still, life

'still, life' follows an ambulatory trail, primarily across Delhi and its outskirts, with a focus on the student protests in late 2019, followed by violence against the minority muslim community culminating with the Covid-19 pandemic.

I remember we were out of eggs. It was going to be a strange expedition because we had all been told to stay home. But breakfasts must be had. The shortest route to the market had been blocked off by large, no doubt virus proof metal gates. If it weren't for the special logic of Resident Welfare Associations, I wouldn't have found myself on the main road, witnessing the beginnings of a working class exodus, watching families forced to traverse hundreds of kilometres on foot to reach their rural homes.

      It was the partition but in 8K. Unsurprisingly, I spent the rest of that day and then the next many months, chasing the moment, trying to capture it as everything changed, probably forever. Why photograph any of it?  Were the images meant to be a breadcrumb trail? A mnemonic guide to help us find our way back in case we forgot?  In any case, I didn't photograph the eggs. 

         Some months earlier I had  watched as an older cop yelled at his younger colleagues to stop hurling stones back at the protesters.    “ They’ll only throw them back at you, you fools.” He screamed as the tear gas, misfired into the wind, slowly wafted back at them. I didn’t photograph the elderly constable either. Soon after, a bunch of his fellow cops heroically took down a teenager.  Many lathis were swung. Large men fell over themselves, trying to get a swing in. A few seconds later,  an unconscious body lay on the road, while a camera was shoved back. A child had been taught a lesson. I got it on camera,  but somehow I can't summon that scene, that beating, as readily to mind as I can that elderly policeman.A few weeks later a group of young men were taught the national anthem , on camera.

      Has the city always been a maze of colony gates? Did the roads come with ‘attached’ barricades? Were students always suspect? And food so unpalatable that it became a threat? Have you ever seen a ransacked home?  Can fear hold a city together? We may return but can we ever go back home?

   None of these photographs will provide definitive answers.  Some will leave you with questions.  Hopefully all of them will provoke us to remember.