Cheryl in the blue chiffon dress

NOTE 1-  After taking advise I have chosen to use the more acceptable Hindi word Kinnar as reference to India’s 3rd sex, rather than the general word ‘Hijra’ which holds disrespectful colonial connotations and I admit I’ve used for years.

NOTE 2-  I must also make a note to myself some time very soon. I must not start any more blog postings with ‘whilst sitting and gently rocking on a train’ but as it is true, here goes.

Whilst sitting and gently rocking from side to side on an express train bound for VT station deep inside Mumbai’s frenetic sense arousing suburbs I heard the ominous ‘triple hand clap’ of the Kinnars’ as they made their way along the carriage towards where I was seated.

Kinnar, Benares 2002

They were still some distance away and with my ear finely tuned I could tell by the amount of hands I could hear clapping there were a group of Kinnar approaching. This provocative on-mass approach was a clear signal to me. There was the probability of gang intimidation the definite use of some very provocative language and behaviour and the possibility of a smidgen of sexual molestation, aimed predominantly at vulnerable young men. I have been witness to a number of testicular squeezes on board a train on a number of occasions and I was hoping that once they realised they had a foreigner on board, and that being an unknown quantity for them, I would most probably be spared both the sexual assault and daylight robbery, I’ve only had my balls grabbed once. I could cowardly sit back and watch as my fellow male passengers deflected most of the flack away from me. Women are always spared the intimidation and humiliation!

The train was somewhere between the local stations of Kalyan and Thane well inside Mumbai’s commuter belt, the perfect hunting ground for Kinnar to find their prey and collect revenue whilst people are on their daily commute into work. As for me I realised that this could go one of two ways, they would either giggle at first then completely ignore me or I would be picked out for special treatment. This day I got the ‘special’ treatment.

Since sunrise I had been sharing the compartment with four young men and two young ladies, I myself had been on the train for over 24 hours whilst my six fellow passengers were newer arrivals, having boarded the train on its slow approach to the city. The four young men had huddled together on the two single seats next to the isle and were sitting on top of one another in a comfortable early morning embrace as young men often do in India. The two young ladies were sitting opposite each other inside the carriage peering through the metal bars of the trains open windows, their faces partly covered by their sari in a polite discreet manner this helped keep their faces free from dust but also enabled them to hold a private conversation together.

The jingle of bells from gold ankle bracelets grew louder as the bare footed Kinnar announced their approach. Heavy stomping of feet accompanied by rhythmic finger clicking and their oh-so-soft hollow hand clapping along with the occasional loud bang of a tabla let everyone know they was coming. An inexperienced foreigner  who was travelling on an Indian train for the first time could be forgiven for believing the train had been boarded by a troupe of female dancers dressed in traditional rural village costume from deep inside the deserts of Rajasthan. Not as was the case, by a group of hairy legged transgender ‘males’ who had nothing more traditional on their minds apart from relieving people from there hard-earned Rupees.

Within Indian culture the Kinnar (who are also known disrespectfully  Hijra)  have a magical persona and can perform religious rituals at weddings and at the births of newly born boys, they can also bestow blessings for good health and can earn a handsome living when working for the upper classes. Most Kinnar see themselves as neither men nor women but as a separate 3^rd sex and life for the many different ‘types’ of Kinnar can be as complex and as troublesome as it is fascinating. Many Kinnar are also sex workers.

Almost all my encounters with Kinnar have been happy ones and for most of the time they have been a brief enlightening experience for me. My encounters with India’s 3^rd sex have usually been filled with many jokes and also lots of questions. I have asked them questions and in turn they have interrogated  me. Only once, an isolated incident close to Hosur in the southern state of Karnataka have I ever had a proper ‘run-in’ with a Kinnar, when I felt under pressure to hand over money, that on that day, I just did not have and the altercation ended up with a brick being thrown at the rickshaw I was travelling in. That was the only time a meeting with a Hijra could have turned really quiet nasty, my auto rickshaw man quietly and wisely advising me not to retaliate. He said Hijra sometimes have bad days.

Almost out of nowhere and as I sat remembering  my slight rickshaw-altercation some years before, that very moment, a ‘diva’ of Bollywood poroprtions burst through from behind her entourage and freed herself from her hand clapping and dancing friends. She was wearing an electric blue and quite revealing chiffon dress that flowed almost to her ankles. The neck line was plunging allowing just a tantalising glimpse of her red laced Bra and she had a huge fake Safire necklace which lay against the a growth of stubble on her chest. Stubble that I estimated was shaved off roughly a week ago.

There was no doubting her intentions she took one long and lingering look in my direction she sauntered over to where I was sitting and sat down next to me she put one hand firmly on my right knee and in a voice that could pass for an Indian version of Ertha Kitt she stated very deliberately with eye to eye contact “I-am-in-love–with-you-darling”. She purred after she said this to me.

She asked me. “What is your name darling”? I replied with deliberate eye to eye contact that my name was Jason. She replied back in the voice of a purring Indian cat once again “My-name-is-Cheryl-and-I-love-you”. It was at this moment for a few brief seconds I actually flirted with assuming the identity of a generic and bumbling Hugh Grant type of character, stumbling through a dictionary full of apologetic words with an English boarding school stammer. I thought against this option though and decided to front this situation out without using an alternative persona for cover.

Also at this point in the journey I honestly sensed that there had been a sharp intake of breath from everyone else in the carriage swiftly followed by a huge collective sigh of relief. I definitely felt that the atmosphere had been lifted and everyone else in the carriage were actually thinking, Ha! Let the foreigner take all of the flack this morning.

Cheryl asked me politely “What is your name and what do you do”? I told her that my name was Jason and that I was a photographer. Before I could catch my breath she exclaimed loudly ensuring everyone in the carriage could hear “Jason-I-Love-you”. The young Indian men adored the attention that was being lavished upon me and not upon them and I admit now that I was slightly flattered by Cheryl’s advances but only slightly you understand. I told Cheryl that as we had just met I did not believe that she really loved me and that may be it was possible it was only a little lust she was feeling. The young men on the single seats were laughing out loud now and the ladies in the open window seats were also paying more attention to the commotion we were making in our carriage.

There are never ‘normal’ journeys into Mumbai on the train. Life in India is never simple but today’s encounter with Cheryl was less normal than other. Cheryl and I had quickly turned into a comedy double act aboard that train, we had really clicked and I told Cheryl that she should have her own show on prime time television. Cheryl was born to be a star and I do believe that in any other country she could have fronted her own cable TV chat show, she was an enigma. I remember thinking at that time that Indian prime time television may not be ready for Cheryl just yet.

I am not easily shocked. I have been in some situations that some people might find uncomfortable and others even questionable but the refreshing thing about being in India is that however long I spend within India’s cultural grasp she always pushes the boundaries of what might be considered socially acceptable to the absolute limits. In India I imagine clearly defined rules but in India I find these rules can be bent and even more fluid and surprising than many supposedly liberal western communities.

Cheryl was pulling no punches. She said to me “I know that you love me and I know that you want me” and I told her categorically that I had absolutely no sexual interest in her at all but I did think she was very funny. Cheryl was like a mongoose in a death grip with a serpent  though, she would not let go. Cheryl made her intentions quite clear again and with the universal and provocative hand gesture she openly offered me some light hand relief. Cheryl said we could go to the toilet. I told Cheryl that although she was dressed as a woman I was aware that under her blue chiffon dress she was almost definitely still a man and that I really had no intention of finding out. I was not about to be tossed off in a toilet by a bloke in a blue chiffon dress on a train in India even thought I quite liked him-HER. I said to her quiet defiantly  , I’m just not doing it!

The two young ladies who were sitting in the window seats were laughing at us whilst her troupe of fellow Kinnars’ listened passively from the next compartment. So I turned towards the young Indian men expecting their support, Cheryl wasn’t taking ‘NO’ for an answer. I turned to the eldest and smarter dressed of the young Indian men. “You wouldn’t go off to the toilets and pay to have, with a nod of my head,  ‘that’ done to you would you?” and without any hesitation he replied “yes, why not?” I asked the next man “would you?” He also replied yes. All four of the young men confessed that if it had been offered to them they would all go off to the toilet to be tossed off by a Kinnar on a train. The two young ladies in the window seats were holding their sari over their mouths and were giggling loudly.

I asked the first man again. I said I can’t believe it; you would have no problem going off with Kinnar to a train toilet? With a cool shrug of the head and in his lovely confident Mumbai accent his said “Ya! why not? Same feeling!”

The only thing that really shocks me to this day about that mornings encounter was the honesty of those four young men and that how sex with a male prostitute was so readily accepted in front of virtual strangers. Imagine that on the Birmingham to London cross-country line.

Before Cheryl left I did manage to write down her phone number I was desperate to meet up and take her portrait but I swear and I know you will not believe me  I lost her mobile phone number and I never met her again and that is the sad truth to this little tale ended. Honest…..

Jason Scott Tilley

 

Home

Whilst travelling for so many years across India I always felt a very real sense of peace, I felt that India was the correct place for me to be and that though some periods of my life may have been way out of control and were the consequence of hard work, heavy drinking, drug use and mixing with some seriously dodgy people, everything in my life up to that point seemed to have conspired in my favour and had brought me to an unexpectedly stunning period of living.

Even though I might only be briefly passing through the organised chaos of a vibrant mega-city, where on an hourly basis and whilst not in the confines of cheep spartan rooms, over time I had learned to dodge the wing mirrors of auto-rickshaws erratically  driven by skinny mad men and I had acquired the skill of avoiding the dangerous horns of oncoming bovine traffic and I jostled, shoulder to shoulder like a local, with the hurried hoards who had to compete for every spare inch of space, in this mayhem and in India I always felt a true sense of home.

Me, Varkala, Kerala South India 2006

I was also equally at home whilst relaxing and living for weeks at a time breathing fresh mountain air in quiet Himalayan community’s, completely understanding why my Great Grandfather chose to build a cottage retreat in the hills of the Deccan plateau where he could escape the summer heat of Bangalore.

Whilst I was being rocked from side to side sitting next to an open window aboard a steady moving train, the hot dusty breeze drying taught skin on my always sun tanned face I honestly believed that I belonged to that specific moment in place and time, inextricably connected to a country and to family members who were born and who had lived their entire lives in India many decades before but had long since passed away.

Stories had been expertly woven together over the course of so many years using our family’s cherished oral history and our much loved family photograph albums and were recounted to me with a great passion by my Grandpa that I felt I was able to take refuge with family spirits of the past and prepare myself for an increasingly uncertain future.

 

The Shimla experience (part 1)

For some years I looked forward to a short period of my life where I could forget about commissioned photographic work completely or at the very least postpone  having to do it for a while. I promised myself that rather than waiting around for the inevitability of old age to creep up on me when one day I would draw my pension then soon after that I would roll over in bed and die of boredom. I planned that at some point in the middle of my life I might create some time just for myself, a sort of early retirement plan without necessarily retiring or indeed without any definite plan.

I had already pre-visualised my own fate and I had resigned myself to the probability that one day I would almost certainly be found stagnating in the corner of an old people’s home in the West midlands, England. I thought if I did eventually make it to old age that it was more than likely I would be found drugged and drooling in an old arm-chair in the corner of a retirement complex, probably disgraced and cantankerous. I would be wallowing in the sweet fumes produced by my stale urine whilst being kept alive with dozens of prescription tablets cold cups of tea and digestive biscuits. I loath tea whether it is hot or cold and I hate all types of biscuits. This was an unhappy thought for me.

I had figured out in my early 20’s that it seemed to me as if the holy grail of western aspiration, the pinnacle of our lives was to safely reach retirement age, when we could then switch the metaphorical lights off and pronounce “goodnight all”.  It seemed cruel to me that I should not be allowed to enjoy a prolonged period of recreational spare time at some point during my working life whilst I was young  and my body was still fit enough to enjoy a sustained period of quality time and hedonistic fun .

My body rocked from side to side in perfect rhythm with the small first class carriage I was lying down in. I managed to secure a private compartment within the final coach on the Kalka Shimla Express by offering the train guard a couple of hundred rupees extra to open the wooden door and allow me inside. Just before the train left Kalka station at 6.00am sharp he told me that the luxury bogie would be closed for the day. I never argued with him I just manufactured my body language to look a bit disappointed, I looked in through the freshly cleaned window and the luxury carriage was empty. What a waist I thought. I sadly stared at him, the guard quietly searched down into his deep trouser pocket from where he produced an enormous set of keys, the size of which only people who work the railways in India possess. He expertly identified the correct small key, he inserted it in to the lock, he turned the key and he opened the door signalling me inside, once inside and out of view other passengers I passed the guard the money. It was polite, gentle and very quiet corruption.

From my comfortable horizontal position I made my way regally in to the white Himalayan clouds, my head was resting on the arm of a sizable padded couch, my view, uninterupted from both carriage windows at the flora and fauna that my Nan often reminisced to me about as she told me idyllic tales of how in the days of the  Raj she and her school friends made their way each year back to Mayo College in Shimla escaping the oppressive summer heat of New Delhi. The yellow and red flowers she told me, would rest on green leaves as tall trees lined the route of the narrow gauge toy train and when the train briefly stopped at tiny stations allowing the train to take on water and its passengers to buy some food, she and her school friends would rush out to collect hundreds of the fallen flowers from the freshly swept platform floor and carry them with them, colourful souvenirs  of their journey north in to the hills.

As I lay on my back exhausted from the previous nights sleepless train journey from Amritsa via Ambala to Kalka, the air became thinner and thinner and as the train slowly climbed higher and as we passed by the stations of Koti-Darampur-Barog-Kathleeghat the panoramic views from the large windows grew more magnificent and I noticed for the first time that the lack of oxygen at this altitude resulted in my breathing becoming quite shallow. Although I’m sure that my Grandmother would have loved to have completed this journey one more time sadly her doctor and her heart would never have allowed it. I would do the journey for her and tell her about it later, she would be pleased that I had made the effort. I felt as free as I had done for many months now.

The train arrived at our final destination of Shimla on time early in the evening, the temperature was cool the sun already low in the sky and orange in colour, as I walked up the steep hill towards the town from the station I purposely told a local porter who was not much taller and probably lighter than my rucksack that I would carry my own bags up the hill. After about twenty steps I realised I had made a huge mistake, this was the only exercise I had done all day and I was now breathing thin mountain air, it suddenly felt that my lungs were about to explode from my chest. Stubbornly and stupidly I carried on walking slowly. I stopped every fifty yards or so following road signs to The Ridge and to Christ Church, where gasping for any breath I could find, I found a middle of the range guest house and I checked in to a room.

 Next Day…………

I woke up very late the next day my mind seemed blank of thought and when I checked my alarm clock, it was just before lunch time. I also felt quite heavy-headed, I was on the 4th floor of the guest house, the vista of my room was south-facing and the windows in my room faced the corridor and balcony, my curtains were slightly ajar. I thought I could remember closing them. As I lay in bed and I looked through the gap in my curtain I could glimpse the sun occasionally glint in to my bedroom shining through the small gap in the curtain shimmering through the pine and rhododendron trees.

I was hungry, I got out of my bed and I got dressed quickly, within about five minutes and after consulting my guide-book I walked down to the Shimla Indian coffee-house. I sat on one of the wooden chairs in its colonial interior and I was immediately attended to by one of the smart uniformed waiters. I ordered two meat samosas and as I waited for my food to arrive I quietly sat alone and I searched my mind to see if I could re-collect any event from the previous night.

I went out to a restaurant cum bar that was directly opposite my guest house for food and a beer and soon after I arrived two respectable looking men asked if they could join me at the table, I said that was fine but at some point in the evening there was an argument between them and I remembered feeling uncomfortable and I said good night to both of them.

As I sat pondering the odd previous night two of the largest samosas I have ever seen or have ever seen since arrived at my table. So large were they in fact that they needed one plate each to accommodate them. I began to tackle the first one of them with my shiny metal fork and as I broke through the pastry the spiced minced lamb and peas oozed out on to my plate. I looked at the other still untouched samosa and I remember thinking what a greedy bastard I must seem to every one in the coffee shop that morning. My mind was also preoccupied by trying to fill the gaps in my memory from the night before. Dark thoughts sparked then danced around the void where my recent memories were usually stored. I was at a loss as to why I could remember so little from my first night in Shimla. Why did there appeared to be some chunks of my evening missing? As if so exceptionally drunk, I had blacked them out, I was sure that was not the case though.

I had a need to fill the empty spaces in my mind with facts and why did I have such a vivid dream of the man who sat down opposite me at my table the night before being in my room and walking past one side of my bed last night. I had left the bar with both men still in heated debate and I do remember that my beer did not taste right, I could remember leaving some of it.

So strong was the memory of the man walking by the side of my bed as I lay there motionless as soon as I finished my samosas I left the coffee shop and I walked back to my guesthouse. I spoke to the middle-aged manager who had checked me in the evening before and who was now seated behind the wooden counter. I asked him directly “did some one come back with me to my room last night” he looked puzzled and he replied “no sir”.

I was determined to get on with the rest of my day, I left my guest house and I began to walk the short distance to The Mall. The air was crisp and clear and the sky was a deep blue the unpolluted mountain air provided an almost uninterrupted panoramic view of the snow-covered Himalaya from the Ridge. I spent my afternoon climbing up and down the steep steps that are scattered around Shimla; these steps connect the small alley ways to lanes like a gigantic three-dimensional game of snakes and ladders. Thousands of middle class Indian tourists mingled with a handful young western travellers and a sprinkling of the wealthier European types gathered themselves in posh restaurants or brushed shoulders with locals in the numerous Indian sweet and cake shops. Shimlas picture postcard perfect-ness you could not compare with other Indian towns of comparable size, it was an almost sickening sight. I felt that I was in India, but not quite.

I planned that the main destination of my day would be the Gothic Christ Church Cathedral, the church that my Grandmother visited once a week for Sunday morning’s service. She was not a religious woman but I knew she enjoyed being part of her schools congregation and I know that as a schoolgirl she thoroughly enjoyed the freedom of the town after the service had finished.

Built high on the mountains Ridge Christ Church is visible for miles around and I purposefully avoided walking close to it all day, I was saving it till last. Eventually I made my way towards the entrance, a large stone archway, I opened the heavy door and I went inside. By now I just wanted to sit down and think, my breaths were deep and laboured, the church was empty, I walked half way down the isle and I sat in front of the imposing church organ to the left hand side of the church on one of the cold wooden pews.

Through out the day my memory was occasionally jogged by the brief flash of the image of the man who I met at the restaurant cum bar the night before. At times I could briefly imagine him walking next to my bed whilst I was lying under the heavy quilt. I always remained quite motionless though. It was whilst I was inside Christ Church that I really began to search my mind.

Although there seemed to be substantial parts that were missing from my memory I appeared to have retained some very lucid recollections which seemed part dream and part memory. I was sure that the previous evening was quite genial in the beginning, although I had no visual memory of the man sitting in my peripheral to the left of me I remember that he told me he was a friend of the man sitting opposite me when he sat down. The man sitting opposite told me he was a doctor from Delhi. He was quite a handsome man, clean-shaven and tall, he had thick black wavy shiny hair and he spoke in fluent queens English with that posh Indian twang. I remembered he was wearing a smart black turtle neck jumper. I could now recall that I went to the bar to buy one more beer, a Hayward’s 5000 my usual, I took that beer back to the table and I went to the toilet. It was when I returned from the toilet that the two men were fully immersed in a heated verbal confrontation and the perfect English they had both been speaking in front of me had been replaced with Hindi, the mood had changed. The man to the left of me was visibly upset with the man who was wearing the turtle neck jumper opposite me

As I sat facing the altar in that church I tried desperately to concentrate and to access my subconscious mind searching to recall the images that I had of him walking past my bed to the toilet in my room and I could now remember that as he walked past me he walked to the end of my bed and he said “I will sleep here with you tonight”.  He walked past my bed slowly almost floating with an unnerving confidence and when he returned from the toilet he lit a cigarette in the corner of the room throwing the match to the floor whilst still looking at me. The act of throwing the match to the floor frightened me but still I didn’t move. As a teenager I was lucky not to lose my life in a house fire, I would never throw a match directly on to the carpet inside a room.

I held on to this thought as I left the church and as I walked the short distance back to my guest house. I arrived back and the manager was seated behind the counter and a teenage boy was sitting along side him. I politely said hello to them both and I climbed the four sets of stairs back to my room, breathing heavily to catch my breath, I opened the door. When I entered the room, lying on the floor in front of me, was a spent match. I could almost not believe what I was looking at. I stood still for a couple of seconds and then I walk the short distance to the corner of the room, I bent down and I picked up the match. The match did not free itself from the carpet immediately it must have hit the floor whilst still hot, melting the mixed fibres of the cheep carpet as it landed. I sat down on the end of the bed with the match in my hand and I stared at the slightly open curtain. This find was surely too much of a coincidence. I still felt confused but I was more convinced now that that man had been in my room the night before but a half-burned match was the only evidence that I had. That night I made sure that the door was firmly locked from the inside.

The next day in Shimla…………

I awoke early that morning and I lay in bed catching up with world events on BBC news 24. I had been away from home travelling alone now for just over one month. I hadn’t usually allowed myself the luxury of a television set in my room but I was pleased of its company this time. I felt much more comfortable that morning as the mystery of the first nights events in Shimla began to clarify my thoughts. Reality had begun to fill the empty spaces where yesterday mornings missing memories should have been. I could now easily recall that when the argument began in the restaurant I sat that quietly for some time drinking my beer. The man next to me was clearly remonstrating about me and my beer, I kept on drinking my beer he never tried to stop me. I can only estimate that the argument must have ensued for about twenty minutes and I could clearly remember thinking that my beer had a strange texture to it and that it did not taste right. Eventually I made my excuses and as I stood up to go the man who was sitting opposite me wearing the turtle neck black jumper apologised to me for the commotion and he said sorry, he then said to me, “so where are you staying?” With out thinking I pointed out of the window and I replied “just over there” directing him straight to the guest house. He must have been able to watch me walk back without moving from his seat. I could kick myself now!

When I got back to my room I turned the small square television set on and got into the big double bed I pulled the heavy quilts up to my chest, the nights are cold in Shimla. Half an hour must have past when the door opened, the man who was wearing the turtle neck jumper from the restaurant walked in he said some words to me as he walked past me to the bathroom. In all of this time I never questioned anything, I never remonstrated I never moved, I was completely calm, I had been sedated!

In the back of my mind I knew that this situation was completely wrong and after he lit his cigarette  he stood watching me from the corner of the room,  telling me that he was going to sleep in my bed with me that night, from somewhere I found my voice. I shouted at him “GET OUT OF MY ROOM”, but still I did not move. I screamed at him again “GET OUT OF MY FUCKING ROOM”. Calmly he turned away from me to face the curtains and he opened them, he looked through the gap and out on to the corridor, I’m sure he was checking to see if any one was watching him, I’m sure now that he was checking to see if there were any witnesses. Happy there was no one out side my room he slowly walked towards the door, he said nothing to me and he left the room. I lay in bed still motionless and I continued watching the television set.

Jason Scott Tilley

A thoroughly analogue year

All in all last year was a fairly big year for me. I thoroughly enjoyed the time that I spent at Coventry University in their darkroom, lets us hope that this year is just as productive. I have not put any blogs out recently about my adventures in India but I will be sure to put some stories up in the coming months, some you will believe whilst others you just wont. I have spent the last two months scanning in negatives from the 1980′s and 90′s with some silly accompanying stories to go with them. Hope you like them. I Will write more posts soon, Jason

Analogue prints drying at Coventry University

The beautiful people project and my Coventry University photographic residency featured on Develop Tube

Thanks to Erica Mcdonald for adding my conversation with Jaskirk Dhaliwal about the beautiful people project that was recorded at Coventry University last month.

Jaskirt Dhaliwal in conversation with Jason Tilley at Coventry University. They discuss the life of his family in colonial India and how the beautiful people project began.

Jason Tilley – Photographer in residence from CU Photography on Vimeo.  Recorded at Coventry University.

The meeting in the middle of the Indian ocean

I was sitting chatting and drinking a cold beer with an attractive Australian woman I had just met in a bar on Havelock Island a few days before Christmas in 2005. The low-tech bar we were drinking in had been discreetly made out of Bamboo and it had been carefully hidden from view and was sheltered beneath tall palm trees that were heavily laden with coco-nuts, just metres from the sea.

Havelock is one of the smaller Islands that make up the Anderman and Nicobar islands, the remote archipelago that sits in the middle of the Bay of Bengal between India, to the west, and Burma to the northeast. It had taken me five long days and very boring nights on board a former Scandinavian owned ship, which instead of moving freight around Europe, is these days used to transport Indian passengers and a few western travellers twice a month from Chennai to Port Blair on south Anderman. After a couple of nights in the capital of Port Blair I took a connecting ferry on to the island of Havelock.

The remoteness of these islands is their attraction, unspoilt by tourism as yet, with permits needed for all foreign travellers – you really have to want to go there and also have the time to do so.

 As we continued drinking, our talk, as always with foreigners on long term journeys, eventually graduated from, where have you been and where are you going on to and we talked about what seemed like passed ‘normal’ home lives.

 I then began explaining in more depth some of the reasons for my long term travels across India and explained that I had first travelled to India with my grandfather on a trip to Mumbai and Bangalore in 1999. I explained that even though he was 85 years of age he still had a real zeal for life and for travel. The Australian woman looked at me in a rather strange way and said to me “I was sitting in this bar last night and I was told a story about a grandfather and his grandson who had once travelled from England back to Bangalore”. She told me that the man, who was from New Zealand,  would be in the bar later that evening and I should meet him.

 So, later that evening, I was eventually introduced to a man from New Zealand, who as it happened, was the very same man that I and my Grandpa had met in the Victoria hotel in Bangalore in November 1999 and he was so impressed with my grandpa that he often told the tale of meeting this 85 year old traveller and his grandson. Unusually he didn’t seem at all surprised to see me- as he put it the world is an increasingly small place.

 The following day – Christmas day – I rang home to pass on the news that on the remote archipelago of the Anderman and Nicobar islands there were still people talking about grandpa.

 Jason Scott Tilley

Campbell Road Bangalore

What do you see when you look at this photograph? I guess you see the same scene as I do. You will see the four-legged table with a small vase of flowers placed on top and you will then notice the long white lace curtains that hang down and the bright sunlight that shines through the lattice wooden door frame and the rear bicycle wheel that is half hidden just to the left of the veranda  door.

Of course we all see the same scene, but I have been looking at this photograph for more than thirty years now and what I enjoy the most about this image is that it allows me to directly engage with my great grandparents daily view, one hundred years ago.  My ancestors must have walked past this scene every single day, as they either left or entered their bungalow, at No 3 Campbell Road, Bangalore. They would never have given this view a second glance, or ever realised that one day this view would interest people years later. Just a simple view and a precious record of an old  family home.

 Jason Scott Tilley

Finding Marguerite

Sitting with my grandpa’s photograph albums on my lap and talking to my grandmother after Sunday lunch many years ago she looked at me and stated, in a tone which sounded somewhat incongrously jealous for a woman in her late seventies, “those books are just full of photographs of his ex-girlfriends”.

My grandpa who was sitting opposite, either didn’t hear this remark or chose to ignore it – the snooker on the television providing a timely distraction. It is true that the books do have quite a few photographs of beautiful young women of the Raj but as far as I can work out only one of them was actually a girlfriend of my grandpa.

 As I have mentioned in the previous post, Marguerite Mumford from the Nilgiri Hills, there are an extraordinary number of photographs of one elegantly beautiful young woman whose name was Marguerite. The photographs of her are always infused with a certain playfulness during day trips to the beach or picnics by the river. There is something personal and intimate about the photographs of her. Marguerite obviously loved to play to the camera or to be more precise she loved playing up for the photographer, flirting with both the camera and the man whose eye followed her through the lens – my grandfather.

 As a family we had often asked my grandpa to add the names of the people to the photographs in his albums and at some unknown point in time, he must have succumbed, and done just that.

As time wore on, I became more intrigued as to whom Marguerite really was. I wondered why their romance had ended. Would I be able to find out anything else about her? I spent hours scouring the internet in the faint hope that I might be able to find someone from her family who I could share her beautiful photographs with, but sadly to no avail.

After months spent searching my hope began to wane and eventually almost petered out entirely, but I never stopped wondering about her however, or what had become of her.

Recently I was pouring over the pages of the albums once more and I noticed the faded words Marguerite ‘Lovedale’ that my grandpa must have written more than twenty years ago.

Intrigued as to what the word ‘Lovedale’ meant I returned once more to the computer and within seconds I realised that this was the break I had been looking for. Lovedale is the nickname of the Lawrence Memorial Military School in the town of ‘Ooty’ in the Niligiri Hills. My great-grandfather, Algernon Edwin Scott, had a summer-house in Ooty and my grandpa would spend weekends with him whilst he was studying at St Josephs College in Canoor. Ooty would have been the place where he must have met Margurite and their relationship subsequently blossomed.

 I immediately contacted the school in Ooty. They in turn put me in touch with ex-pupils who although now in their late eighties and nineties were still in touch with one another. My search led me to a woman in America called Moira who very kindly informed me that she was still in touch with one of Marguerite’s sisters, Gladys, who also lived in America.

 

 After months of searching it all happened so very fast, and I was soon sharing the photographs I had of Marguerite and one of Gladys that my grandpa took in New Delhi sometime after the Second World War. Gladys remembered my grandpa very well and the family then told me that Margarete was still alive and living in New Zealand, but she was now ninety-six years of age and living in an old people’s home. They told me her memory had dimmed, but she was physically quite well.

 I was then put in touch with Alecia, Margurerite’s daughter who also lives in New Zealand. and I began sending them pictures of the young Marguerite – images I presume they had never even imagined existed, let alone ever see.

 In my eagerness and excitement at re-uniting people with a now-life-time-ago-history, I also sent a photograph of my grandpa. Marguerite’s poignantly hopeful reaction was simply, “is Bertie here?” It hadn’t occurred to me that these long-forgotten photos would upset anyone.  I was told that my grandpa was the love of her life and after she had left India she had married an Irishman and they had moved to New Zealand.

 It had been obvious to me all along, by the very nature of the photographs, that they were in love. From the moment I first found negatives of Marguerite I could see thay were kept very carefully and separately from the rest of grandpa’s photographs. It was very apparent that they both meant an awful lot to each other. Proof if it were needed of the indelible nature of first love.

 Jason Scott Tilley

 

 

Train-spotters and stalkers

Street portraits have been around almost as long as photography itself and they are a part of most photographers’ repertoires, but some photographers are obsessive in their collecting of types to the point where street portraiture is their practice. They are entomologists, train-spotters, archivists, stalkers, genealogists, who trawl the streets searching for types to add to their own eccentric taxonomy of humanity; a taxonomy that carries conviction through the photographer’s consistency of vision rather than any more objective measure.  It is the clarity of vision, the ability to see people, rather than just look at them, which determines success in this field. The modern master of this practice, Hiroko Kikai, offers a musical analogy; of transposing the ordinary from a minor to a major key. Kikai’s haunting of the Asakusa Temple in Tokyo for the last 4 decades in search of selective specimens of humanity achieves a quiet majesty, forming a body of work that is more of an offering than a taking.

In the same spirit Jason Tilley’s wanderings are on the streets of India from where he brings us a reminder, and I welcome frequent reminding, that people are weird, wonderful, and us.

Chris Steel Perkins

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It has often occurred to me that I could be described as a collector of people and faces and whilst I was travelling through India, I did on occasion, recognise that I could also be  described as a ‘stalker’of sorts, but I had never previously been conscious of the fact that I might be collecting ‘types’.

Admittedly , when I delve through the six boxes of black and white film and the thousands of negatives that I collected between 1999 and 2009 I realise it is natural to typecast me as an ‘obsessive’ and within my collection I admit there are lots of different ‘types’ to be found.

Many will naturally question: Who is this white man who spends time looking at the ‘other’, pointing his camera at people in areas of the world that do not concern him?

And so they should. The very act of questioning and criticising suggests the photographs have provoked thought and in turn a response.

 What is the context in which I make these portraits and what do other people think about me photographing ‘the other’?  Had these questions ever entered my mind, I may never have made any portraits.

Is it an obsession? Is it stalking, compartmentalising, stereo-typing or even fetishism? Probably all of the aforementioned depending on your own personal take. After all, is it not endemic of objectivity to be the slave of human subjectivity?

As E.M. Forster highlighted in his novel ‘A Passage to India’, it is a complex world where ‘the Spirit of the Indian earth … tries to keep men in compartments’.

 Jason Scott Tilley