Performance Anxiety and Indian Bureaucracy

I don’t know that I’m tough enough, especially when this country is tougher than me. I love it, I love my bharat mata, but she really doesn’t make it easy. I don’t know that I’m good enough for this. This is the single hardest thing I have done in my life, and yet I chose it. I could have made it easier—but I had to do this, I had to come here alone, I had to pick an especially difficult battle, and I had to fight it alone. All just so that on Monday night, when I finally sink into my $4 bed, exhausted, I will know how cut out I am for this. Because at this moment it’s ceased to be about how good a photographer or writer I am, but about everything else, and I could really do with that validation when the going gets tough. And it has. And there’s no validation in the world except surviving a likely stampede, and emerging with pictures good enough for what is to be one of the most important moments of my fledging career. But it’s all about pretending you know what you signed up for, that you’re up to it, and looking fine when you’re really paddling wildly under the surface and shooting in the dark.