As we walk through the streets, markets, squares, and temples of Kathmandu – it’s impossible not to stare and marvel at the differences. How can you miss them? The colors, the manner of dress, the ways of worship, the worship in the streets, clothes, rituals, the place of life – it’s striking.
Of course it’s why people come to this part of the world. Westerners come with their intrigue and fascination. Some enjoy it like spectators while others attempt to dive in and gain new understandings by deconstructing their worlds and trying to get inside a culture this different.
The story, in fact is almost always the same. People who delve into what seems completely different or opposite may acquire some new views and practices – but they discover that underneath all the differences and approaches is a core humanity that is really very much universal.
How many people are really so bad once you get to know them? With cultures, I think this is typically more so. Good people trying to lead good lives exist everywhere. That is certainly the case in Nepal.
As Emily and I walk along, indulging in the joys of observing the differences, I sometimes think of something I read in Orhan Pamuk’s “Istanbul”. He talked about how western writers and artists in the 18th and 19th centuries would come to Istanbul to paint and write about it. Most of the time, their works were forms of exotica – highlighting a strange, different, “oriental” culture.
For this reason, their work – though it captured pieces of Turkish history that Turks themselves didn’t record so well – is not appealing to people like Pamuk. Who wants to be treated as exotic? Who wants themselves and their culture reduced to a curiosity?
I heard the same sentiment from the man who ran the synagogue we visited in Hania, Crete. Crete once had a thriving Jewish community which was decimated by the Holocaust. This one man and a small group of congregants has tried to keep a tiny synagogue in Hania alive, for the sheer purpose of not allowing Judaism on Crete to be completely and permanently extinguished.
The gentleman who runs the synagogue explained that Judaism on Crete was left alone for thousands of years. The writings of the Talmud did not wash up on is shores. The interpretations and directions of rabbis from elsewhere did not affect Cretan Judaism – which in turn, made Judaism on Crete different and unique.
While this man wants to preserve as much as he can about Judaism on Crete, he doesn’t want it remembered as “Jewish exotica” – some group of people who were quaint and had different ways of doing things. That levels the values, importance and real meaning that centuries of Jews created and lived.
No one wants their lives, people, work and values turned into a National Geographic special.
So, I try to remind myself that the same holds true here.
We want to marvel at interesting things, take photos to preserve and share them, and write blogs to convey them. To a large degree, this is unavoidable. We want to remember, we want to share, and we hope that in doing so, we create some positive impact.
At the same time, when we capture the image of a woman dressed in bright colors selling religious beads outside a phenomenal Hindu temple, we are in a way, turning her into a curiosity.
After all, no one has ever passed by anywhere I’ve worked and snapped a photo so they can take it back to the family in Peru and show them the amazingness of American culture. No one back in Lima is looking at a photo saying, “Wow, look at the buttons on his shirt! And that office phone is to die for!”
I wonder sometimes if that’s what we’re doing in a way.
Then there’s the other side. If someone came to visit me from Nepal, I would drive them around to show them what I think is best of Los Angeles. I would take them to see the “sights” that we use as markers of our culture.
Here in Nepal, people are dripping in culture. For the most part, they are very proud to share it and to let you – and anyone you might tell – know that Nepal may be cash poor, but it is a country rich in history, culture and tradition. This is not a place where people are spiritually devoid or where people become disconnected and alone.
Instead, people live together. They share holidays and tragedies as families and communities. They live immersed in the religions and traditions that are their inheritance from at least 2,000 years of life in the Kathmandu Valley. People live linked to one another and their history.
That’s something worth capturing – and something people seem to want to share.
As we go along – I think about the issues of exotica. I want to walk the line of celebrating without reducing. I want to share without creating a curiosity. I want to give people their place in the world without turning it into a point of interest.
The hardest part about capturing and sharing anything is that we can only record parts. Everything becomes reduced to two dimensions. And that’s just not the way we live.
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