His eyebrows were connected

As I wandered through the backstreets of Malda in eastern India, I noticed a man seated against a faded wall. He wore a tank top, a pendant dangling from his chest, and what struck me most was the unbroken line of his eyebrows—like a rope stretched firmly across his forehead. When I raised my camera, he looked back directly, as if out of sheer boredom, returning my gaze with unexpected intensity. It was hard to tell whether his eyes were serious or playful, but either way, he made for a striking subject. Through the viewfinder, I could see his neatly trimmed beard forming a dense shadow along his jaw and cheeks. Apparently, when endowed with abundant body hair, even the eyebrows demand their share of attention—and this man was a textbook example.

Curiously, in India, where the heat is relentless, many men are covered in thick body hair. Anthropologists suggest it may help shield the skin from ultraviolet rays or deter biting insects. Yet in a place where a single fan is often all one has to fight the sweat, such hair seems more nuisance than benefit. And still, the man of Malda looked entirely unbothered, even proud of his heavy brows and beard. While I wilted in the sweltering air, he seemed armored in his natural covering, as though body hair were not a hindrance but a kind of protection.

After all, across history, cultures have placed very different values on facial hair. In ancient Rome, shaving was considered the mark of civilization, while in the Middle East and South Asia, a full beard often symbolized maturity and masculinity. This man in Malda, with his rope-like brows and shadowed jaw, seemed to embody some midpoint between these extremes. As I pressed the shutter, I indulged in the fancy that his eyebrows carried a world-historical significance. But the man himself, of course, had no such concern. He merely sat there, passing the time, looking back at me with idle curiosity.