Source: Outlook India
BANARAS INDIA, October 20,2002: Dayanita Singh, renowned photographer whose ground breaking work showing middle class India has helped redefine the Western view of India, recently visited Anandamaya Ma’s Kanyapeeth in Banaras. One of the 20th century’s most important saints, Anandamaya Ma, who attained Mahasamadhi in 1982, set up what is probably still the only gurukulam for girls in India. During her visit Singh said,”My father had wanted one of his four daughters to study in Kanyapeeth, but my mother wondered how we, city girls, would adapt to a life so severe — girls cooked on coal fires and did their own laundry and cleaning, secluded from the rest of the world. As I left the ashram, my cousin, who runs the Kanyapeeth, asked: ‘So, who do you think has had the better life?’ I was silent. I wondered if I had a daughter, would I’ve wanted her to spend a few years in the ashram?” Singh’s work has been published in several international publications including Time and Le Monde. The photograph of the jumping girl, taken on the day of that memorable visit, has gone on to become one of Singh’s most well-known images. When the work was to be exhibited at the Ikon gallery in England Singh said, “I had to think of a title, and I remembered what seemed as Ma’s essence to me as a child. She used to say, ‘I am as I am.’ ”