"This is the way we live in India; a pitieous situation."
This off-camera remark was made to Rupert Everett during a visit to a prostitute's room in a seedy part of Bombay and was part of Everett's fascinating documentary about Sir Richard Burton called "The Victorian Sex Explorer.>
It was a shocking scene in many ways; the candid manner in which the girls talked about their way of life, a life they had been forced into. The quote is issued just after one of the prostitutes reveals her small son, a baby, in a box, covered and concealed under a bed.
So having decided to include the quote here, I looked through photos I had taken during visits to Kerala and Rajasthan, but all I could find were pictures of people smiling, kids with siblings, a grandmother straight faced holding her grandchild; very poor, but not pitieous. And it would be wrong for me to include them when they have left me with some far better memories.
A lesson perhaps in photojournalism.
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