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I have spoken of India as a bittersweet land. It grows increasingly bitter for me. I have never let this bitterness show in my work. Each day the increasing rancor and rottenness of the average Benares character that I am subjected to, has the inevitable cumulative effect. I have made many friends here, who are kind and considerate and have helped me personally or in my work. But the vast number of people I have come in contact with (and this usually means hundreds everyday, for my days are spent in the streets, where my work takes place. Either in the documenting of wall painting or my normal shooting in B+W) have showed a complete lack of any courteousness, rather a money grubbing, selfish, vicious nature. True I am a foreigner, do not speak the language, and the literary level in the U.P. is around 19% so I am dealing with an uneducated mass, they take me either for a hippie or a tourist, they are poor and think all foreigners are rich and are out to take them for all they can get (for which I cannot blame them). All these things are factors yet after a year of observing at close range I have come certain negative conclusions, most about the fundamental character of India. Most are spiritually bankrupt, they pay lip service to Ram in ignorant idol worship but it has not visible effect on their relations with their fellow human beings. They had shallow depressed lives of constant bickering and discussions of money. The cost of something is their deepest intellectual concern. I am making broad generalizations. There are of course sensitive, intelligent minded people who act decently to their neighbors and family.

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But the majority I have observed live little better than the lives of animals. There is still a certain charm in the way life is conducted here on a half-primitive level, almost everything being made and transported by hand, the fantastic variety of action in the streets, the gullies with their windy up and down lanes, the endless panorama of shops, the river, etc. But it is soured for me by the personality of most of the people who live here. I have never seen a more materialistic, quarrelsome, vile, unpleasant display of human nature. It makes you believe in Celine (in the past I have always considered him too pessimistic).

India today is the remnant of an ancient civilization, a giant rotting carcass with a few pockets of leftover culture remaining. Yet there are still areas of greatness, a true guru, an uncorrupted priest, the Sanskrit classes of religion, mythology and philosophy, the art, the music, but these are exception. The mass doesn't give a damn for the ancient culture of India, they prefer a cheap Hindi film song blaring in their ear to their classical music. Though they will tout the prestige tidbits of their leftover culture that foreigners are interested in. But to the masses their culture means nothing. They are concerned only with self gain, they devour each other the pig sty of their soulless existence. Yet as I say there are decent men and women trying to live in this environment. Inevitably they are dragged down to the level the corrupt mass. There is no more grace to life here, it is all rottenness and decay, no redeeming social values.

Oct 19, 70