Capturing Life

There are days when it’s six in the morning and means goes from snuggling inside my cozy blanket to being on the road with a camera in hand, constantly trying to learn something by picking my early morning escapade partner’s brain in the vortex of North Kolkata’s lanes.
It begins with a sudden desire at nine in the evening, then proceeds to calling up the only person ready to give her time to indulge it and eventually snowballs into a plan, one of unprecedented fun when put to action. It’s almost winter (not many brown leaves to call it ‘autumn’) and the waking up part is the most difficult. Photowalks, as people call it nowadays are the best opportunities to observe people around us.  Agreed, it sounds clichéd but that’s the purpose behind it. Capturing life as it slowly unfurls itself before preparing for its way into the monotony of daily urban life. My partner and I choose the river banks, or ‘Gangar ghat’ and the adjacent streets where houses older than time create an ethereal atmosphere of peace, serenity and the beauty of a bygone era as our location.
First comes ‘Gangar ghat’ frequented by many photographers for clicking birds taking off with the background of the rising sun, or people returning after an early morning dip or people chatting at tea stalls, I settle for landscape shots to feel like David Lean while my partner, the pro here, shoots tilted portraits of damaged goddess idols.
Then there’s obviously moving carts, people bathing, children playing, confluence of the river with spillage from all kinds of sources – there is enough for generations of shutterbugs.
Then come the lanes. Exposed brick walls, climbers creeping up the walls of these houses, French windows with wooden Venetian blinds, Belgian glass, thick and sturdy horizontal ledges at the interval of every floor define this region.
All you need is the spirit to get to these places and the pseudo-intellectual in you will automatically start clicking pictures, without much thinking.  These localities are pictures in their own way, all one needs is a camera to frame it for themselves. Plus, there’s always the advantage of the early morning sun.
Simple tip: Just let a ray of light fall on a shabby red wall of an ancient building (there’s an abundance of those here) and you have a beautiful scene.
Looking at the memory card back home, almost full of vivid images along with the tiredness that it brings, the waking up part suddenly feels almost insignificant as the ‘greater good’ goes from the small screen of my camera to turning into my desktop’s new wallpaper.
Coordinator, class XI, Julien Day School, Kolkata.

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