Before it fades away

In a deeply personal series, photographer Abhishek Khedekar documents life in Peora, India, a village cradled in the lap of the Himalayas where population decline is accelerating. I started recognizing the same red patterns on the houses that I had seen in the photographs. Wind had risen and a storm was on the way. Dogs led us to a familiar place. We entered a house—last time, they had offered tea. The storm was raging and the house was silent. Sitting there, idle, between thick walls and low ceilings, we were speaking with smiles and glances that were louder than words. The TV was an icebreaker, the photograph too. An old TV and an old photograph. “Does this work?” “Of course.” They asked us where we were staying and we pointed at the house up the mountain, cocooned in a blanket of pines and oaks. “Priti’s house in Satoli.” They nodded as if to show they knew exactly who we meant; people do that here when we mention Priti, the woman who came some 25 years ago to escape the fast-paced life of Mumbai for a week—and settled for a lifetime. There, she built Spacehouse Himalayas, a place where artists can work and create. Spacehouse and Peora are watching over one another from opposite sides of the Kumaon Hills in Uttarakhand, a northern province of India. Fabrics are hanging from trees and aipan decorate the houses—the brick-red drawings made with rice paste. The splashes of colour reflect the lives of the people who live there. But, too often, people come and go—mostly go—and the aipan is slowly disappearing; a memory that’s starting to dwindle. Peora is a land of extremes, a blessing and a curse. The geographical complications, the young that move to the city and the monkeys that destroy farms and orchards, make it almost impossible to grow anything. And so, the landscape is rapidly shifting. This very landscape is a far cry from the one Abhishek (the photographer) calls home, but the village and its inhabitants seem familiar and beguiling to him. I cannot count the times we got lost trying to get to places in those hills, but that is also why I remember fondly having tea in a shop, a little above the Peora school, waiting for the rain to stop so we could head back. Words by Valerie Ottavy