Submission

Afgoanistan Munir, Ahmad, Maroof and Hamed live in Assangaon, Goa, over 2000 kilometers from their homeland, Afghanistan. This series of environmental portraits explores a sense of displacement & dislocation in these proud, young men, while presenting an alternate narrative about their nation, religion and identity. While they stitch together new lives for themselves within the eclectic tapestry of Goa, they hold on to their cultural roots by staying close to each other, forging a fraternity soaked in the nostalgia of cuisine, songs, stories and humour from back home. They are strangers in a strange land. Yet very much at home. For that is also the true essence of India - a shapeshifting, amorphous mass of humans, and not land. Beyond the dogma of geography, politics, religion and language, India has always been what its inhabitants wanted it to be. Goa for me. Afgoanistan for Munir, Ahmad, Maroof and Hamed.