Husband Instagrams wife's time with cancer over 10 years

Select posts from Nitesh Mohantys Instagram account nimo_obscura Diya rests in the morning scenes from Tata Memorial Hospital including a reflection of Nitesh and Diya and cut fruit which bore the caption lsquoPortrait of a couplersquoThe longest 30 seconds of Nitesh Mohantys life was on the morning of January 15 2007 His wife Diya who was sleeping next to him began shaking suddenly and violently In the days to come Diya then a head designer with Spaces by Welspun and Nitesh would be least prepared to learn that a brief fit would herald the presence of a low grade astrocytoma With those 30 seconds cancer would no longer be an acquaintance but a friend who had overstayed his welcomeTeaching an elective on time travel and memory at Ahmedabads National Institute of Design Nitesh asked his students that if they could go back in time and change one moment what would that be He asks the question of himself now If I could change those 30 seconds of her first epileptic attack I would do that Ten years later I am still living those 30 seconds he saysThe evening light is slowly fading at Nitesh and Diyas apartment in Borivli A large print of Gustav Klimts The Kiss hangs shyly beside a window that offers a generous view of Sanjay Gandhi National Parks rolling hills And unless Nitesh told you so it would be hard to guess that behind one of the closed bedroom doors Diya rests in the company of a friend Sonal Choudhury and a house help Kanta Ekka Save for the whir of the fan and our chatting here is a quiet rarely found in MumbaiFrom a low table in front of us Nitesh a visual artist and visiting faculty member picks up a copy of Susan Sontags On Photography and he quotes verbatim All photographs are memento mori To take a photograph is to participate in another persons or things mortality vulnerability mutabilityThere is a reason why he brings up these lines If the act of taking a photograph means freezing moments as the present becomes past then it couldnt be truer than in this couples life On Instagram Nitesh runs an account under the handle nimo_obscura where he chronicles the full sum of the experience of cancer as both devoted husband and helpless onlooker The frames portray hospital wards lunches and paraphernalia and companions such as Sonal and Kanta Each post is accompanied by a quote or a line from one of the many books that are arranged like Lego towers in their houseChronicling lifeInstagram is my soliloquy Nitesh saysIn 2011 when Diya had a relapse of cancer and before the rise of Instagram a photojournalist friend asked Nitesh if he was photographing Diya I said I wasnt and wondered what she meant She said Hold each day as it passes by That made me realise that there may be something to it that although this is a futile attempt I could hold on to each passing moment he saysThat year Nitesh took to a DSLR Between multiple appointments with doctors the lines between spaces started to blur Home and hospital there seemed to be no difference If as a young couple they had dreamt of an itinerant life the truth now was that the longest travel that happened was between Tata Memorial Hospital in Parel and home in BorivliI started spending a lot of time at home Once you start doing that you become aware of every little thing I make salads for Diya and notice the sunlight falling on the kitchen slab he says The DSLR shots didnt only feature his wife but odd details like olive oil and whirring fans He showed prints to Diya who like many of us could be was confused by the abstractions Where were these shot she had asked him Nowhere had been his reply People think they have to travel to various destinations to shoot My life is home bound for the most part and that way you start paying attention to minute details and the rhythm of life even in interior spaces The sound of the azaan the chirping of sparrows or the flit of the corner of a curtain you know what happens at what point of the day he saysThese images titled Nowhere made their way into a curation by Akshay Mahajan for FOCUS Photography Festival in 2015 and were shown at The Hive a nowshuttered arts and technology venue However when a secondhand battered iPhone 5 came into his life as a gift Nitesh took to Instagram I find Instagram as a way to escape It is my way of making sense of whats going on Diya and I have been trying to make sense of whats been happening to us for the last decade he explainsOn Instagram Niteshs feed is a mix of several emotions hope surrender grief borne out of mixed states exhaustion monotony anxiety and love The images are snapshots of things such as cut fruit or strands of hair as much as Diya herself If there is a word that would exemplify the condition it would be waiting ndash a state of limbo a permanent transience a characteristic feature of those patients and families at Tata Memorial Hospital Tata Memorial Hospital wasnt new to me My grandmother and mother both had cancer so the space didnt intimidate me says NiteshHowever the truth about cancer is revealed only when you talk to Nitesh His Instagram feed hides it behind smoke and mirrors You get just a hint of whats happening but not quite the full image Reflections superimpositions cryptic descriptions the brutal reality about cancer and what it can do to your life is not put out thereA friend tells Nitesh that his photographs remind her of Wong KarWais In the Mood for Love My work is nothing like Christopher Doyles cinematography for In the Mood for Love but I get what my friend is saying I dont want people to know me If they knew me they would sympathise rather than look at my posts from a distance The distance is important he says Which is why Diya is both beloved and metaphor in Niteshs series The pictures of her are fuzzy a figure in the shadowsIs the composition of the photos a deliberate attempt to hide Not deliberate says Nitesh Alluding to his Instagram handle the word obscura should tell you something ndash Nitesh says I think the fuzzy pictures are representative of my state of mind I wasnt this person 10 years ago I cant recognise myself anymore I will be true and say that since that moment and now I havent remained the same personA personal accountFor a belligerent Internet generation and its performance of positivity on social media Niteshs feed should come as a surprise If we are used to seeing posts of weddings engagements exotic vacation destinations births in the family or a new car then here is an account of grief This memorialising is not melodramatic but poignantNitesh is aware that the posts are for public consumption and while the question of sharing personal grief with strangers often arises he has made his peace with it I was once seated next to a young girl in the metro She was scrolling through my feed and double tapping the posts hearting them She had no clue that I was sitting right next to her and it was my account It hit me then that these are random people But I do think from the feedback I get that this can be a shared experience he saysIn October 2016 an MRI scan revealed that Diya had a fastspreading glioblastoma While in her last stages it is a hard question to be faced with how long is the last stage In Niteshs Instagram account there is a mourning in progress for the slow but definite passing away of a dream of togetherness We ask him if this is his ode to Diya He corrects us It is my song of despair Like Pablo Neruda Twenty love poems and a song of despair he says with a smileThose 30 seconds jolted us Before that we were like any other couple After 2007 we were forced to reassess what we wanted However this is not the way you want to learn a lesson about life he says Cancer is their friend says Nitesh which has made them more attuned to the details of the everyday a quality that every photographer would be paralysed without It is why Nitesh says he can wait patiently for crazed sparrows to stay still as he shoots them It is why he can watch sunlight fall on Diyas shoulders every morning as she sits by the window It is why he can predict when gulmohurs and will give way to the flames of the forest at SGNPI had to wait for four days after I fell in love with her before we could speak to each other he says recalling their first day as classmates at Sir JJ School of Art in 1992 Nitesh was 18 and Diya 17 They found out that they both lived in Borivli As an aside Nitesh says These days with the Tinder generation we quote Rumi and talk a lot about love but we dont do it enough Love was very different in the 1990s You fell in love and you thought you would be together forever Diya never had to ask me if I would marry her It was understood I would To call Diya my muse is to reduce what I feel for her