Central India, I don’t remember what year (~1984-88), although I do remember exactly where.
This irrigation channel is still there, but it had already been non-functional for at least twenty years when I took this picture.
It’s lovely when children, all on their own in the fields hundreds of yards away from their homes, can just grin at a chap with a camera, with no fear and no self-consciousness.
The risks are probably no smaller in India than in Britain – in fact, they’re probably greater. But they don’t think about them, their parents aren’t reminded about them every day by the telly or the papers (2007 edit: this may be beginning to change now – tellies are starting to appear even in the remoter villages. But program content is very different from the UK, and that sort of reminder is pretty unlikely.) And they’re genuinely not big risks in either place.
Put the other way, the risks in Britain are probably no greater than in India – in fact they’re probably smaller.
How much has our society lost in this terrible paranoia? I am absolutely certain we’ve lost a lot more than we’ve gained.
(See also LornaExtracts#/Vagrants – my aunt in Surrey, 1920s.)
©1989 Clive K Semmens