picture perfect
Never has a country been so well suited to the exclusionary nature of photography. Picture postcards, or even the column of images to the right, do an excellent job of portraying a selective reality of an India limited to scenic vistas, exotic apparel and quaintly decomposing architecture. The other day, while sitting by an exceptionally idyllic brook which cut oh-so-lazily through a mountain pass of tea and coffee plantations, I noticed a young couple (for there are many young couples who come here to Munnar to escape the Tamil Nadu plains or the choking heat of the Keralan coast below) taking pictures. More precisely, the man was arranging his wife (?) for a photograph with her body turned as if recently surprised and her arm awkwardly raised above her head to appear as if she was in fact supporting the tree instead of the other way around. I could tell from where I stood that the glamour shot would not include the toppled playground or the rusty machinery to the right, or the struggling garden with a trash strewn stream flowing into the distance, just like that picture couldn’t include any of the other Indians who couldn’t make it that weekend for a mountain escape.