I heard that the Jain monks were staying there in the monsoons.”The title is reflective of her inner thought process during her journey to compile this book. I met them spontaneously in Kolkata. Although I loved spending time in her Buddhist community, it was very removed from life with my father who had brought me up in ways that would allow me to face the world. Parents really shape our lives,” she says.“What moves me in Briana Blasko’s quiet, unintrusive photographs — as in her soulful and beautifully lucid Preface — is her readiness to follow India into the silent places where truly its energy lives. As a child, my mother’s world was largely foreign to me. “She has a monastery near Varanasi and was my mentor from the inception.”Briana set out on this quest for finding the right images with the help of her mother’s teacher’s daughter. We had worked on many different projects.” Pico Iyer’s preface interspersed with some personal memories set the tone for Within Without, a visual delight that takes you through the Path of the Yogi. You’ll notice how many of the people in her work wear white, quite unadorned; you’ll register how many of them are Jains, members of the gentle, peace-loving tradition often overlooked in all our clamour over Hindus and Moslems. She deliberately opted for the black and white visuals. “A journey that perhaps began as an inquiry into my mother’s life choices.
Sharmila was exploring the concept of combining Indian dance with fabric. I was so inspired by it, I decided to write about dance and textiles, but since I had little knowledge about Indian textiles, I was introduced to Uma Prajapathy, who has a company in Auroville called Varanasi Weavers and that’s how my first book, Dance of the Weave, came about. Her love affair with India began in 2003.With Without: The Path Of A Yogi by Briana Blasko Rs 999, pp 136 HarperCollins.The author, Briana Blasko spent four years traversing through the hinterlands of India and Nepal to collate images for her book. Although she lived in a community, she eventually left it to find her own path. She has dedicated this book to her mother as she lost Laminated PP woven Machine-made Bags manufacturers her father last year. I kept my mother’s life distanced for a long time because her path was so unusual and as a child I didn’t see how I could comingle these worlds. And we couldn’t agree more with her. That was the initial impetus to come to India, I didn’t realise it would take me five years to complete the book,” she confesses. For two years, I met them in different locations. “I came to Mysore to study Ashtanga yoga, and I have been a student of the same for the past 18 years. The book depicts 71 (black and white and colour) stunning images of Buddhist, Jain, Sufi, Hindu and Christian priests. “I just felt that the all colour process wasn’t working out.. Once we did the research on Indian dance, we saw the connection.Now that the book is over, Briana plans to take some time out to herself. The title comes from, going back and forth in doing and not doing, in taking that picture and not taking that picture. I was also wondering if I would finish the book and my experiences with the people were so profound, sometimes I didn’t take a picture and when I stopped taking pictures, I knew the book was complete. That was the beginning of my great love for India,” she recollects.