Falling in Love with India. Feeling the transformative power of her people!

Stephen Huyler arrived in India on his 20th birthday, fell in love with the country, and for the 53 years since then, has spent an average of 4 months each year in India, visiting almost every district in India, documenting the arts, crafts, religion, and the incredibly resilient but practically unknown role of women in rural India.

PG: Your life and mine have some similarities but many more contrasts, as you know. For example, both you and I love India deeply, though you as an American, and I as someone who was schooled and grew up a nationalist. Though I have spent a large part of my life outside the country, having been exiled when I was 27, while you have spent a large part of your life inside the country, out of choices made for love of India. Your life and your memoir are so fascinating, rich with your extensive experiences in India. Why don’t we start with one of your favorite memorable moments.

SH: I sometimes lie awake late into the night thinking of story upon story, some very gripping, others humorous, still others sad or heartrending. Yes, my memoir is filled with these stories, yet I realized that, more than any of those, I want to tell the bigger story of how India revealed herself to me, and of how I have been transformed.

About ten years after I first began to travel in South Asia, I was sitting on the floor of a small home in rural Odisha, surrounded nearby by men and boys and, not far away in the room, by women and girls. A teenage son was lying with his head on my lap. His uncle was talking with me while laying his head on my shoulder. Other adults were closely leaning in towards me while children squirmed and played between our feet. And all the time, friendly conversations filled the air, not separating me as a man from across the sea, raised in a culture so very different from their own. I was just one of the family.

I have experienced this closeness many times since in homes throughout this diverse country. It is a part of my life, part of my new identity. It would never have happened in North America, at least not among the American communities with whom I was in contact in the 1950s and 60s. Physical intimacy and personal distance were, and in many ways are, very different in the US and in India. That was one of the ways India changed me: I was being transformed.

PG: You speak and write so elegantly and eloquently.

SH: Thank you. I have always been a writer. It was as if I was born with a pen in my hand, composing stories from early childhood. As a young boy, I was a version of Pied Piper, telling stories to younger children, inventing magic, or casting spells with my words. But when I first arrived in India on my twentieth birthday, I realized immediately that here was a country that I needed first to get to know well before I could write. Other foreign travelers wrote of their experiences immediately, and books that recorded these impressions had been composed for centuries. I felt I needed to wait.

Before I even attempted to write a single word for publication, I had traveled extensively in India for ten years, crisscrossing the country from north to south, east to west many times,.

By then, I had walked, ridden, or driven through rural and urban lanes and explored cities and villages, markets and festivals. I had taken side roads into experiences beyond even my very vivid imagination. Most importantly, I had been a guest in countless homes, sometimes just for a meal or for tea, but often for weeks at a time. I had learned to quietly observe, to see and to listen deeply, to let go of expectations, and to let in the unexpected.

When writing about India, I try to subsume my personality and character — to allow into words the voices and aspirations, the thoughts, opinions, laughter, and pain expressed to me through all those years of living closely with Indians.

Over the decades, I learned to photography so that I might make a visual record of subcultures and regions never previously photographed. Yet I never lead with my camera. Unlike most of my colleagues, I leave my equipment behind as I get to know people, becoming familiar with them as they relax and learn to trust me. Then, and only then, I ask permission to photograph them. Can I record their home, their street, their farm, their art, or their rituals? I am frequently told that the photographs that illustrate my books and lectures portray an unusual unintrusive intimacy with my subjects. You see, whether I record a story or take a photograph, it is the same: I try as much as possible to take my ego out of it.

PG: And you have been fortunate to have met many Indians who have learnt to let go of their ego.

SH: Yes, and perhaps interestingly, the individuals who come to mind are not those known broadly as gurus or spiritual leaders, but much more frequently those who might be regarded as common men and women. I count humble villagers among the most enlightened people I have met: the farmer who understands that the earth itself is the very flesh of the Goddess and must not be desecrated, should never be abused, must always be loved and treated with the deepest respect. The elder woman who wisely, quietly counsels her sons and daughters, her granddaughters and grandsons, putting their needs and their choices as paramount while often quietly, humbly sacrificing her own needs, even sometimes her own nourishment, to better their lives.

These individuals and many more are the often unrecognized fundament of India. I come from a country that has often discarded its elderly and has placed a premium on man’s ability to conquer the earth. I find those trends increasing rapidly in India as well in the twenty-first century. But still, as I travel extensively through India’s backroads, I continually marvel by the pervasiveness of these ancient wisdoms.

PG: You have seen so much more of India than I have (actually, far more than almost all Indians!), but I do want to share with you that, when I was a college student, I was offered a year as an exchange student in America, and I turned it down, thinking I had seen so little of my own country, how could I go abroad? And I made a pact with God that I would not leave India, even for a visit, till I had visited every state in the country at least once – excluding of course those states, such as Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh (then called NEFA), which we were not permitted to enter without a special permit, and who was ever going to get me one? And by the time I left India for the first time, to go to a student conference in Finland in 1968, I had indeed visited, except the North-East, every single state in the country. Though Kerala remains my favourite part of the country, because it is the only State of the country which manages to offer a civilised life combined with some minimum care for ordinary citizens as well as for nature.

SH: I’m glad to hear that you made that vow at an early age to see each region of India and that you achieved your goal before you made your very first journey outside India. I’ve had, over the past fifty-three years, the great fortune of repeatedly returning to India, choosing different routes, taking sideroads, and ending up at destinations not marked on any maps at that time. My cross-cultural survey was intended to take me to places that others did not visit, that had yet to be recorded, or where the most recent descriptions were a century or more old. That decision opened me to experiences I could never have imagined.

I began as a writer but then taught myself to be a photographer so that I might more fully record what I saw. Those photographs are the only visual record ever made of many of those communities. The relatively recent access to smartphones by South Asians everywhere has changed all that. Almost everyone is making a visual record of their personal environments. In some ways, it is superfluous for me to continue photographing, but my original images are a form of invaluable time capsule. I do not feel any ownership of those photographs. I took them for the Indian people, and they rightfully belong to them.

On a number of occasions over a period of decades, I met individuals who had never seen another foreigner and who were so provincially restricted that they asked if I was a native Indian from another region. They could not even conceive that I was from across the seas and from another continent. That situation no longer exists in India and has not repeated itself in the past three decades. In some ways, the ordinary woman and man there, if there is such a thing, is more aware of global news than most of my fellow countrymen. I have regularly engaged in deep conversations about world politics and cultural trends with individuals in even the most remote districts of India, proving them more informed than me. It is humbling.

PG: How do you approach a community new to you where you don’t know anyone?

SH: I’ve always found that I have a natural affinity with children, and, in many ways, children are the heart and soul of each Indian village and town. I encourage them, smile at them, and draw them out. When their parents or aunties and uncles see that their children are at ease with me, any resistance they might have softens.

But also, for whatever reason, I have always been a non-threatening male. I am a heterosexual, but I never objectify women. It’s just not part of my DNA. So, when I meet new people, the men instinctively sense that I am not a threat to their women. As I initially converse with them and they watch my body language, their own protectiveness of their family lessens. I am invited to enter homes and participate in meals in ways that other males, foreign or visiting Indian, would not be welcome. It has always been so.

I learned early on that a resentment of visiting photographers underlay people’s reactions virtually everywhere in the country. Photographers would point their cameras and take numerous pictures, but their subjects never saw the results of their efforts. On my third trip to India in the mid-seventies, I brought a Polaroid camera with me and an entire suitcase of instant film. Before I took out my 35 mm camera, I always used the Polaroid first to take photographs. I could give these portraits immediately to whomever I wanted to record. I gave thousands of these prints away each trip. When I return to those same villages today, a village elder will often bring out a framed Polaroid image I had taken decades before of them or their children or sometimes a beloved family member who is now long gone.

With my photographs, I even created a magic act for children. Although Polaroid cameras of those days instantly ejected an image that came into full focus in one minute with no added effort, I made a magic act of it for the children. I would snap a picture, make a show of the unprocessed print as it ejected from the camera, and then pretend I was saying magic spells over it as I waved my hand to draw out the colors and portraits, all the time with a big grin on my face to show the adults that it was a game. Children and adults loved it! And I reveled in the joy of their spontaneous giggles and laughter.

Just eleven months ago, I was staying in a favorite unpretentious, small heritage hotel in western Rajasthan. I’ve known the owner for twenty-five years and admire his generosity of spirit and the thoughtful care with which he attends to his clientele. We were talking over breakfast, when he mentioned that the first portrait of himself he had ever seen, had been taken when he was a small boy with a group of other children in another area of his small city. He then described the situation and a foreign male photographer who had thrilled him and his friends with a magic act as he took and gave them a photograph of themselves. As he told me this story, I realized that it only could have been me! I’ve never even heard of another individual who did anything similar with an instant camera. And I was able to track through my notes that I had been there in that town, collecting stories and photographing in early 1981.

This friend has promised that when I return this year to visit him, he will do his best to find that print and show it to me.

PG: Do you have a favourite part of the country, whether as large as a state or as small as a particular waterfall or viewpoint?

SH: Many people ask me that, and the answer is a resounding ‘No.’ India is so geographically, climatically, and culturally diverse from region to region that different aspects draw me to each area. I am a born traveler — I love exploring new areas and visiting regions I know from earlier years. I enjoy witnessing local identities and the changes over these decades.

I have never wanted to freeze India in any given time. The country and its people and cultures are always changing and always innovating, and I am fascinated by those changes. Some may seem to be improvements and others the loss of a beloved familiar custom, but I revel in both the old and the new. My work and my approach have always been to notice and record the creative ways that individuals change and grow. Despite the biases of the inaccurate Western press, India has never been stagnant, never hidebound and unchanging. The cultures I witness are defined by change and adaptation, and I find these riveting and mind-opening.

But back to your question, Prabhu Bhai, I have always been a foodie, and I love the diversity and sumptuous inventiveness of Indian food. I learned early on that the finest food in South Asia is prepared in the home, not in restaurants. I have been fortunate to have lived and eaten meals in innumerable homes around the country and shared delectable morsels from tiffin pails in trains as I travel from one spot to the next. When I ponder about India, I often think of the crisp dosas and Brahmin thalis of Tamil Nadu, the biryanis of Punjab, the malai sweets of the Gangetic Plain, the dal puris of Rajasthan, the spicy meen varutharchas of Kerala, the unusual chutneys of Odisha, the bise bele baaaths of Karnataka, Bengal’s singharas, the kadhpeopis and rabris of Gujarat, and Kashmiri gustaba served with sweet-fruited kormas. My mouth begins watering just thinking about them. How can I choose one? It is the same with the art, with the people. I have friends everywhere. Some are families that I return to again and again. Others I see less often. But I always feel a sense of homecoming, of being yet again with those friends I’ve learned to love, with whom I am so comfortable, to share stories, to talk about family and change, to remember the past, and to wonder about the future.

I am white, and I am American, but India is truly my second skin, and I always long for it when I am away…

PG: Can you sum up your relationship with India?

SH: This is your India. It never should have been assumed that it could truly belong to anyone else. And I am a foreigner. But I am, at the same time, one who has been continuously challenged, opened, changed, and transformed by what I’ve seen here and learned to know and love here.

If India has taught me anything, it is the power, the necessity of complete and open reciprocity. Indian welcomed me with open arms, with generous kindness, and with constant, sometimes gentle, sometimes forceful teachings.

PG: What does the release of your memoir Transformed By India mean to you?

SH: My life, my work, and this new memoir are about giving back, thanking with deep-hearted gratitude, and sharing a half-century of insights into the often overlooked and little seen strengths and depths of this constantly evolving subcontinent.

PG: I’m sure that your giving back, in the form of your memoir, Transformed by India, will be widely admired and enjoyed, especially in India, though of course also by people abroad who are of Indian origin or heritage – as well as by others who, for one of any number of reasons, appreciate and admire India.

ABOUT

Prabhu entered publishing in memory of his wife, founding Pippa Rann Books & Media in 2019 – perhaps the only general books imprint outside the country with a focus on India and on people of Indian origin. Earlier, he was among other things an academic and a management consultant. He continues to mentor young entrepreneurs, especially in his personal passion: new technologies.

 


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