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Photographer Ken Buslay traveled through India and after weeks of hectic and being the center of attention, he arrived in ‘Paradise’ at the coastline of the South Western region.
“A coincidence, someone’s story and a hand that reached out for my hanging head brought me to the tiny beach in Karnataka, India. Once, there were a few huts and a little restaurant but they had been taken down, an old Hippie told me, mentioning the version of this story changes depending who you ask.
After some hours of walking through the heat, I sat down next to a girls simple shelter. Her fingers gently went through the sand, picked up the bigger pieces and collected them in a frisbee. „I’m cleaning the sand,“ she said in a calm voice and smiled at me. We shared an orange, I stayed.
Wrapped up with a blanket in my hammock up in the tree, cold morning wind from the sea wakes me up as the sun breaks through the colorful play on the horizon. The treehouse family is still sleeping but the neighbors Ann and Ohad are already having tea and cookies before they sit in silence for an hour.
„What is it you’re learning here Ohad?“ – „That this is all I need“
Without electricity, the sun tuned everybody in on a life closer to nature with water from the well and only the sound of insects and waves surrounding us. Everything slows down and the thought of time as a number that indicates how long since or until fades away. I began to watch all the little beings around me and started to feel as one little part of everything, rather than being a superior part of nature that is served by the rest of it.”
Coming to ‘Paradise’ was my first experience of living close with others, sharing a space and things. A tryout in an unreal place that left me with an idealistic vision based on a utopia that only Western people can experience in a third world country. Goats come by to steal your food, policemen might take your weed and cash but really, there is not much to deal with other than yourself. You’re given the luxury of having this space.
And even though the dream of a beach life utopia had to dissolve as a whole over the coming years, it was beautiful and important to visit this dreamland. I believe that only if we dare to dream of something that might be too big, we will be able to bring a piece of that dream into our reality.”
Text and images by Ken Buslay
