Profile

Cross section ready for dissection

'He hadn't meant to touch it. As he grubbed in the rain-filled gutter to pick up dog shit, human excrement and blackened, rotten vegetables, stowing them in the basket he carried on his head, he brushed what seemed to be a pile of rags, and it moved a little. The pile was flesh; it was a leper, dying. Eyes, nose, fingers and toes had already gone. Maggots writhed on him. And Murlidhar Devidas Amte, shaking with terror and nausea, stumbled to his feet and ran away...'

Almost everyone in this photo is caught in profile giving a more literal meaning to the photo being a profile of Indian everyday-life. Indian street life is always colourful, and colour has always been symbolic of life in itself. An abundance of colour derived from an abundance of life but with this abundance comes a loss in value. Perhaps life in itself is no different from a mere commodity, evaluated by scarcity. Conversely, looked at from a self centric perspective, most tend to value their own life to infinity because there is only one consideration; Self. Yet in spite of the infinite value we place on our lives, what are we doing with it? Do we attach an economic value to it like as if it is an actual commodity; a digit making up the GNP or GDP figures? Or do we value it with some other standard and if so what is that standard?

'Mr Amte, a handsome man in his 30s, was better known as a big-shot criminal lawyer in Warora, in what is now Maharashtra in central India. He could charge as much as 50 rupees for arguing for 15 minutes. He was a member of the bridge club and the tennis club and vice president of the Warora municipality, and he kept, outside town, an elegant farmhouse set in lush fields which he had never lifted a finger to cultivate himself. But after living with Mahatma Gandhi in his ashram in the mid-1940s, something had happened to him...'

I would recommend reading the rest of the article from The Economist. Sure, there are plenty of people around the world like Mr Amte. We say "how noble", "how selfless" and then move on, leaving the likes of him and Gandhi as social commentaries of a time and place anywhere but here or now.