I recently came across a forward full of the usual stuff about India, stuff like “power cuts, dung on the roads, caste system, bureaucracy, and blah..”. Its a little disheartening to see someone judge a country with more than 1 billion people and just seven major river systems on the basis of how the air of a metropolitan city smells like of if the streets are spic’n’span or not.
For a little quick review of the facts, agriculture is the major occupation, and services is the major contributor to the domestic produce. After being ruled by the Cholas, Guptas, Mauryas, Chalukyas, Pandayas, Sungas, Kalingas, Solankis, Pallavas ,Britishers, Portugese and the Spanish and being invaded by Jengis Khan and the likes in-numerable times it just so happened that in 1947 that we became a democratic country. After the generation of people who saw the struggle for Independence came the people who got were born into the Republic of India as Indian citizens with free air, water and everything else.

The moment a moment is captured is awesome and it is more for those moments than the final photograph that I pursue photography for.The feeling, with the dials spinning by and the sound of the shutter rising and falling, click!, is like bike riding. The camera allows one to dive deeper into people, their lives, streets and their things. And apart from this abstract thought the camera by itself is a wonderful mechanical contraption. No less beautiful than a wrist watch or a car.

I truly started out in photography with a used Nikon F55 which came with a shabby 18-85 mm kit lens. Shabby because the front element had an extraordinary amount of play and I spent quite some time trying to learn the art of manual focussing on it (before giving up). Next came the Pentax K10d which I bought with my own hard earned money and an old Pentax ME Super (which is one of the best cameras I have ever clicked with). And a FED 2 Rangefinder after getting very influenced by Henri Cartier.