The first set of temple bells rang for me, really rang for me, in 2008. I had been standing in line waiting for over three hours to enter the Kamakhya temple. I wasn’t even a “real” photographer then – just an unreal one with a box camera and a shutter happy finger. Something happened when I looked at the temple bells that day through the view finder – the world shifted very slightly for me.
The seeds of a journey had been sown – one that would lead me both to the remotest parts of the country as well as to the innermost recesses of my being. Travel became the means to explore both the inner and the outer world.
And while pushing further and further outward, my camera became both the reason and the means to pause for a moment. The stillness that I had only ever felt before, as a swimmer alone in the water – when everything is silenced and stops for a moment – that stillness is what I began unconsciously seeking through the lens of my camera.
For someone who has never been ritualistic, the pull of temples and spiritual places became stronger – not as places of worship but as spots for personal reflection. And the bells – the bells have rung for me in so many places since – in tiny little roadside temples in the hills, in places thronged by worshippers, in sunshine, in rain, their mellifluous peal always calling my name and suffusing me with positive energy.
The act of photography is essentially a cry against our own mortality – with every image we capture, we hope to freeze time and stop its march. Every image is a memory that has been forever frozen in time. But for me, photography has also been a journey that has helped me reach into the quiet places of my own soul. It has taught me that the best pictures aren’t those of the prettiest or the most remarkable things I have seen – but ones that help me tell my story. Of finding beauty in breathtaking detail, of finding pleasure in solitude, of a visceral connection to this land and its people.
Each of these photographs have made me look at the world anew and replenished me spiritually and creatively. And the act of photography has given me untold joy and transformed mundane things into magic. I hope it works some of that incredible alchemy on you.