House arrest

Holding on to disparate momentsBy Nitesh MohantyHome is where Nitesh Mohanty has lived many different lives Love happiness companionship grief and death came and went sometimes overstaying their presence and on other occasions leaving very quickly Its this transience that Mohanty has made peace withBefore he moved to Ahmedabad from Mumbai to chair the Crafting Creative Communication programme at MICA he was caregiver to his late wife Diya who was diagnosed with astrocytoma in 2007 She passed away in 2018 For a significant part of the 10 years when his wife was battling cancer Mohanty had been by her bedside So the idea of home was never too distant or alien I am most comfortable at home because I would hardly step out to make images I thought that what the home offers is vivid enough for me to question the little details that I could notice through my lens he saysWhen the pandemic happened it didnt feel out of the ordinary I had already done a bit of social distancing while I was a caregiver and didnt have a social lifeJust that now he had moved cities And the house he was occupying was a new one The idea seamlessly extended itself from a chapter that I was part of to a new chapter that I was living through a different frameworkIf there was something that he was trying to make sense of it was the difference between living in a house and a home hellipif Mumbai was a home and if this is just a house that I am trying to inhabit Or am I trying to create a little room for affinity to these bare walls and space I am occupying with a friend and partnerNitesh MohantyThis new conversation and curiosity with the idea called home and what it means to him nowmdashafter having lived a life where you have lost someone dearest to youmdashgave birth to a lockdownthemed series of images that Mohanty has aptly titled This Too Shall Pass It is part of Guldasta an online project that showcases personal voices and narratives in the form of words images videos and zinesWe dont have a choice but to accept this And the fact that its transitory gives us more hopeA black and white photograph of a pair of hands raised against a white wall is juxtaposed with a bird in flight as seen from the balcony of an apartment Another picture has a woman in the buff chuckling in the bedroom paired with a picture of a sliver of sunlight on the wall of an unlit room As someone who is trying to understand the medium of photography I have mostly been holding singular moments and that has been my preoccupation largely This time around when I was putting the lockdown story together I was conscious about what happens when two disparate images start speaking to each other It can either initiate a sense of irony or harmony or just a juxtaposition Because in life everything is juxtaposed You might want to hold on to a thing or idea in singularity but its always aligned with something else and while in the absence of something else it can have a linear reading the moment you offer a juxtaposed thought next to it it initiates an interesting conversation says Mohanty adding All these moments were shot individually without a conscious idea of pairing them later on So while the picture of hands being raised has nothing magical about it the moment you pair it with a bird it talks about the human yearning to be set freeFollow httpswwwinstagramcomnimo_obscuraMaking memories with achaBy Athul PrasadAchan Acha Dad The words mean the same but conjure many ideas for travel photographer Athul Prasad Unlike his mother who he describes as his friend his acha is the person he looks up to The deference and generational gap have always made it difficult for Prasad to hold a conversation with him Acha is also home For someone who has lived a fairly austere life Prasad says his 68yearold fathers only extravagance has been the dream home he built for his family in his hometown Trivandrum right across their ancestral propertyIn the second week of March just before the lockdown Mumbaibased Prasad who has lived a fairly peripatetic life between states countries and hotels found himself with everything that came to represent his acha His mum was visiting her elder son in Australia This meant that Prasad who had gone to be with his dad would now be cooped up with himThe result is a series of contemplative photographs which Prasad says enabled him to see his father in a different light I have been away from home for nearly seven years and each time I came back it was just for a few days This has been the longest I have been in the house my father built seven years ago And it was surreal because dad and I hadnt lived in such close proximity shares PrasadAthul PrasadIt was when he stumbled upon a heap of family photo albums with many pictures taken by his father that he realised how little he had documented his own family especially him I have always avoided taking family photographs because I dont want my professional life to seep into my personal space Yet I knew that this moment with my father was not going to come back I wanted to preserve this memoryTo reimagine what it might have been to take pictures on film like his father had done when Prasad was a child he taped the digital screen of his DSLR and started shooting his dad as he went about the mundane routine activities of sleeping checking his phone or just lounging in his chair He would go back to the pictures only later so that he couldnt tamper with the image as he clicked them and that except for the camera nothing came in between him and the subject At some point dad also began to feel excited about it and it became a bonding exercise for us I started this project in April In May when he grew a beard it was he who asked me to take a picture of him Thanks to these photographs it helped me crossover barriers with acha Our relationship has become breezy to the say the least he says Most importantly I wanted to do this for myself so that I could savour this time when I go back to it in the futureFollow httpswwwinstagramcomathulprasadMumbai on a lunar chartBy Hashim BadaniThe telescope otherwise a tool used to see faraway and inaccessible objects became a bridge that helped Mumbai photographer Hashim Badani crossover and see his ageing parentsA few days before the lockdown Badani and his wife had visited their inlaws in Mahalaxmi Then the lockdown happened and because it is a gated building and movement had been restricted we decided to stay there for a while says the Bandra resident As the days rolled into weeks Badani became increasingly nostalgic about home and his parents who live a few kilometres away in the neighbouring Byculla I couldnt go and see them because they are old and it wasnt a risk worth taking he remembers That the lockdown coincided with the holy month of Ramzan which Badani says was very relevant to his family made him yearn for home more than ever What was reassuring was that he could see his parents home from the refuge area of the Mahalaxmi building The lockdown had skewed all sense of direction and distance I was living close enough to my parents to spot the speck that is their home but farther than Ive ever been in every other way To not be by their side when they needed me most added to my guilt and frustration His lockdown photoseries which he later shared on Instagram was a response to thisBadani borrowed a telescope from a friend and set it up on the terrace and tried to spot his Byculla home Even though home was really far I could see it So I called my mum and asked her to come to the balcony I was able to spot her though she was just a white speck And this became a routine through the month of Ramzanmdasha strange mode of communication Shed come out every evening and Id make photos of her through the telescope It felt like some physical validation to be able to see my parents in realtimeHashim BadaniIn between he found himself collecting reminders about the city that surrounded him The fact that we are a port and that the sea is never far where my father went to work Sewri and some of the places I grew up in The more pictures I made the more I felt the need to fit everything into something bigger Maybe its the moon this May Maybe its the strange solace we seek from traditions when times are tough Badani later shared on Instagram He then placed these images on a lunar chart It was representative of different things It was taken during the month of Ramzan and ended on Eid after the sighting of the moonThe grid of the telescope images he says is a map of many things but most of all its a way home As a documentary photographer I have always interacted with urban spaces But because of the circumstances I had suddenly been alienated from it This was a good way to feed into those memoriesIts me looking outward from within the houseFollow httpswwwinstagramcomhashimbadaniDreaming and longing of homeBy Menty JamirI DONT know when I will go home Its a question that has plagued Delhibased Menty Jamir for the last four months and inadvertently crept into her photography An image of her staring into a fogged bathroom after a shower the shadow of her hands dancing against wet tiles scattered strands of hair flying like the unruly branches of a tree and a brassiere hanging by a hook These are pictures of longing and regret says Jamir who originally hails from NagalandWhen the lockdown was announced Jamirs worried mother had asked her to return home so that she could be with the family I have been away from home since I was 15 and couldnt imagine myself being stuck with my parents for such a long time I was worried that we would argue constantly and that would put a strain on our relationship she says That decision however soon left her remorseful The one thing that I loved doing was stepping out for a walk or run to the neighbourhood park Sometimes Id lie down on the grass and simply stare into the sky and watch the birds fly Those small luxuries had been snatched awayCooped up at home chasing her own shadows she found herself thinking of home very often I even began dreaming of itmdashspending time with parents siblings and friends In my hometown there are no cases of COVID19 yet and people were going about their life normally I regretted not leaving when I could have or should have says Jamir Her story too has found room in the lockdownthemed series by GuldastaHere Jamir shared photographs she had clicked over the last one year contrasting and sometimes juxtaposing it with life indoors to highlight the paradox of being trapped I switch on and off on and off I sing I swim I sink I reach for the light that is not far only to be met by me fears The silence inbetween time the sighs of unidentified emotionhellip I reflect I reminisce I remain she writesWorking on this project articulating her thoughts and giving shape to the loneliness she was experiencing has helped her cope she says Right now its just me speaking to my plants day in and day out Yet I know I am also making something meaningful and beautiful alongside Its a story she says thats worth preserving and one that she will remember once she finds her way back homeFollow httpswwwinstagramcommenty___jamirFinding beauty in monotonyBy Rishita SharmaIt was on photographer Mayank Austen Soofis Instagram timeline thedelhiwalla that 20yearold Assambased engineering student Rishita Sharma found her tiny moment of fame A portrait of a friend who was visiting her at home and whom she had clicked while she was gazing outside the window and tying her hair in a loose bun was shared by Soofi on his page Sharma who is a selftaught photographer and pursues it as a hobby has spent the last few weeks indoors making sense of what it is to be at home Her friend who lives in the same colony and visits her often is a recurring subject and so is her mother while she is preparing pickle on the terrace or lying down on the floor or cooking in the kitchen I really love shooting outdoors but with the lockdown I suddenly found myself at home but that also helped me look for a new way to express myself shares Sharma My pictures are more about capturing the monotony of my daily life and the people who are part of it To me they are ordinary but I think its this ordinariness that I find most beautiful The photographs that she has shared on her Instagram handle are a mix of shots taken on her DSLR Redmi note 6 and iPhone But I think its most convenient to take pictures on the phone because I dont like my subjects to know that they are being clicked It takes away from the realness of the image she adds The lockdown she says if anything has made her more observant about the little things that she had taken for grantedmdashlike the hidden corners in her house that look different at different times of the day And because I live in Assam which is always so beautiful it lends itself effortlessly to my cameraRishita SharmaFollow httpswwwinstagramcomrishitaa_18Observing the inanimateBy Ritesh UttamchandaniThe anxiety that comes with isolation is no stranger to Ritesh Uttamchandani An independent photographer Mumbaibased Uttamchandani has spent crucialmdashif not significantmdashtime within the four walls of his house not once but thrice in the last decade The first one was longdrawn An accident followed by a surgery had left him homebound for 10 months The second instance was in 2018 when he was in the midst of publishing his debut photobook The Red Cat and Other Stories which required investment of both emotional labour and a lot of manhours I am used to observing the intimate spaces of my home he shares And yet the lockdown didnt quite fit into his isolation narrative mostly because it was imposed on him Uttamchandani who has been living with his sisters for the last four months says the experience was disorienting at least in the beginningRitesh Uttamchandani Pic courtesyVipurva ParikhJust before the lockdown I had started work on my second photobook and I was hoping it would keep me busy for the next few months And then suddenly all my plans had come to naught he shares While his contemporaries saw the lockdown as an opportunity to busy themselves with their cameras Uttamchandani who is also a photojournalist for once didnt feel the need to overstretch myself He avoided taking pictures with his phone or DSLR for a while and if and when he did the shots seemed mopey like his state of mind But photographers are instinctive by nature I was not deliberately building a visual narrative but because I was mindful about everything around me I couldnt stop myself eitherThe patterns of his sisters hair fallen over the dust in the house while sweeping the floor the bareness of his gated colony and his neighbour whod religiously step out in a PPE kit every evening so that his dog could take an evening walk were observations that made their way into his photographs But the one that stayed with him was while making himself tea one morning I had left the tea to boil and then rushed midway to do another errand in the house When I returned to pour myself tea the chai patti tea powder in the handi had oddly come together in the shape of the map of India It was so strange that I had to take a picture of it says Uttamchandani To me it also reflected the situation we as a nation are in With every state following its own rules to arrest the spread of the virus one gets a sense of the balkanization of this country India is boiling even if slowlyFollow httpswwwinstagramcomriteshuttamchandaniCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and a complete guide from food to things to do and events across Mumbai Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates MidDay is now on Telegram Click here to join our channel middayinfomedialtd and stay updated with the latest news