# 8 Calcutta, India, 1989

I feel closer to this picture than any other. The indentation mark the man on the cycle rickshaw has on his bare skull is the same I have in my head and my father, who was also bald, had in his. Is this a sign of family or racial kinship -is he a distant cousin of mine? After all, many Iranian Jews went to India on business as my father did to Turkey, or does the mark suggest forceps births?

The consuming, lyrical shabbiness of this photo reduces me to tears. The thin white paint on the back wall spills all over the darker base. The torn loose piece of tarpaulin hanging from the back of the folded hood of the rickshaw. One wheel is flat. The sweetness of the pocket flaps of the man's shirt, bent and sticking out like a kid's hair. The tangled loose wire twisted around the armrest to keep it under control.

The origin of every photo moves inexorably away as one is looking at it, but what if the picture itself is an image of dissolution? What is the result of this double whammy, what perception, psychic barrier does it break? ...

--MNN