Junior College Photography – Photo Essay

Chapel, St. Xavier’s College

 

The classroom at the far right was 20 A, my Junior College class room.

Random Photo Shoot @ Chennai

Supermoon Photography at Midnight

Okay Here is the Supermoon in India. Can somebody please tell Star News not to go so blah about this phenomenon?

Bit off centre but its pristine white quality is pretty.

The camera shook when i took this shot. It looks like a meteor or probably a very ugly sperm.

Believe me it was just a pretty moon. About the size? Hmmm… 14% larger than usual. Like I care.

A traveller’s diary: My city and my gaon

Am i too late for introduction? Better late than never, although i am quite a stickler for punctuality in normal life. Buts such is the case with most Indians, most Mumbaikars, we find an ear to listen to our feelings and we go on without realizing that we have not even introduced ourselves to the person sitting next to us. When travelling in long distance trains, we Indians share, we fight, we show kindness that is not always reciprocated back, we come to know each other without knowing each other really. We make friends though we know we may not meet each other ever again. Our world is big, with place for all. I am a mass media student in a reputed college in Mumbai and love to write and do photography of course. I don’t know why people say photography is inherited. In the film ‘wake up sid’, the protagonist sid/ siddharth had got his photography bug from his father. Mine is quite a familiar filmy story, the same my dad also had photography as his hobby. I started mine 2 years ago, and i had to coax, do tantrums, reason and what not to get my DSC H50. I had no idea that canon or nikon were better options but at that time all that fascinated me was a camera and i loved to click. The DSC caught my eye and i fell blindly in love with it. All my classmates oohed and aahed (and i am not exaggerating one bit here) when i went around clicking photographs all the time. I must say my juniors in college are way better than me and passionate for photography just like me. We share a passion, an emotion to freeze the moment in time that is not waiting to be captured but if you are there at that precise moment when its playing out and are able to freeze that, you are a hero. nobody wants to be a part of the crowd here. Ask anyone, just anyone in Bombay if they want to be part of the crowd. No one. Neither do I. But i want to be with them. I want to see them and be able to photograph them. We talk about real India, but the urban city is hardly real. Beyond a thin membrane of tolerance there is a vacuum a barrier that one cannot penetrate. The real India is the land of devotion that stands in serpentine queues outside temples. The real India lies in the spice of the food that is traditionally made even today. The real India is rural- where even today most of the population sweats it out to make a living. People say that India is rising globally, yes, most of it is true too. But i find the true calling here, in the soil of the most remotest villages and small towns. You don’t need a trade hub, flashy town around you to exist. I had gone to kashmir once. In Sri nagar, i went to ride in the shikara with my family at Dal Lake and truly felt at peace with the world like never before. A short while later a boy of mere five or six year old in his small shikara came near the shikara i was in and asked me if i would but his lotuses. The lotuses were the most beautiful flowers i had ever seen. Unfortunately the boy had a very painful look on his face. I felt a deep stirring of emotion. I asked him, ‘How much?’.
‘Give him whatever you see fit, madam. He’s a local boy, sells lotus, very beautiful they are.’ the man who was sailing my shikara said.
I took a small bunch and paid him five rupees.
As it had to happen, the boy’s face was filled with even more sorrow but thankfully there were no tears. He had lived in a place ravaged by extremists most of his life, i could understand his pain but do no more about it. He looked like he wanted more money for the lotuses. But before i could think more on it, he had drifted away and the darkness of the twilight swallowed him completely till i could no longer see him. I felt sorry for him. The man riding my shikara told me not to look too much into it. You see the problem with city people like me? We come across people but all of them are nameless creatures in our memory. there are people that i come across who help me if i am in trouble or distress, but thats it. My mother tells me, ‘that is how good people work, they do a deed and go back into their lives’. Sometimes those who help us do not even have a face. I wish i knew that boy’s name. I don’t know what good it would have done him or me. But i wish i knew.

Dal Lake, Srinagar

Nimble hands over the shutter

My photography experience is hardly much to be tagged as my kind of photography. My photography professor used to tell me, ‘We are too conditioned by our social selves, it dims our perspectives, it clouds the imagination.’ Initially, i did not agree. But today i have understood what he meant. Letting go of the perceptions we have developed as a result of our socialization process opens newer perspectives and windows of imagination. My city- Bombay (Pardon me, i cannot force myself to call it Mumbai just because a schizophrenic old fool running a pseudo-ancient extremist party tells me to call it Mumbai, i ‘shan’t’ call it Mumbai), well, i read somewhere in a travel book that it is not a beautiful city. I beg to differ on that. It pulls the strings of anyone’s heart just as photography pulled me from the boredom existence of a student life. Creating images is something that i have always loved. My first love with the camera began when my dad clicked photos of me during my childhood. I was quite a ever- ready subject, ready to offer a million poses inspired from movies of the day. I had been brought up with that kind of fashion sense too. If the latest movie heroine wore orange pants and black netted top i had to get it the next day! Similarly for films like Hum aapke hain kaun, Aflatoon, etc i copied Madhuri and Urmila on every costume of theirs, whereas the rest of the world was busy copying their dance moves. Many years down the line, it is me with my Sony DSC H50 clicking pictures of little members of my family. ( Now kindly don’t turn your nose up just because it’s a Sony it’s still my first camera hence i love it unconditionally). It is indeed a very fulfilling experience, kind of an honor to freeze the moments of their early life on to them, spreading smiles across their grown up faces. After taking up photography, i feel i have some legacy to pass on as otherwise i have nothing in heirloom or tradition to pass on, i am a terrible sindhi so culturally i have nothing to pass on (yikes). Tomorrow when the younger ones in my family get the photographs and feel good, i shall know that i have succeeded.