India 1977

First great journey, first great reportage. At 23, with a friend my own age, I discovered India. Varanasi, Calcutta, the streets, the ghats, the packed trains — a country seen at human height, up close, in the movement of the street.
India appeared to us as a teeming, colorful, noisy world, at times fascinating, at times harrowing. The crowds, the smells, the scenes of daily life and the omnipresent poverty confronted us with a reality very far from anything we had known until then.
What struck me most was this poverty lived since birth, by people who have never known anything else — and the humility with which many of them, even the very old, seem to accept such a hard life, almost like a positive resignation, without jealousy or any glance at the neighbor's fortune. An existence reduced to the essentials — earning one's own keep, and that of one's family — pushes some toward withdrawal, indifferent to the fate of others; others, on the contrary, toward a disarming solidarity. A phenomenon that can be seen all over the world, but which India reveals with a particular intensity.
After a few days, we decided to leave this commotion and continue our journey to Nepal.