Leonid Plotkin | Sacred Mountains of China

Photo © Leonid Plotkin-All Rights Reserved

Travel photographers...brace yourself for a collection of compelling cultural and religious photo essays.

Out of Leonid Plotkin's many photo essays, I chose to feature his lovely work on the sacred mountains of China, which he photographed over several months. The mountains are important pilgrimage sites since ancient times, and total thirteen. The sacred mountains of China are divided into several groups. The Five Great Mountains refers to five of the most renowned mountains in Chinese history, which were the subjects of imperial pilgrimage by emperors throughout ages. In addition, there are The Four Sacred Mountains of Buddhism and The Four Sacred Mountains of Taoism.

Apart from this photo essay, there are many others; one more interesting than the other. Bolivia, Chile, India, Nepal, Thailand, Bangladesh, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia...need I to add more?

Another interesting thing...Leonid photographed the Urs of Nawaz Gharib in Ajmer while I was there in May...and yet we don't seem to have run intp each other. I'm not totally surprised of this in light of the crowds, but it's still unusual as there were almost no non-Indian photographers beyond those in my workshop, and 2 or 3 others.

Leonid is a freelance documentary photographer and writer. His work has appeared in publications such as The Guardian, The Observer, The Economist, Penthouse Magazine, Student Traveler, Budge Travel, Discovery Magazine, MSN.com and others. 

Jimmy Nelson | Before They Pass Away

Photo © Jimmy Nelson-All Rights Reserved

I've traveled quite a lot and visited far flung places, read and viewed many travelogues and photo essays...but I've never heard of Goroka.

But having viewed Jimmy Nelson's phenomenal opus Before They Pass Away, I now know what it is, and so will you.

British photographer Jimmy Nelson carried his 4x5 plate field camera to 44 countries around the globe; from the rain forests of Papua New Guinea to northern Mongolia to the Namibian desert, to document a tribal cultures that may disappear before we know it.

According to the photographer's website,  "the goal of this visual anthropology, published in Nelson's new book, Before They Pass Away, was to capture the lives of remote and endangered tribes. The tribes he captures might seem wild and somehow alien, but they show clear dominion over their remote and unforgiving environments, offering a remarkable glimpse back in time to how we urban dwellers once lived."

About 30 tribal groups are documented in Nelson's website and book...ranging from the Kazak of Mongolia to the Karo of the Omo Valley, lovers of ethno-photography and aficionados of anthropology will revel in exploring this work.

The book has over 500 images to be featured in large book, printed in a huge 42 x 59 cm size. The price of this special exclusive collectors' book is around $8000. However, a more modest version exists and will be available for $95 in September 2013 from Amazon.

In the meantime, I'll be frequently enjoying Nelson's tribal photographs, and I encourage you to do so as well.

Back Story | The Black Coated Fakir

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

The black-coated fakir suddenly appeared out of nowhere in the Sufi shrine of Moin'Uddin Chisti during the annual Urs...in a sense, he was almost an apparition. Clutching a green flag with the numerals 786*, he had a certain gentle presence, a wise demeanor about him...was it perhaps because of his white beard?

Was he just a pankiwallah or was he more than that? I couldn't find out as no one nearby spoke English, but I really didn't mind. I let my imagination roam free, and thought he was also a Muslim "sadhu", a fakir...a wandering mendicant who had renounced all material possessions in order to gain spiritual salvation.

But my imagination would not stop there.

Had this been some centuries ago, this gentle fakir may well have been one of the Sufis who walked from the west (Afghanistan and Persia) to Pakistan and India, and who were instrumental in establishing Islam in South Asia through their liberal attitude, tolerance and kindness towards the poor.

And time-traveling back to the 1200s when the establishment of the first two Sufi orders in India took place, I imagined this black-coated fakir could've stopped and settled in Ajmer after his lengthy wanderings. Had he lived at the time, who knows...he could've become a Sufi saint himself with a dargah bearing in his own name.

Yes, I should've found out his name.

* What is 786? According to Wikipedia and other sources, Muslims in South Asia use 786 as an abbreviation for the Arabic letters of the opening phrase of the Qur'an. 786 is the sum of these letters in the Arabic numeral system.

For more details on Sufis, see my photo essay The Possessed of Mira Datar.

Miguel Ángel Sánchez | Palestine Portraits

Photo © Miguel Ángel Sánchez-All Rights Reserved

Here's another series of wonderful photographs by the talented Miguel Ángel Sánchez.

Not only are they wonderful, but they depict one of the most oppressed people in the world, living under a dreadful occupation for over 60 years, as beautiful human beings by borrowing the techniques of the Old Masters....perhaps Caravaggio.

Miguel Ángel Sánchez is a Spanish photographer based in Cairo since 2009, where he opened his own photography studio. Cairo is the base where he works and prepares projects developed in Egypt during the past 5 years.

He is also an itinerant photographer who takes his workspace to many corners of the world: Asia, Middle East or black Africa. He covered the war against Gaddafi in Libya, documented the Ulu Pamir in Turkish Kurdistan, the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.

His work has been published in media such as El País, The New York Times, Le Monde, New Yorker, Photo Raw, La Lettre de la Photographie, and many others.

While this post features Miguel's portraits of Palestinians, don't miss his gorgeous portraits of the Ulu Pamir people in Turkey.

POV: Religious Trances or Mental Disease?

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy- All Rights Reserved- Photo Crop

In virtually all the Sufi dargahs I visited, from the shrine of Bahadur Shaheed in Varanasi to the one of Mira Ali Datar near Ahmedabad, I was stunned by the sight of women (a few men as well) entering into trances in front of the saints' tombs.

I initially thought these trances were caused by the religious fervor of these women, particularly in the ethereal "presence" of a saint...a syndrome colloquially called hajri. Being in a trance signified the entrance of the deceased saint in the body of the entranced person, to rid it from ailments, from jinns and other undesirable symptoms.

From my casual observations, these trances varied in their intensity from person to person. Some were completely oblivious of their surroundings, whilst others screeched and suddenly lunged at anyone who approached them with a camera. Some were accompanied by husbands, sisters and other family members, while others were alone.

At the shrine of Bahadur Shaheed, a woman supposedly in a trance tried to throw a rock at my head, whilst another in Mira Datar shoved me rather violently, and then apologized when she was out of her trance, saying she was unaware she did so.

I witnessed a significant number of women in the shrines of Srinagar sobbing and muttering supplications to the interred saints....but trances are different, and I concluded these are caused by mental disease.

Schizophrenia most commonly expresses itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, which may be what the “hajri” manifestations are. I’ve witnessed seemingly perfectly normal people arrive at these dargahs, socialize with their families and friends…then walking over to an area closer to the tomb itself, and slowly bring themselves to a crescendo of repetitive, and violent, erratic outbursts of physical activity that include rolling on the floor, banging their heads on pillars and walls, and swaying their heads from side to side.

If you look closely at the cropped image above, you'll notice that the arm of the woman in the trance bears scars that must've been caused by self-cutting. Self cutting is a symptom of borderline personality disorder, depression, anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, and schizophrenia.

In India, poverty-stricken and superstitious people who suffer from mental illness frequently employ faith healing as an alternative to psychiatric treatment, and it is mostly those that I see at these dargahs.

Nicolas Perron | Face To Faith

Photo © Nicolas Perron-All Rights Reserved

Ah, the Kumbh Mela! Yes, it's an important religious event for Hindus...but despite its over-commercialization, its entrenched charlatanism, its "must-go" label as an annual event for Western (and others) seekers of spirituality and documentarians (visual or otherwise), it has a magnetic pull, and a strong one at that.

It is considered to be largest peaceful gathering in the world, with over 100 million people (an example of the overhyping?) visiting during the Maha Kumbh Mela in 2013  It is held every third year at one of the four places by rotation: Haridwar, Allahabad, Nashik and Ujjain.

Nicolas Perron returned from the recent Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, and uploaded 100 of his photographs of the event. He managed to stay clear (almost) of the ash smeared sadhus, and of the freak show that is a certainty at the Kumbh, and focused his lens on the regular devotees....and titled his gallery Face To Faith.

Nicolas Perron is a self-taught photographer, independent and freelance, in particular a travel/humanitarian photographer. He is currently based in Paris, France, from where he travels extensively, working on assignment and on commission, creating stock images, and developing his own personal projects.

Back Story | Bilal, The Callused Punkawallah

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved (click to enlarge)

Although my travel photography style is not for stock, and is more akin to photojournalism, I still like to make posed portraits... some are environmental and others just straight forward, especially of those I encounter who make interesting stories.

Bilal is one of such people. I met him in the dargah of Nizzm Uddin in Delhi where he earns a living as a punkawallah, fanning the devotees to provide comfort during the summer days while they pray or listen to the periodic qawwali. I hadn't seen him before on my regular trips to Nizzam Uddin...so perhaps he's a newcomer.

Punkawallah in Hindi means 'the man with a fan', but I'm not sure if it's the precise appellation for Bilal's profession as he works in a Muslim shrine. It may well be, but perhaps it's different in Urdu.

Bilal has the telltale callus of a pious Muslim on his forehead...in fact, he has two of such calluses from genuflecting on the ground when praying five times a day, instead of the customary single callus. This is perhaps due to his facial bone structure. These marks are colloquially called the Muslim "bump"and are highly desirable signs of piety amongst Muslim men.

It's so desirable among observant Egyptian Muslims that there are rumors that irritants, like sandpaper, are used to darken the callus.

But back to Bilal...despite his serious expression, he was all smiles and assured me we'd meet in Ajmer during Ghairb Nawaz's Urs in a few weeks. All that in sign language. and a word or two of Hindi on my part.

I did meet him again inside the shrine in Ajmer, where we greeted each other like old friends. With the throngs of people milling about,  he quickly grew very business-like, unfurled his flag-like fan, and started to do his punka'ing...and hustling to get paid.

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

For those interested in tech stuff: the top photograph was made with a Leica M9 and a Voigtlander Nokton 40mm f 1.4, and processed with Color Efex Pro 4, while the lower one was made with a Fuji XPro1 and a Fujinon 18mm f 2.0.

POV: The Inle Lake Fishermen Are So Tired!

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

I traveled to Myanmar (Burma) twice in 2001 and 2002. At that time, it was still very much "off the grid of mass tourism", and few tourists could be seen...either put off by the comparatively onerous entry requirements (and restrictive travel itineraries) or by their unwillingness to support the military junta, directly or indirectly. When I was in this lovely country, there was no internet as such (just a few approved businesses had it), no mobile telephony...but few cared. Burma and its people more than made up for these little inconveniences.

Recently the country has opened up and changed in many ways. Aung San Suu Ky was released from her house confinement, and her party won most of the seats in the lower parliament. Tourists are flocking in to the country as if these's no tomorrow...hotels are overbooked...flights are full and groups of Western and Asian tourists are spending time and hard currency to the benefit of the local Burmese.

This opening up has generated a lot of travel images by photographers...either on professional websites, or on social media. However, I haven't seen much of new approaches or fresh angles.

The photograph (above) of the Inle Lake fisherman I made in 2001 was from a pre-arranged photo shoot during which a few local fishermen would oar their boats not far from the hotel, and I'd photograph them from another rowing boat in the middle of the lake.

Most of what I see nowadays are photographs of for-hire fishermen photographed near the hotels' wharfs where the water is placid and calm...ideal for reflections and other cute stuff.

C'mon photographers...you can do better than that now. Photographs of the for hire fishermen of Inle Lake are a dime a dozen....and they all look alike. Who will buy them? Think of something else...another venue...go to the fishermen villages...produce a photo essay or an audio slideshow of their lives...be inventive and creative.

I've photographed the Inle Lake fishermen at dusk 12 years ago...12 years ago, and you're still photographing the same stuff?

You want ideas? Look at Sim Chi Yin's The Water Seller and Anthony Pond's The Ring Train of Yangon.

Kaushik Ghosh | Meraj, The Last Qawwal

I'm serious about this...aficionados of photography, qawwali, sufism, history and Indian culture...this is especially for you.

It's a must-view audio-slideshow of a legendary qawwali singer and musician from Delhi produced by Kaushik Ghosh, that will assuredly garner your admiration. I predict we shall hear much more of Kaushik in the weeks, months and years to come.

In the late 13th century in India, Amir Khusro, a musician, scholar and poet as well as a follower of the Chisti order of Sufis, was instrumental in merging Persian and Indian musical traditions to create qawwali as we know it today.

Ustad Meraj Ahmed Nizami is the elder descendant of a close disciple of Khusro, and belongs to its well-known discipline known as "gharana". His extended family has been performing qawwali for the past eight centuries, and as such Khusro's style has passed unbroken across seven centuries and thirty generations.

Kaushik Ghosh is a self-taught freelance documentary photographer based in Delhi, India. Born and raised in Kolkata, he graduated with a medical degree from  the University of Calcutta, and received training in fine arts from All India Fine Arts Association.

Prior to becoming a documentary photographer in 2011, he worked in the Indian healthcare sector for 7 years in various positions ending as the Medical Project Head of East and Northeast India. In 2012, he became the editorial and creative contributor of Getty Images, and an editor for a multimedia production of a UNESCO supported documentary. His photographs were featured in The Times of India, Hindustan Times, Better Photography, The Travel Photographers Network, Muse Magazine and others.

Meraj, The Last Qawwal can also be viewed on Vimeo.

New Gallery | The Veneration of Gharib Nawaz

I've just added The Veneration of Gharib Nawaz, a gallery of monochrome images to my website which were made during the annual Urs of the Sufi saint Moin'Uddin Chisti in Ajmer, Rajasthan, a few weeks ago.

As I wrote earlier in a blog post, the shrine of the Sufi saint Moin'Uddin Chisti welcomes pious pilgrims, vagabonds and charlatans, sightseers, mendicants and beggars, fakirs, shoppers, established and opportunistic vendors, pickpockets and thieves, the poor, the wealthy, the venal and the innocent and all the rest of them who come here during the Urs to seek spiritual salvation, riddance of 'jinns', money and entertainment.

For those interested in the gear side of photography, most of the images were made using a Canon 5D II and the 17-40 L f 4.0, while others were made with the Fuji X Pro1 and a Fujinon 18mm f 2.0. 

As for the post processing, I converted the color images to monochrome using Alien Skin Exposure 4  software.

You may also want to view an audio-slideshow of color photographs of the annual event. 

I've also updated my website The Travel Photographer with two new galleries of Viet Nam.

Zsolt Repasy | Romania

Photo © Zsolt Repasy-All Rights Reserved

I thought of featuring one of the countries I have seldom featured on The Travel Photographer blog: Romania...and in that context, I'm pleased to introduce Zsolt Repasy, a Hungarian photographer who has a well edited travel portfolio which, apart from Romania, includes photographs from Istanbul, Budapest, Dublin, Sarajevo and Asia.

Romania is located north of the Balkan Peninsula on the western shores of the Black Sea. It is a country of great natural beauty and diversity and a rich cultural heritage.  Its southern regions are usually seen as part of the Balkans, however Transylvania, its largest region, has a more Central European look. Transylvania is associated with tales of bloodthirsty vampires,  however is one of the most beautiful natural regions.

Zsolt Repasy is a freelance photographer from Budapest, Hungary concentrating on cultural, social and humanitarian work. His action sports and travel images were featured by National Geographic, Corbis Images and Camerapixo magazine, including reportages from Transylvania, Dublin and Sarajevo, Bosnia. He is currently freelancing for Corbis Images, Demotix, and various NGOs.

Rasha Yousif | Eid In Zanzibar

Photo © Rasha Yousif-All Rights Reserved

I'm very pleased to learn that Rasha Yousif has just completed (well, almost) her photography website, as it showcases her photographic talents. She has returned from my just completed Sufi Saints of Rajasthan & Kashmir Photo Expedition-Workshop, during which she was immersed in her favorite element, photographing Islamic rituals and traditions. This is Rasha's second expedition/workshop with me; the first being The Oracles of Kerala in March of last year.

Perusing her images on her website reaffirms what we all recognized during these group workshops: Rasha is definitely at her best photographing people, and connecting with them through her camera and through her social skills.

She is making great strides in multimedia, and I encourage you to check her multimedia gallery, in which she showcases a number of well done audio slideshows converted to videos of her photographs and sound recorded on her trips. You can watch these on her Vimeo page. Rasha promised me she would complete her audio slideshow of the Sufi Urs in a few days (weeks?).

She is also active on Twitter, and you can follow her there.

Rasha is from Bahrain, where she works in the finance industry. She graduated from the University of Bahrain, and obtained her Masters in Finance from DePaul University.

Mohammad Moniruzzaman | The Spellbinders

Photo © Mohammad Moniruzzaman-All Rights Reserved

Here's The Spellbinders, a series of photograph depicting the traditional circus troupes in Bangladesh, which were once the major entertainment attractions during the rural fairs or melas in this South Asian nation.

With the advent (and in some areas, proliferation) of other forms of modern entertainment modes, such as television and movie theaters, as well as encroaching urbanization, the traditional circus troupes are facing an uphill struggle to survive. According to the photographer,  In 2011, there was only 6 or 7 circus troupes available, and since then, a few more have closed down their operations. 

I don't really know what the situation is for Bangladeshi circus troupes, but in India these are often accused of illegally employing Nepalese girls, and often being fronts for sex trafficking.

Mohammad Moniruzzaman is a Bangladeshi photographer involved in image making since 2007. A photographer by passion and a microbiologist by profession, he moved to the United States to obtain a PhD degree in microbiology. 

Back Story | The Sufi Poet(ess) of Hazratbal

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

"I Knew You Would Come"

At the Hazratbal shrine in Srinagar during my just completed Sufi Saints of Rajasthan & Kashmir Photo Expedition-Workshop , we came across a middle-aged woman devotee, clutching a well-thumbed Qur'an, praying and meditating in solitude. Her prayers became more audible as I approached her, and she seemed oblivious to being photographed. Her face was streaked with tears, as she was totally immersed in her devotion.

The Hazratbal shrine and mosque is on the western side of the Dal Lake, and is an important place of worship for Muslims. This shrine blends Mughal and Kashmiri architectural styles and dates back to the 17th century. It contains a relic, the Moi-e-Muqqadas, believed by many Muslims of Kashmir to be a hair of the Prophet Muhammad. This relic is shown to the general public on very special occasions, such as the recent observance of the Isra and Mi'raj; the ascension of Prophet Mohammed to Heaven.

Through our guide and interpreter, Nizar Malik, we learned she had traveled quite a distance from her village to pray at the shrine, and that she had been foretold of meeting us in a dream.

Unprompted, she launched into a plaintive and devotional song in Kashmiri...which, to my ears, sounds very similar to Turkish, sprinkled with some Portugese. In reality, Kashmiri has thousands of words Persian and Arabic due to the arrival of Islam in the region, however, it remains basically an Indo-Aryan language.

For more of my monochrome photographs from Srinagar, see Kashmir's Sufi Soul.

I was told her song is a devotional poem to the Prophet Muhammad, and how his light shone over El-Tor in Sinai, where Moses received the tablets from God.

Shane Green | Slaves of Moinuddin Nawaz

Here's another very well made audio-slideshow of the annual Urs Festival commemorating the death of the Sufi Saint Khwaja Moinuddin Hasan Chishti as produced by Shane Green, a photographer and one of the group members in my just completed Sufi Saints of Rajasthan & Kashmir Photo Expedition-Workshop. It's the second time he travels with me...the first being in Vietnam last fall.

As evident in the audio-slideshow, Shane generally prefers an urban aesthetic style in his photographs to a purely ethnographic one. He claims that this only happens when he's had a few beers...but I can vouch that his beer consumption has nothing to do with it.

It's surprising how Shane managed to interview a pilgrim with a North England accent out of the many thousands pilgrims that visited the shrine while we were there. Himself from Sheffield and now living in Mallorca, Shane is influenced by Martin Parr,  Christer Strömholm, Weegee, Bruce Gilden among others.

The title of his audio-slideshow is how the pilgrim narrator described himself and others who came to commemorate the death anniversary of the  revered Sufi saint; a religious event in which some 700,000 pilgrims are said to have attended. Moinuddin Hasan Chishti is the most revered Sufi saint in South Asia, and known to have been a liberal religious figure, and have nurtured a universal acceptance of all faiths.

 Slaves of Moinuddin Nawaz can be viewed on Vimeo as well. 

Aziz Ahmed, The Srinagar Unani Hakim

"Arak Kelab". Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

"Aziz Ahmed, The Unani". Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

"Dame-Jeanne Bottles". Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

"Aziz Ahmed, The Unani". Photo © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

Across from the Sheikh Hamdan mosque in Srinagar, I noticed a small traditional store (top photo) with a sign in Urdu script which, in Arabic, read "Dogs' Sweat"! However, on further clarification, it was a store owned by a vendor of rose essence, and the sign actually meant "Sap of Roses"....quite a bit of difference.

I entered the dingy small store, and introduced myself to the owner Aziz Ahmed, a Kashmiri unani who's been practicing this dying profession since inheriting the business from his father, and his grandfather before him. The store had been standing for many generations, and still has a wonderful array of antique bottles and jars; some of glass, others in ceramic, imported from England during the Raj. Some larger ones called dame-jeanne (or demi-john in English) have capacities of up to 15 gallons. I know that because my maternal grandmother used to buy similar bottles in Cairo, and convert them into beautiful floor lamps for her home.

But what is unani? It's a form of traditional medicine practiced by Muslims, and first arrived in India around 12th or 13th century with the establishment of Delhi Sultanate and Islamic rule over North India, and subsequently flourished under the Mughal Empire.  Unani is the Arabic word for Greek, and it's based on the teachings of Hippocrates, hence the term.

However, Aziz hasn't really practiced it for a while, and it's a profession that is slowly but surely disappearing. He survives by selling rose water used to wash the Sufi shrines, and kewra water used for flavoring various foods, sweets syrups and soft drinks. Extracts of these two florals are also used for perfume...so the unani may have turned into a attar (a perfume seller).

Listen to Aziz Ahmed telling me (in accented English) about the demise of his business:

Li Xinzhao | Through The Unknown Tashkurgan

I had never heard of Tashkurgan. You probably haven't either.

It turns out that it's an area on China's western frontier (Xinjiang Province), located in the eastern part of the Pamirs and on the so-called "roof of the world", and it has a long history as a caravan stop on the Silk Road. In the Uyghur language, tash kurgan means 'stone fortress'.

Li Xinzhao is a fine art photographer, who documented the inhabitants and way of life of the region since 2009. She stayed in Tashkurgan for several months photographing the Tajik nomads using a Hasselbald large-format digital camera and Profoto lighting. Being driven in an old pickup truck by a Tajik driver, she traveled the sparsely populated landscape searching for the nomads, staying with local families along the way.

She studied at the University of the Arts London, China Central Academy of Fine Arts and the International Center of Photography in New York, and began her photography career in 2007. Since then, she has completed projects in England, United States, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Cambodia, Nepal, Thailand, Tunisia, Kenya and others. She has won a number of awards and contests.

Photo © Li Xinzhao-All Rights Reserved

You can also watch the above video on Vimeo. It's posted by Photographie.

Ustad Meraj, The Qawwali Master

Photograph © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

Photograph © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

In the late 13th century in India, Amir Khusro of the Chisti order of Sufis was instrumental in merging Persian and Indian musical traditions to create qawwali as we know it today.

Ustad Meraj Ahmed Nizami is the elder descendant of a disciple of Khusro, and belongs to its well-known discipline known as "gharana". His extended family has been performing qawwali for the past eight centuries, and as such Khusro's style has passed unbroken across seven centuries and thirty generations.

Accompanied by my friend Kaushik Ghosh, himself a talented photographer, an aficionado of Sufi traditions and who generously arranged this meeting, I walked the narrow lanes and warrens of Nizzam Uddin neighborhood until we reached Ustad Meraj's second floor apartment.

It was there that the elder icon of qawwali told us of his personal life story, and then favored us by singing a few minutes of this traditional devotional music form of South Asia. A faltering voice, perhaps weakened by age, but nevertheless a virtuoso of the harmonium.

Here's a clip from the whole interview and performance I recorded whilst with Ustad Meraj.

The Sacred And The Profane

The Sacred And The Profane is an audio slideshow made during the annual Urs of the Sufi saint Moin'Uddin Chisti in Ajmer, Rajasthan. It can also be viewed here (perhaps better quality).

The 'ecosystem' feeding off the shrine of the Sufi saint Moin'Uddin Chisti consists of pious pilgrims, vagabonds and charlatans, sightseers, mendicants and beggars, fakirs, shoppers, established and opportunistic vendors, pickpockets and thieves, the poor, the wealthy, the venal and the innocent...who come here during the Urs to seek spiritual salvation, riddance of 'jinns', money and entertainment. Even the transgendered hijras come to Ajmer to take part in the veneration of Gharib Nawaz.

Notwithstanding (or perhaps in a way because of it), it was uplifting to see Muslims (Shi'a and Sunni, Sufis and non Sufis), Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis, Christians and non-believers congregate to pay homage to the most important Sufi saint of South Asia.

And in spite of my repudiation of all religious traditions, I was also impressed by the piety and zeal that grip the pilgrims that surrounded me in the shrine. I have no doubts that Moin'Uddin Chisti is deserving of much reverence, and that he and many of the Sufi saints before and after him were instrumental in establishing Islam in South Asia through their liberal philosophy, tolerance and kindness towards the poor. It was not the orthodox and rigid Islamists of the time who spread the faith in this region of many ingrained beliefs, creeds and practices....but it was because of gentle Sufis like Gharib Nawaz.

In Delhi, adjacent to the dargah of Nizamuddin Auliya (one of Chisti's disciples), followers of the orthodoxTablighi sect have an office building, and frequently excoriate pilgrims and visitors to the shrine as being blasphemous.

In my view, nothing could be further from the truth.