50/ 100 Family Photo Dog

Day 50. Halfway through my project.

This dog isn’t dead, even though it might look like a bunch of folk are mourning for it. In actual fact the dog was absolutely fine. What was weird about this family photograph was that we have absolutely no idea in the slightest who any of these people are and, despite their insistence that they have a picture with Fiona, they didn’t want a copy for themselves.

I can clear up part of the mystery – why did they want a photograph with us in the first place? It is very common in India for random people to come up to you and ask for a selfie with you. It happened every day. Of course, with Varanasi being the place where everything strange in India is dialled up to 11, there we were asked to be in photographs many, many times every single day. We were actually asked so many times some days that we had to be a little bit rude and say no because we had other things to do.

Varanasi is a town that’s bursting to the seams with pilgrims that have traveled far and wide to come and perform their Hindu rituals in the river Ganges there. It’s a super-sacred place for them. Our good friend and lifelong Varanasi resident Sonu told us that many of these people have saved up for a long time to afford the trip from their little village or town in the middle of the countryside to come here and, quite simply, they have probably never seen a white person before in real life.

They were all desperate to have selfies with us simply so that they could go back to wherever they came from the show their own friends and family that they were with a very white, very tall man and woman from Scotland. Incidentally, they always ask where you’re from. When we reply Scotland they say ‘Aah, Scotland, very nice place’ and nod appreciably. Then, when you ask them if they know where it is, they always said no.

So, photographs with the tourists included for added spice – that’s easy to understand. What is less easy to grasp is the purpose of shots like the one above. Many times each day a huge family would ask for a family picture, most often with Fiona in it. But here’s the twist – they wanted me to take it on my phone, and they didn’t want a copy for themselves. They always spent a long time composing themselves, gathering all the distant relatives, getting into the correct order (this seemed critical, but made no sense to me). They even wanted to check the photograph once I’d taken it, but they always refused my offer of a copy. Even Sonu has no idea why they do that. Is simply knowing that they are on a tourist’s computer somewhere in the world a good thing?

In the photograph about there is a man by himself on the very far left. He wasn’t in this group and was essentially photobombing. This also happened a lot. You might also notice the two men on the left holding hands – Indian men of all ages do this a lot. Smiling is also completely optional.

After this photograph, as with all the others too, everyone wanted to show their gratitude and shake hands. Fiona was a little worried about the woman stood next to her as she clearly had a very unpleasant looking skin disease and went through the usual hand shaking and hugging – Fiona still checks herself in the mirror every morning, scrutinising every bump and lump.