"The crowd lined up along the street, shoulder to shoulder, back to front. Fathers held up their boys over their shoulders. The older children climbed up the trees to have a better view. The pressure of the crowd was building behind me. On the other side, an opening formed in the crowd and about fifteen men assembled around the buffalo tied at the very end. The sacrifices were about to begin. We were in the remote island of Sumba, Indonesia, invited to witness the funeral rites for a hundred year old woman." Journeys with the caterpillar, is a humble and humorous attempt to capture the dramatic simplicity of Nusa Tenggara Timur(NTT) in Indonesia, covering the islands of Flores, Komodo, Rinca and Sumba. The photographs from the book have been selected for Solo Exhibition at the National Library and the Arts House, Singapore. All royalties from this book will be donated to Ayo Indonesia and Yayasan Harapan Sumba (YHS), two NGOs doing wonderful work in Flores and Sumba respectively.
About the Author: Writer, traveller, and photographer; Shivaji Das is the author of 'Journeys with the caterpillar: Travelling through the islands of Flores and Sumba, Indonesia' and 'Sacred Love: Erotic art in the temples of Nepal' Shivaji Das was born and brought up in the north-eastern province of Assam in India. He graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, subsequent to which he completed his post-graduation from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta. He is presently working as a management consultant in Singapore. Shivaji's writings have been published in magazines such as TIME, Asian Geographic, Venture Mag, Jakarta Post, Conscious Magazine, PanaJournal, Freethinker, etc. He has given talks on topics ranging from Travel Writing, Humour in Cross-Cultural context, and the culture of Indonesia in universities and forums in Singapore, Morocco, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil. His interviews have been featured on BBC, CNBC, Channel News Asia, Travel Radio Australia, Around the World TV, Radio Roaming, and Singapore Discovery Centre's IFD exhibition. His photographs in collaboration with his wife, Yolanda Yu, have been exhibited in the Darkroom Gallery, Vermont (USA), Kuala Lumpur International Photography Festival (Malaysia), the Arts House (Singapore), and the National Library (Singapore). Shivaji also takes an active interest in migrant issues and is associated with Singapore based organization Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2). He is the conceptualizer and one of the key organizers for the Migrant Worker Poetry Contests in Singapore and Malaysia.