I watch as the rickshaw turns into Bollywood. Not the wonderland of film stars, shimmering saris, and overacted musicals, but its shadow, the slum in the heart of Ahmedabad. I have often walked its streets, peered into homes built along the edge of a brick wall. One neighbor is separated from another only by a pile of metal boxes or a sari stretched across a clothesline. The picture window has no window at all, and it opens onto everyone who passes by: scooters, children hurrying to school, nighttime wanderers, and cows unaware of their own sacredness.

I notice that the slum has shrunk. Money has pushed it into an ever tighter corner. The bulldozers came and crushed homes beneath them, along with a wall on which someone had drawn the image of their god and two hearts pierced by an arrow. People slipped away like cockroaches into their cracks when the light is switched on. In their place now stand StarBuckx, a Thai Spa, and a boutique selling wedding saris.

I wonder why I keep returning here. I do not admire decay or romanticize poverty, but when I look at an overturned cot, a bicycle leaning against it, and little bags hanging from the handlebars, I see harmony. Perhaps beauty is born from the rhythm of everyday life rather than from the lofty ideas of a designer.

I do not notice the rubbish or the stream of waste flowing into the street drain as I photograph two women. They are beautiful, wrapping their arms around each other and smiling—not at the camera, not at me, but at this moment of life.

I think: perhaps I am not photographing people after all, but joy, friendship, hope—and sometimes hopelessness. The trace of karma in a human life.