A life of Bravery

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“Nothing’s more important than having the bravery to live your life”.
(“Daily Inspiration” by Robin Sharma)

This is a portrait of Sunita which I took a few days ago inside her house in a little city located nearby Varanasi (Benaras) in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

Sunita thinks that she is around 65 years old but she is sure that she joined an hijra community when she was 12.
She was born in a poor Muslim family from the state of Bihar.
As she was still very young she understood that being an hermaphrodite wouldn’t allow her to live a life like ordinary people, she wasn’t a boy neither a girl.
So she happily decided to become an hijra, it was her will then and she has been learning from a guru (teacher) how to perform for weddings and new born babies.
Today she became a guru herself and she introduced me to Shushila, an Hindu hijra who stays at her side and who will become the guru when she dies.
It is nice to see that in this community Muslims and Hindus are living together and respecting their beliefs, their religion.
They are also called to any Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Jain family’s functions in the city, and even Christians call them for Christmas.
A few months back Sunita went to Mecca, on the pictures she showed me she shaved her hair and dressed like any male pilgrim.
She saved money all her life in order to stay there for two months, she says that she is not the same anymore, she feels that she is closer to God.
It was the only moment in her life when she had to act like a man.

While I was leaving her house she walked with me for a while along the railways, she told me that she is respected there and that she is happy with her life.
She insisted, “Tell everyone I am happy” and she gave me her blessings.
Few people are like Sunita, she had the bravery to live her life…

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Shushila, the Hijra

 

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This is a portrait of Shushila which I took a few days ago inside her guru’s house in a little city located nearby Varanasi (Benaras) in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

Shushila is 35 years old, she was born in an Hindu family of the same town, she studied at school untill the age of 16 and she joined an hijra community when she was 17.
She didn’t become hijra (Hindi: हिजड़ा, Urdu: حجڑا), nor she was forced to be so, she was born like that as an hermaphrodite and therefore she is considered as a member of “the third gender”, neither man nor woman.
Like most of the hijras, she refers to herself linguistically as female, and wears women garments.

Becoming an hijra is a process of socialization into a “hijra family” through a relationship characterised as chela “student” to guru “teacher”, leading to a gradual assumption of femininity.
Typically each guru lives with at least five chelas; her chelas assume her surname and are considered part of her lineage.
Shushila’s guru is Sunita, a Muslim hijra, who has been teaching her to perform religious ceremonies at weddings and at the birth of babies, involving music, singing, and dancing.
Hijras are intended to bring good luck and fertility and they are most often uninvited to Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Jain family’s and even to Christian’s for Christmas.
Hijras are said to be able to do this because, since they do not engage in sexual activities, they accumulate their sexual energy which they can use to either bestow a boon or a bane.
It is said that hijras’ curse brings bad luck or infertility.

One day Shushila will become the guru of her community after Sunita’s death.
Sunita decided that it ill be like that and Shushila will follow exactly what her guru said, she will carry the same teaching with younger hijras.
It is nice to see that in this community Muslims and Hindus are living together and respecting their beliefs, their religion.

As I was asking, she told me that she was happy with her life, she said that in her society she wouldn’t have been able to do anything else so she was enjoying her life as an hijra.

I took many pictures of her, I said that I wanted natural poses, I was trying to show her soul like I did with her guru’s portraits.
With Sunita we tried to make her laugh as she wasn’t used at all to be in front of a camera and finaly I like this one which is far away to what I wanted.
After showing her she said she was happy of the result.

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Close Encounters of the Third Gender

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“The third sex is described as a natural mixing or combination of the male and female natures to the point in which they can no longer be categorized as male or female in the traditional sense of the word.
The example of mixing black and white paint can be used, wherein the resulting color, gray, in all its many shades, can no longer be considered either black or white although it is simply a combination of both.”
(From “Tritiya-Prakriti: People of the Third Sex” by Amara Das Wilhelm”

Shushila is an hijra, neither man nor woman, she belongs to a third gender, ensconced in tradition in India for years…
She is the chela (disciple) of Sunita, her guru and she will become guru as well the day her guru will leave this world…

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From the Chaos of the World

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“Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul.”
(William Somerset Maugham – English Writer, 1874-1965)

Anand is wrapped in a silk scarf made with a hand embroidery.
This artcraft is done by ladies involved in several workshops that we have settled with GURIA, a Human Rights organisation fighting against the sexual exploitation of women and children, particularly those forced into prostitution and trafficking.
Each scarf is unique and made in sarees provided by many women in Benaras who take this opportunity to get rid of pieces that they brought in order to celebrate happy moments, festivals or parties.
Those accessories carry traces of happiness in their yarns…
Anand, our icon model, shows his body for the purpose of this brotherhood and happiness chain as this is a way to catch the attention on this fight for Human Rights and human dignity.
(Scarf style “Kingdom” – 100% silk – Collection RED HALO)

RED HALO is a collection of household linen based in Benaras (Varanasi – India) providing work to people who were living with difficulties and education to children.
“Like” the RED HALO page on Facebook and join this amazing human adventure in Varanasi,www.facebook.com/redhalo.in

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Out of Necessity

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“A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity.”
(From “Letters to a Young Poet” (1934) by Rainer Maria Rilke)

Anand is wearing a kantha silk scarf made with a hand embroidery.
This artcraft is done by ladies involved in several workshops that we have settled with GURIA, a Human Rights organisation fighting against the sexual exploitation of women and children, particularly those forced into prostitution and trafficking.
Each scarf is unique and made in sarees provided by women in Benaras who take this opportunity to get rid of pieces that they brought in order to celebrate happy moments, festivals or parties.Those accessories carry traces of happiness in their yarns…
Our model shows his body for the purpose of this brotherhood and happiness chain as this is a way to catch the attention on this fight for Human Rights and human dignity.
(Scarf style “Kingdom” – 100% silk – Collection RED HALO)

RED HALO is a collection of household linen based in Benaras (Varanasi – India) providing work to people who were living with difficulties and education to children.
“Like” the RED HALO page on Facebook and join this amazing human adventure in Varanasi,www.facebook.com/redhalo.in

Join the photographer at www.facebook.com/laurent.goldstein.photography

 

Come What May

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“I must continue to follow the path I take now.
If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost.
That is how I look at it — keep going, keep going come what may.
But what is your final goal, you may ask.
That goal will become clearer, will emerge slowly but surely, much as the rough draught turns into a sketch, and the sketch into a painting through the serious work done on it, through the elaboration of the original vague idea and through the consolidation of the first fleeting and passing thought.”
(From “Letter to Theo” (July 1880) by Vincent van Gogh)

Anand is wearing a kantha silk scarf made with a hand embroidery.
This artcraft is done by ladies involved in several workshops that we have settled with GURIA, a Human Rights organisation fighting against the sexual exploitation of women and children, particularly those forced into prostitution and trafficking.
Each scarf is unique and made in sarees provided by women in Benaras who take this opportunity to get rid of pieces that they brought in order to celebrate happy moments, festivals or parties.
Those accessories carry traces of happiness in their yarns…
Our model shows his body for the purpose of this brotherhood and happiness chain as this is a way to catch the attention on this fight for Human Rights and human dignity.
(Scarf style “Kingdom” – 100% silk – Collection RED HALO)

RED HALO is a collection of household linen based in Benaras (Varanasi – India) providing work to people who were living with difficulties and education to children.

“Like” the RED HALO page on Facebook and join this amazing human adventure in Varanasi,www.facebook.com/redhalo.in

Join the photographer at www.facebook.com/laurent.goldstein.photography

An Absolute Necessity

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“The work is an absolute necessity for me.
I can’t put it off, I don’t care for anything but the work; that is to say, the pleasure in something else ceases at once and I become melancholy when I can’t go on with my work.
Then I feel like a weaver who sees that his threads are tangled, and the pattern he had on the loom is gone to hell, and all his thought and exertion is lost.”
(From “Stranger on the Earth : A Psychological Biography of Vincent Van Gogh” (1996) by Albert J. Lubin, p. 22)

This is one of our handloom workshops in Varanasi (Benaras).
Varanasi weavers have to struggle with many issues since the industry collapsed fifteen years ago and half the workshops of the city had to close.
RED HALO has settled a program in order to help a few of them, it is a drop in the ocean but in our humble and limited way we are trying to maintain a few people to carry on this amazing heritage which remains in the Eternal city.

RED HALO is a collection of household linen based in Benaras (Varanasi – India) providing work to people who were living with difficulties and education to children.
“Like” the RED HALO page on Facebook and join this human adventure in Varanasi,www.facebook.com/redhalo.in

Join the photographer at www.facebook.com/laurent.goldstein.photography

Carrying You with my Blood

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“Extinguish my sight, and I can still see you;
plug up my ears, and I can still hear;
even without feet I can walk toward you,
and without mouth I can still implore.
Break off my arms, and I will hold you
with my heart as if it were a hand;
strangle my heart, and my brain will still throb;
and should you set fire to my brain,
I still can carry you with my blood.”
(From “The Book of Hours” by Rainer Maria Rilke)

This is a view of the Holy Ganges shot at dusk from Jatar ghat in Varanasi (Benaras).
Those bamboo sticks carry baskets with candles lifted up in order to tell the spirits to welcome the people who recently departed from life…

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Into the Answer

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“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.
Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. 
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer. 
(From ” Letters to a Young Poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke)

This is a view of Scindia ghat shot from Anand’s boat at dusk along the Ganges in Varanasi (Benaras).
The Eternal city allows anyone to to live one’s way into the answer…

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As a Wild Hunter

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“With my mouth I speak slander, day and night.
I spy on the houses of others – I am such a wretched low-life !
Unfulfilled sexual desire and unresolved anger dwell in my body, like the outcasts who cremate the dead.
I live as a wild hunter, O Creator !”
(From the Guru Granth Sahib – the religious text of Sikhism)

This is a picture of the burning ghats of Manikarnika shot at sunset from a boat on the holy waters of the Ganges in Varanasi (Benaras).
Antyesti, the Last Rite, is an important Sanskara, sacrament of Hindu society
According Hinduism cremation is releases an individual’s spiritual essence from its transitory physical body so it can be reborn.
If it is not done or not done properly, it is thought, the soul will be disturbed and not find its way to its proper place in the afterlife and come back and haunt living relatives…

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