Homecoming

I took this picture, which is one of my favorites, at the Taj West End hotel in Bangalore many years ago. The scanned negative has suffered, like many of my old negatives, so that the viewer of today may not see what I do, when I look through the eyes of memory.

The staircase led to the suite where I always stayed when I visited Bangalore. (The small building, deep within the hotel grounds, has been remodeled into the Tata Suite, and the staircase is no longer visible from the entrance.)

When I took the picture, I first removed a distracting vase of flowers from the niche on the left. The simplicity and warmth, the sense of expectation caused by the dark staircase ascending into light, perfectly expressed my feelings about coming home.