This is the starting point. TII - THIS IS INDIA
India, where I am from, India is where I find my inspirations and stories that I feel strongly about.
The idea is to produce a body of work focused on her daily life, street life, people on the street, people off the street, rich and poor, clean and dirty, modern and old, today and tomorrow, its an attempt to make TII an abstract representation of Indian reality. |
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I couldn't stop taking these pictures of the kids jumping into the river on a hot summer morning in rural Uttar Pradesh. |
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A sadhu in a small village in Uttar Pradesh. |
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If you ever have to join the government, you need to fill out the forms for the entrace exams, this lad will sell you the forms you need. |
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GREAT INDIA INDEED !! |
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Indian roads are full of surprises. These are from my recent trip to Uttar Pradesh. |
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Deers, peacocks, penguins (ok, plastic penguins!) and even trees are all caged for public viewing in deer park in delhi - not so dear afterall. |
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How many locks does one need to secure a shop? |
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no comments!!! |
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One of those candid moments! |
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I was in Jodhpur recently and took this photo while strolling around looking for a place to have dinner. This is a typical sight in India, where a vendor runs a phone booth and offers other services like internet, currency exchange and courier services to travellers.
What actually caught my attention was that while shutting shop, he had a chain in his hand. It quite amplified the current situation of falling rupee and the euro crisis. |
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During a recent assignment in West Bengal, i went to photograph a low caste community, the Chowdulis. They traditionally work as fishermen. When they took me along with them one morning, I was really surprised to see how they work. Since most can't afford boats or even nets, they drain water from ponds and harvest fish by hand.
Honestly, I was expecting to get on a boat, not stand on muddy dried up river.
below: the state of my feet!!! |
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This street vendor in rural bengal was selling all sorts of roots... few of the things he claimed to have remedies for :
1. cannot perform in bed... use my product.
2. you wife isn't happy with you... use my product.
3. not having kids... use my product.
4. scared of snakes... use my product.
5. scared anyway.... use my product.
MY FAVOURITE >>>
6. if you step in to swim - and pee right away... use my product. |
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A Royal wedding we attended in Jaipur, Rajasthan. |
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I was sitting in my car, and I couldn't stop myself from taking this picture of either an innocent, or probably a jealous look from a girl who was anxiously looking at her older friend doing her make up girl on the streets of Calcutta. |
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"Sab kooch milega," (you'll get everything) is what this vendor on wheels told me when I took his photo! |
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crack of dawn.
bath time.
Street dwellers.
and few taxi drivers
and then the cars
life on the streets of Calcutta |
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'hundreds' of people.
armed with brooms.
all over Delhi.
400,000 in all.
1,500 in my neighbourhood.
one mission - clean up the capital.
a 24 hour mission.
what happens after 24 hours.
wait for another army? |
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Waiting outside a government office, I found this dead Ambassador. It ferried people around town... was shiny and new but now It sits under a banyan tree and vendors sit on it and wait for customers to buy their neatly packed shirts. Astonishing how an ambassador never dies.
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a long evening.
evening of music.
public art.
T.L.R.
New Delhi. |
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I was in Puri, the eastern coast of India on Bay of Bengal. It was an amazing sight of Indian tourists, mainly my fellow Bengali travellers who would lie down on the beach and wait for the big waves to come crash on them. Here, you can see a young woman holding her father's leg as he is is pulled towards the sea by a strong wave... the lady, a family member couldn't stop laughing as the old man kept saying, "O MAA GO' (O mother!)!!!
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Strolling through a small village in northern Bihar, i chanced upon this oddly dressed young man sporting a woolen hat (in the middle of summer) and adorned in currency garland and a bright pink towel. This newly wed who was walking around with a plate fuil of dry fruits was going door-to-door seeking blessings and best wishes. |
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I made this picture while working on a project about insufficient health services provided to the poor in rural India. As soon as we arrived, the villagers gathered to discuss their problems and wanted us to take up the issues to the government officials. I pushed myself against the wall and quietly stood there, waiting for the right moment. The picture in front of me was not only beautiful but miserable. The frame and the bright colors through my viewfinder were beautiful, but the content in front of me was a sharp reminder of a class based society that India is struggling to get rid of- a slice of which one sees here where the women from the lower caste sits on the floor while the upper caste boys stand and stare in the background doing nothing. While claiming to be the fastest growing economy in the world with a seven percent growth rate, India, ironically is struggling to answer that dilemma.
Featured in Verve Photo |
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I was on an assignment in Tamil Nadu recently, working on the water issue in Chennai. I was amazed by the colours of the tumblers the locals use, as much as I detest plastic and love brass tumblers but the colours left a lasting impression! |
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The coiours seem to haunt me somehow! This photo was shot during one of the assignments for a charity in Rajasthan. |
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The villagers had gathered in a small room to discuss their plight. The light in that small room was minimal but streaming in from both sides and was typical 'God sent'! Typical of rural Indian huts, the colour of the wall was bluish-green and added a phenomenal texture. |
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Portrait of my friends and their lovely daughter in full-on Indian period attire, a perfect farewell photo of a couple of who truly love India. |
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The rich and the elite showing off their taste, in colour and flags! |
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I was at this party in New Delhi, possibly the fanciest party that I had gone to and was quite astonished to see some rare old photographs placed on rather kitsch with no sentiments at all. These rare beautiful photographs reflected poor taste because of excessive garishness.
NOTE: these are my personal views. |
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Driving past the industrial area in New Delhi I saw this mannequin on top of a bus stand. ironically a migrant labourer who was sitting under the shed (clearly not waiting for the bus - note the beer bottle) was completely oblivious of the mannequin!! |
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...with commonwealth round the corner, the Delhi government gets their team of fumigators to some of the neighbourhoods around the games complex. Wonder if the fumigators will come back next monsoon? |
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this is it! This is one part of new liberal India!
India Shining?
Really? |
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I was photographing the intifada styled protest on the streets of Old Srinagar in Kashmir. A young Kashmiri spotted me and asked me if I could take a photo of his t-shirt... |
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petrified? terrified? horrified? scared? frightened? or all of the above?
During a recent assignment, I was in Uttar Pradesh and I went to a classroom where this young girl was asked to recite a poem. She stood there in the corner, horrifed. The teachers' desk had two different kinds of sticks which made sense why a sweet little girl would be scared to even recite a poem about birds chirping in the morning. When I confronted the teacher and reminder her the rights of the child and how she couldn't beat up children - she couldn't care less and defended herself by saying that 'the kids need a good beating to behave themselves.' Horrifying! T.I.I.
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SWEET WALA
I was on an assignment in Punjab sometime back. This man was sitting in his sweet shop, and as soon as he saw me with the camera, he jumped up and posed himself in front of his shop. I couldn't resist taking this photos of this 'sweet wala' |
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BOMBAY FILM CLUB
Walking around in Dharavi, I stumbled across this small dark and dingy video club where all the migrant workers would gather and watch Bollywood movies on a big screen. This wasn't a proper cinema, and since they were all using pirated movies, the price for a ticket was cheap. no pepsi, no popcorns and no chairs! |
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Breadsmiths
Bakeries around the world might disagree with the way bread is made in this bakery outside of Bombay, and the 'making of' bread is a totally different ball game here. |
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spicy italian magazine cover
Few years ago, my friend Carlotta and Francesco went to Old Delhi to 'make' a photo of an Italian design magazine, Pelle. We wanted to send a portrait of the magazine back to the magazine, and spice market was the perfect place to take this posed portrait. Crowd gathered in no time, and since the magazine had no lingerie content (apart from the cover of course!), the magazine was immediately returned back to us. |
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Buddhist temple in Bihar
In one of my trips covering the Buddhist trail, I went to a Buddhist temple in Bihar and walked into a room full of thousands of earthen lamps that lit the entire room. Must confess it was a surreal experience in Bodhgaya. |
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Rickshaw wallah in Hyderabad
I sometimes find it annoying when people keep staring at photographers, but sometimes its just fun when you can make interesting frames with people in the photo, while they are staring at you. |
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Bollywood.
colour.
dance.
violence.
drama.
emotion.
action.
all of the above. |
