An image from the exhibition

As you climb to the top floor of the Jitendra Arya exhibition at the National Gallery of Modern Art, you see a close-up of writer Shobhaa De, breathtakingly young and beautiful. She is clearly lying down, her hair piled high, a thick halo ornately studded with jewels, her eyes densely outlined with kohl, looking straight through the photograph into yours, unblinking. My companion said to me, "The camera, the image, this making her into a sort of creature, is objectifying her, but the look in her eyes won't allow that objectification."