Purple Karma

Faces

Posted by Prateek Ahuja 1 comments Labels: bop, despair, disease, eyes, faces, healthcare, hunger, India, operation asha, poor, portrait, poverty, prateek ahuja, purplekarma, slums, Starve, story, tb, tuberculosis

Faces.
They tell you a story. A story that has never been told. A story that longs to be heard.

These faces and these stories have an existence. But this very existence becomes questionable when the trap is an ancient disease.

The disease was called 'Consumption' and rightly so has consumed humans like none other. It doesn't seem to cease even after taking billons of lives.

The look of despair, the hunger, the poverty fill the world of those affected. The very existence of these souls is now being questioned by their own beliefs.

Tuberculosis kills.
It is now turning into a man-made epidemic with newer strains which are difficult but not impossible to cure.

How far can we go from here is for us to decide? Are we fighting the stigma well enough? Are we giving enough attention and care to these souls?

Author's note: These photographs were taken in the slums of Jaipur, India. Misery that the patients and their relatives are going through is evident in their eyes.

Face of TB

Posted by Prateek Ahuja 0 comments Labels: child, disease, Face, hyphenen, India, kush, lung, New Delhi, operation asha, poor, portrait, prateek, Purple Karma, purplekarma, stigma, tb, tuberculosis

Yet another post on these patients and their families fighting the disease which is also referred to as an ancient disease which still exists and still kills.

These are some of the patients who are fighting the situation and the stigma that comes with tuberculosis. For them, every day is a survival. These are sad faces and happy faces and sad faces within happy faces.

my love for Diane continues…

Posted by Prateek Ahuja 0 comments Labels: arbus, diane, diane arbus, inspire, karma, love, photography, prateek, purple, purplekarma, quote, susan sontag

and fascination for her work too…

The colors of slums - I

Posted by Prateek Ahuja 0 comments Labels: blue, Color, colors, delhi, hand-pump, handpump, hyphenen, India, irony, poor, prateek, prateek ahuja, pump, purple, Purple Karma, purple-karma, purplekarma, rust, slum, slums

Its amazing to see and take notice of the colors that are present around you when you are walking into a not-very-well-to-do-locality, which are otherwise also called slums. And its almost as fascinating to see how these colors in the newly painted walls and brightly painted doors create a different world altogether.

You will perhaps never get to see such a thing in a well-to-do neighborhood but is a trite in slums and old parts of Delhi (and other older parts of the country too). Either the walls are newly painted with bright yellows, greens and blues (and even pinks!), or the walls have not been painted for years or carry marks of local graffiti that makes them totally amusing.

I recently got to visit such a locality (as a matter of fact, I get many more chances, but hardly have my camera around to put it all up here…), and as it turned out, amongst the colors on the walls, the doors and the rust on the gates, there was so much pain and hardship in the lives of these people, that no one really gets to notice the colorful and beautiful (ironical, eh!) world around them.

TB: The Biggest Killer - a photo reportage

Posted by Prateek Ahuja 0 comments Labels: asha, biggest, black and white, cambodia, development, disease, hope, killer, lung, operation, operation asha, patients, phnom penh, poor, portrait, portraits, poverty, tb, tuberculosis

Tuberculosis (TB) is a disease of poverty, affecting mostly young adults in their most productive years. More than one third of the world’s total population is infected with TB bacilli, the microbes that cause TB. More than half the TB deaths occur in Asia.

Cambodia is among top 22 high burden countries in the world.

Hav Kong lives with 14 other family members in a small house. His wife suffers as he struggles with multiple diseases.

Abandoned by wife, without job, Din Khain, 43, and his two children are fed by their neighbours.

Long Chamreun, 31, after losing his job, reflects on how to continue supporting his family of five.

No school, no money; Motherly love is the only constant in Thorn Rothana's life.

He is six years old.

Malnourished, Siem Men was diagnosed with New Sputum Positive in June 2011 and has been in hospital since then. She is 74 years old.

Head bowed in prayer, faith is all that is left in Sien Men and her daughter's life.

So Mon's husband died of TB. And, now she is a victim of the same disease.

Away from family -fighting despair and loneliness -Neang Savoeun is suffering from Extra-Pulmonary TB.

Kama, 65, is a retired Policeman. He is determined to win his fight against TB.

Do Mama, 5, lost her mother when she was 3 months old. She now stays with her father, a rag-picker, who sometimes even fails to feed her.

Seen the worst at this early age, Do Mama still manages to have some mischief around.

Suffering from multiple diseases, supported by her family, Sok Mi, 68, wonders how long she will survive. Her husband has already been treated for TB.

Chan Sokhan, a widow and a rag picker, has been taking her medication regularly and is already on a road to recovery. She never lost hope.

Such dilapidated conditions result in rag-pickers (who earn less than a dollar a day) getting affected by TB.

During my interaction with those who are affected, I was moved to see the toll this disease has taken on the lives of these people.

It is disheartening to see the condition of the people who are affected with this killer disease. In this reportage, I have tried to capture many emotions of these patients; most important of them is the visible HOPE (ASHA) in the eyes of these unfortunate souls.