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Friday, March 18.
In the south, not far from a village,
we come across a large group of vultures.
The corpse at the side of the road is a buffalo, mostly intact.
We've seen this often.
In many parts of India, for religious reasons,
it's forbidden to slay cattle.
They still die - of old age, sickness, cold, hunger,
what we call "natural causes."
A dog helps itself to the corpse,
while vultures wait. They're in no hurry.
When I see this scene again today,
I realize we reacted in terms of our culture.
Around us, the landscape reminded us of Greece,
bathed in some austere grandeur
that lent an air of mysterious sacrifice.
To us it was a tragedy, a drama in several acts.
For our Indian companion, it was an everyday scene:
A glimpse of life and death and their calm alternation.
It was nothing worth filming, nothing extraordinary.