On my way to do some laundry at a friend’s house in Malviya Nagar I walked into the middle of a demolition. According to bystanders the large vegetable market that, up until yesterday, supplied the area with most of its fresh produce was unauthorized and thus was being torn apart by a bulldozer.

It was a sad sight. Guessing from the amount of inventory still on the shelves when the walls came down the owners hadn’t been given any notice. Two bulldozers made quick work of the area, not completely destroying the shops and buildings but rather rendering them into a state of disrepair that’s pretty much unrecoverable.

A large crowd gathered but no one complained or protested, they just stood and stared with a mixture of sad confusion on their faces.

I’ll miss you subzi mondi.

Photos from a little walk I took to explore my neighborhood.

Here are some unrelated bits and pieces from that last few weeks that got lost in the digital tangle of my photo archive.

Last weekend a friend called me and asked if I wanted to go to the outskirts of Delhi and take photographs of some Kushti wrestling. I love this country for that, random calls on what was going to be a lazy Saturday afternoon that lead to something sort of incredible.

After about an hour drive through slow weekend traffic we arrived in an area of Delhi that was half urban and half rural. The scene was Fight Club with a twist of masala. A large dirt “ring” had been flattened out next to a rickety four story building that was still under construction. Random groups of Indian men crouched in the late afternoon heat waiting for the action to start.

When it did it was a lot like the freestyle tournaments that I used to go to in high school, except with more dirt and less spandex.

The ring was big enough to accommodate three, sometimes four matches at once. Two referees dressed completely in white circled the grapplers. Their job was to declare a winner and pay them a small amount of rupees. One man with a microphone called the matches through a tinny PA system as he walked around the ring.

The day started with wiry stickish children enthusiastically dragging each other through the dirt. As the the hours passed the wrestlers in the ring got older and bigger and the crowd grew as well.

The young men with anatomy chart physiques and crumpled cauliflower ears had a lot more energy and skill than the adolescents who proceeded them. Red clay flew about in a whirl of bodies and the crowd cheered for big throws and takedowns.

Unfortunately we had to leave before the biggest wrestlers got their chance to roll around. Even so it was a great afternoon and a unique opportunity to see something rare. I hope I get a chance to go back.

Lately I’ve found it difficult to take photographs. When I was home in Venice Florida everything was very still and very quiet.

Riding around town on my bike with the fading daylight slanting in sideways it was sort of easy to find little moments to capture. They just kind of stood out against the otherwise mundane facade.

India by contrast is loud, chaotic and a bit overwhelming at times. There’s just so much stimuli here that picking out frames becomes quite the challenge.

I’ve found myself putting the viewfinder against my eye and then setting down the camera without pushing the shutter because the image would either be too crowded or too typical or maybe it’s just gone in the speed of Delhi.

So the other day I took a walk in the park near Hauz Khas village. It was quiet and green and I actually couldn’t hear blaring car horns or salesmen wailing in tired Hindi. It was nice to be able to pick apart a scene without so much distraction.