Of all the genres of photography, portraiture is my favourite. Don't get me wrong, I love rambling off road to try and find a unique perspective for a landscape, I love capturing candid moments in street and travel photography, and if all my friends here continue to be under the spell of this strange new desire to watch birds, I might even try my hand at wildlife photography, but without a doubt my photographic heartbeat is for capturing people. Is it that I'm by nature a people person? That people seem by far the most complex, diverse and beautiful creatures on our planet? That attempting to capture the essence of a person on film (or more to the point, my interpretation of that person's essence) seems an almost transcendent pursuit? I truly don't know, but what I do know is that right now I'll take any opportunity I can to stick my lens in someones face and capture a frame full of the beauty of the world.
I've been quite on the blogging front for awhile now, in fact it's the longest I've gone without posting since I started sharing my incoherent ramblings a couple of years back. But in amongst the transition to a new country and a new culture and a new.. well, pretty much everything, combined with a stronger inner pull towards of a couple of other creative pursuits, carving out the time to sit and think and write has had to take a bit of a backseat. But today as I followed one of those other creative pursuits and stood in my front garden and kicked about in the dark brown
soil I couldn't help but think back to my old Garden in Banaras and the
stark contrast between these two locations in which I've grown. And
then the flood of memories came rolling in!
It's been almost twelve months since we packed up our lives into eight bags and left our home in Banaras for the mountains of northern Thailand and lately my nostalgia for India has been fierce. All the difficulties and disasters have been glossed over and in my mind all that now remains is an intense longing for the friends and places (and Chai!) that we left behind. For those of you who know me or followed my blogging about the Resurrection Garden you'll know how much of my life I pumped into that soil and of how much joy (and pain) it gave back, and today as those memories filled my mind my heart began to ache. And so tonight with my little ones now tucked up in their beds, I find myself sorting through old photos and writing up one final post on the Resurrection Garden as a way of getting some closure on a very special period in my life which I never felt I'd quite done up till now.
In November 2014 we returned to pack up our home in Banaras after having been back in Australia. When I left 6 months earlier there were winding paths throughout the garden to explore that were hedged in by ripe tomatoes on the vine, 7 different varieties of lettuce, marigolds in bloom, giant garlic, broccoli, kale, rainbow chard, various beets in full swing and rows upon rows of carrots just weeks away from harvest. When I returned there was this.
The paths were gone,
the weeds were 2+ foot tall and the entire garden had become an
impenetrable thicket of inedible chaos. I tried to get in deep enough to
find the back path but considering the prevalence of venomous snakes on
the property I soon gave up looking and returned to a safer zone to
take it all in. All my hard work, all the hours I had spent transforming
it, all the people who had gotten their hands dirty along side me, all
of it dissipated amidst a sea of green. I was saddened but not
heartbroken, I had returned well prepared for what my garden would look
like after 6 months without anyone to tend to it and knowing how quickly
the weeds would revel in the glory that was my much worked on soil. Before leaving it I
can so clearly remember standing with one foot in the garden and one
foot outside of it and reaching down with both hands to grab at the
soil. The soil outside the garden was hard, lifeless and impenetrable.
The soil in my garden (which was once exactly the same as that outside) was dark, rich, sweet smelling friable soil that was packed full
of life. If nothing else, the feeling that accompanied seeing the outcome of so many sweaty hours of hard work that resulted in such incredible transformation will get me through any future gardening projects with the knowledge that if it was possible there, then it is truly possible anywhere.
The day before our flights the groundskeeper began to hack and slash his way throughout the back corner of the property and managed to uncover what remained of the Resurrection Garden. All that could be found in this once lush piece of Eden were the various colours of discarded plastics and shards of rubbish now scattered amidst the ruins. Aimlessly I walked it's shattered paths where now no green thing remained until the pangs of sadness that echoed in my chest grew so heavy that I slumped to the ground in the place where my garden bench - proudly constructed of an ancient and weather worn stone slab, once stood. I sat there quietly for a good while, breathing it all in for one last time, until my silent meditation was a invaded by the well known sight of a plastic bag full of my neighbour's rubbish soaring out their window, over the wall and landing squarely where my broccoli's once grew. I erupted into laughter, the kind of wild maniacal laughter usually reserved only for cartoon super villains, and as the familiar sight emerged of my many neighbours poking their heads out their windows and over rooftops to look at the odd looking foreign guy in his garden, I wiped the tears of laughter from my eyes, yelled out a final 'thankyou for your gift,' and returned to my home.
As I sort though the many photos I snapped during my time in Banaras, one of the best visuals that can sum up my journey with the Resurrection Garden has got to be the following 3 panoramics. I can so vividly recall standing in the spot these photos were taken from and timidly asking Shooksplitty Boom if she'd be willing to let me turn this area into my garden instead of her initial plan of a row of fruit trees. After she so selflessly agreed to let me rob her of her land I took this first photo so that I'd be able to remember it rightly when I looked back on it in the future.
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| August 2012 |
Over the coming months the amount and variety of foreign objects I pulled from the soil was staggering! The hours were long, the work was hard and the temperature was at times unrelentingly oppressive but slowly yet surely our progress began to show itself. To every traveler, friend, pilgrim and stranger who did so much as lift a finger to help within this space, I offer my most sincere and heartfelt thanks for the genuine joy your work added towards!
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| February 2014 |
Sandwiched between my first and last days there emerged a golden period in which one could find a thriving, productive and organic vegetable patch known as the Resurrection Garden! A true rarity in its time and place. With the first fruits of my harvest I would offer them to the families who overlooked the garden (indeed the very same ones who would 'deposit' their rubbish in amongst my tomatoes) and thereafter used them at home as well as to feed the many travelers who would come for lunch at our River Ashram. Friday afternoons became a community gardening event in which travelers from around the globe would gather to work in, around and on the garden, make music, drink chai and simply help create the beauty which was our space. I can remember planting seeds with my daughter and watching the delight in her face as she'd pull her radishes out of the ground not much more than a month later. I remember many mornings sitting with my tiny newborn son on my garden bench, the early morning mist still hanging thick in the air, the Chai mug still warm in my hand, the stinging pain of sleep deprivation still heavy on my eye lids. I remember the yelps of the Bundar (monkeys) as they dropped my half chewed vegetables and fled the scene of their crime once I had truly learned how to wield a slingshot. I even remember the plastic bag full of human poo I found crushing my tomato seedlings. And I remember standing in my garden for the last time and like everything else in Banaras had to say 'good bye.'
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| November 2014 |
What blows my mind most about these images is the almost identical sight of barren, littered and dead landscapes in the shots taken when I began in August 2012 and when I left in November 2014. It's almost as though Banaras has erased any evidence that I was ever there. But this doesn't bother me in the slightest, for I'll still know. I'll still know the frustration, pain, sweat, heat stroke, germination, growth, transformation, harvests, joy, peace giving, soul nourishing times I spent in that space. And really, isn't that what's most important? Even if it forever returns to nothing, I'll still know, and now you'll know too.
