Shoot Anything

The Black and White Edition has a portentous title, portentous heft, and a foreword in which Shyam Benegal puts on his best impersonation of a portentous Deepak Chopra voice. ‘Photography embraces all of life and the universe,’ he intones, before lapsing into a definition of the activity, apparently cribbed from a learner’s dictionary: ‘Photography is based on the simple principle of reproducing an image directly from life.’ He concludes with a somewhat ambivalent compliment: ‘Ayesha Taleyarkhan is a restless photographer who sees the entire world as subjects for her photography.’

Not just is that the kindest, most honest observation one could make about the photographs in this expensively produced tome, but it also hazards an explanation for this bouillabaisse of arbitrary stock images, featuring zebras, cacti, trees, barbers, old women, slum kids, flowers, horses, ponytails, wood shavings, tango dancers, monks, coat hangers, sudsy soap bars, awkwardly cropped pianos, and those immortal Flickr favourites, broken doors.

There are plenty of pictures of the conspicuously poor: tightly framed weather-beaten faces with crooked teeth, smiling little children with flies basking in their snot, or scouring their mothers’ hair for lice. Women squat on the sidewalk; one contemplates her face in a hand mirror, another tranquilly stirs an ear cavity with a stick. Of one such image, Taleyarkhan says in the introduction, ‘When I saw the young woman selling her wares on the street, I knew a black and white image would more effectively capture the emotional weight of her ordinariness.’

On the contrary, the monochromatic has a way of elevating the ordinary. It flatters the un-patrician profile, burns out unsightly bulges and blemishes, and places a patina of refinement over the rudest of realities. Just ask the youthful aesthete taking an insta-nostalgic iPhone photo of his shinily shod feet on the sidewalk.

Unlike those iPhone photos, though, Taleyarkhan’s aspire to a little more than a smattering of likes on a Facebook album and swift oblivion. Which is why her pictures ought to be more than finely produced, technically correct exposures of wildebeest and pagodas she saw on holiday, or things that she just happened to spot lying around the house. A strong overarching theme might have helped, as would a sharper eye for editing and composition. Without that, the pictures reflect nothing more than the stirrings of artistic pretension in a new DSLR owner, who, disdaining the happy posed portraits of his now-distant point-and-shoot past, marches purposefully towards the closest shantytown in search of some shabby ordinariness to dramatize. 


An edited version appeared in Outlook Traveller's June 2012 issue

Chronicle of a Death foretold

Pic courtesy: Nathan G

I revisited the place of my birth after many years earlier this week, courtesy of an assignment to cover the abduction and murder of two schoolchildren, and the subsequent public outrage and encounter of the prime accused. Thanks to our awesomely incommodious Tuesday deadline, I had just about a day to gather up interviews, and a day to whip out 1700 words. Which were whittled down by half here. 

There were parts they left out that I considered important to the story, though. For instance, the role the media played in further whetting the public appetite for summary justice, as was borne out by the feeding frenzy which occurred every time the accused made a public appearance, and faced a seething crowd clamouring to lynch them. So I'm posting a few lopped off bits here: 

                                                                                

On Rangai Gounder Street, headlines spoke of residents distributing sweets, and bursting crackers, declaring: “This is our real Deepavali, as the demon Narakasuran has been slain.” As the 1000-walas sputtered out, none of the celebrants ventured near the victims’ family’s home, which remained bolted, and silent. Jayanthi, a young goldsmith who lives in a small house around the corner says, “The media people came here the day after the encounter. They asked us if we were happy. We said we were. They asked if this was our real Deepavali. We said it was. So they said, well why don’t you burst crackers then? They bought a 1000-wala, put a matchbox in my hand, and said, ‘There, now celebrate!’” So the crackers and cameras flared up together, and Jayanthi was immortalised celebrating the “demon’s death” in a Tamil daily the next day. “I heard they also stopped a bus that was passing by and distributed Mysorepa, but I wasn’t there then,” she adds, with a twinge of regret. 

[Politicians, with an eye on the May elections, joining in the public breast-beating] 

Today, Rangai Gounder's narrow lanes are wallpapered with posters adorned with portraits of the two dead children, flanked by the ubiquitous teardrops, and a roll-call of incongruously grinning politicians-- the UPA, the Shiv Sena, and Congress MLA Kovai Thangam, who lauded the police action in the State Legislature. There are also motley groups expressing their commiseration through dubious poetry. “My heart is aching when I think of you,” goes one by Dalit Panthers leader Thol. Thirumavalavan. “My teardrops turn into flowers, and I lay these on your grave.” A poster by the ‘45th Division’ of common people says: “You’ll go with anyone who calls you. But you knew it was Yama, calling you, so why did you go?”

                                                                      
[Ire over anyone unwilling to "celebrate" the encounter killing of the accused] 

On the same day, outside the District Court Complex in Coimbatore, 20 advocates protested the killing, with posters which declared: ‘Stop encounter culture’ and ‘The court should punish the accused, not the police’. The next day, posters and handouts around the area provided 9 of their names and numbers, exhorting the public to “teach these black sheep in black coats a lesson”, and to “show these monsters what human rights really is, in our own language, if they gather in a public place again.”   

R Nikkolaus, an advocate and activist with People’s Watch, is one of the “monsters” the pamphlet wants to see punished. He believes it’s authored by the Intelligence wing of the police, but blames the media for the public’s loss of faith in the legal system, its appetite for summary justice, and its blind, emotional fury towards those who question it. “They’ve got to be neutral, but they go along blindly with the police version,” he says. “The Dinamalar website has a public poll: ‘What should be done with Manoharan, the second accused? 1. Encounter 2. Hanging 3. Life imprisonment. Vote and decide.’ How can they decide the culprit? But I won’t be surprised if there’s a story which comes out, saying he was found hanging in his cell.”   

“It’s dangerous to allow the police to take on the larger than life role of cleansers of public morality,” concurs V Suresh of People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Chennai, who calls the encounter “fake at its worst” and “a cock and bull story”, says the police is functioning like a ‘katta panchayat’-- a system of parallel justice, granted by a local goon. “It’s only in these extreme crime circumstances do they come up trumps, otherwise no citizen is safe when they even go to a local police station to register a complaint.”

Dastardly Delhi

Snapshot flashback # 2

March
charge of the highlight brigade

April

May

June

My dream job...

Llama-measurer...as illustrated by this delightful picture I came across in an FAO report:

Why?
Because:
1 there'll be no grumpy foul-mouthed demented horn-blowing motorists on the pampas,
2 I will be honestly and justifiably underpaid,
3 and my gently whiffling co-workers will be soft and furry.

Cudgels to canvas

If you're inured to the stream of gushy, gee-whiz type of wondrously eulogic writing that art-reportage in India usually involves, the Guardian's searing Mr Searle has a sobering corrective for you.

Take for example, his slapdown of Husain, with a delicate swipe of the wrist:

If Husain were a western artist, it would be unlikely that his work would excite the kind of protest it has. His is an insipid sort of figurative modernism that doesn't appear to have developed much since the 1950s. [...] The paintings abound with a cavalcade of indeterminate gods, humans and animals. Mother Teresa and Gandhi are in there somewhere, as well as a moustachioed officer of the Raj, posing with a cuddly blue elephant and a dead tiger. This is as pointed as things get, so far as I can tell.

Puss moth

1995 - 2008

When I'm back home in Madras, like a feline myself, I spend a lot of time prowling my friend's backyard garden. Much of this time is spent communing with her many cats, each of whom has a distinctly unique personality. There's Kali, with her lustrous black coat and flashing malachite eyes, who's as pliant and affectionate as a dog, and makes a regal descent from her favourite tree when she hears her name being called. There's biscuit-coloured Muffin, with fur as soft as felt, and a kinky bent ear, who revvs up his welcoming purr as soon as you're in earshot.

And then, there's stately, gracious Puss moth, with his whitened ruff and exuberant bottlebrush tail, who exudes warmth and well-being as naturally as a toasty little fireplace. Jean Cocteau said his cats gradually became the "visible soul" of his home. Puss moth was the animating spirit of the backyard, presiding over it from his cushioned throne. But today, he had kidney failure, and was put to sleep. RIP, dear Puss moth. My backyard jaunts will never be the same without you.