Vanity

After getting to Badami we headed to look at some old caves from the 5^th and 6^th century. The caves have various depictions of Visnu and Shiva. What is so amazing is the immensity of the cave and the fact that all that created them was a chisel.

After admiring the caves, a few of us went to investigate some loud live music that we heard playing. It was a wedding! I never got an actual good view of the wedding because a bunch of kids got to me before I could get to the wedding. They all yelled “photo, photo.” After I took photos of them and showed it to them, they would stare intently at the camera looking at themselves. It was incredibly sad, I don’t know if I was sad for them or more sad for me.

I realized that they don’t wake up and look in the mirror every morning like I do. They don’t spend ten extra minutes making their hair look perfect. They don’t know exactly what they look like. I didn’t realize that I take my own vanity for granted. I expect to know what I look like, to be able to look at myself when I want to. Vanity to an extreme is not good. But in America, it can’t be denied that our identity is so tied to our appearance, our vanity.

We’ve spent a lot of this trip pondering our practice of medicine versus the Ayurvedic practice of medicine. This instance made me think about our all consuming, vanity driven plastic surgery business. I wonder if the same kind of business flourishes here in India. I’m sure it might in the cities (I can find skin bleaching cream in a smaller city, Mysore) but not in the country.
When I think back on the day. I think of how all the kids I photographed have such a strong sense of self without even knowing how beautiful they are.