamorphosis!

"I didn't know who He was or what He was until I saw him transformed into a Blue Butterfly and coming out from one of those windows.

Was there any proof to the lies ? Well the Blue's of one of those windows lying quite and strange brings a certain amount of truth to an otherwise abandoned tales of Metamorphosis..."

White Desert Story - The Widows.

White Desert Story - The Nomads

“If this were so; if the desert were 'home'; if our instincts were forged in the desert; to survive the rigours of the desert - then it is easier to understand why greener pastures pall on us; why possessions exhaust us, and why Pascal's imaginary man found his comfortable lodgings a prison.” 
                                                                                                                    
                                                                                                                              ― Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines.

White Desert Story - The Childhood

“and when all the wars are over, a butterfly will still be beautiful.” 

White Desert Story - In search of Water

“She is free in her wildness, she is a wanderess, a drop of free water. She knows nothing of borders and cares nothing for rules or customs. 'Time' for her isn’t something to fight against. Her life flows clean, with passion, like fresh water.” 

White Desert Story - The Widows

White Desert Story

White Desert Story - Dada Veer Jaan

White Desert Story - The Moonlit Night

White Desert Story

White Desert Story

White Desert Story - The Widows

This series celebrates the scent and aroma of womanhood in the White Desert. I was going through the images and what made me feel so unique and exciting is that these women are unconventional to the traditional sense of "Widows" in the Indian context.

If you see them carefully you would find in them a reflection of "Maurya", the celebratory  protagonist of J.S.Synge's Riders To The Sea. Like Maurya these women must have weathered all storms of life and death and yet there is a stark and yet poignant grace in their characters.

There's a colour in them which defies the barrenness of the landscape. Young and old alike they share a bond. A bond in their abject fate and yet together they stand and face life.

Actually I saw them celebrating life in their very own manner with grit and determination written all over their faces. There's an unique and unimaginable sense of melancholia in them which is so distinctive than the traditional way a widow is seen in India. And I think it has lot to do with the terrain of White Desert.

As if they are the Riders of this White Desert!