WHO?
I wish I knew. I was born and brought up in West Bengal, India to parents who studied and taught Philosophy, an arts subject, but strayed into Science and Technology to earn money. I found my calling when I picked up the camera in my free time, when I was out of a job. Now I am not a “software engineer” anymore. I love to ride the bicycle, cook, play chess and TT, and read quantum physics. Apparently a doubting, skeptical non-conformist.
WHERE?
No fixed place as such. I am not a globe trotter. I like things simple. I’d rather pick up a good frame in the back alleys, the ghettoes and the markets than city-centers and megapolises. Kolkata and Varanasi are the places that I tend to repeat.
WHEN?
Good light became a criteria when I was using cheap entry level cameras as the color and contrast was good in the early morning and afternoon hours. So I would wake up early and caught the train to the city and be there by 7 am. Afternoons were easier. Now I am not so frequent after my daughter was diagnosed with serious, rare but curable brain disease. So as times changed so did myself and my approach to photography and the timings.
WHAT?
After I found that my attitude towards photography was constantly changing, there must be something that keeps me at it. It was people and the machine, the economic engine, that Kolkata is. In sharp contrast is the laid-back, traditional, surviving-on-holy-scriptures Varanasi. Somehow as a Bengali these things that interest me are part of our psyche, being brought up on Tagore and Ray literature and movies. So these form a backdrop to my search for the inner meaning of people and things, the ever-elusive reality. I shoot some comic images, some surreal, some meaningless abstracts but eventually I think I am trying to figure it out.
WHY?
Photography’s constant fountain of self-discovery, introspection, contemplation, evolution and expression. I think I sometimes run high on emotions. When they get the better of me, I go out and shoot. It is a great balance-restorer.
