❝Loving you scares me to bones, but I shall rather love you to pieces, than let you go and be in pieces.❞
Viraj, an emerging sensation among photographers, and Kashi, the beauty and brain of the oldest city of India - 'Kashi', are not meant to be to...
❝How little do you know about the person in front of your eyes?❞
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1st April 2014
I capture death.
Sombre expressions, sanguine ambitions hidden under the layers of manifested sadness. My muse––the one whose death I was about to capture––Menka, she introduced herself as. A charming maiden of sand tone, onyx-eyes, middle-parted black hair flowing past her shoulder, two or three inches shorter than my 6'1 stature, pretty impressive for a South Asian woman. It was her first theme-based photoshoot, and ironically, the theme she was to represent happened to be death.
Indeed, death is the start of something new.
She was good at her job, I admitted. The way she took the attire and carried that last look, as if death was really looming over her head, and not something to be faked. The more the lenses focused on her while the artificial lights dimmed to complement her natural gloom, the more I became engrossed. Once, twice, thrice, the commands were thrown, and artists toed back to their circles behind the perimeter of the stage where Menka sat.
My ears tuned out the noises, I couldn't focus on anything but her. Taking my position, and tightening the strap of my camera, I took her into the frame. For anyone else, it was just a snap, a picture of a woman who posed for a theme. The next day, the picture of her would be out, Menka will get her raise, and praise. Maybe more contracts and fame. I'd get the same praises, my captured angles will similarly be fawned over, and my shoulder will be patted in adoration. The next day, everyone will move on to the new capture, the new picture.
Me? I'd again enter into my gallery and stand in between those captures, making a new story out of them all over again. I don't let any of these clicks die, ever.
For I see what they can't.
Elegance and charm of those mint-green satin frills that hugged Menka's body from neck to ankles, the fine see-through fabric that clung to her arms, green pearls clustered around her neck, matching the dangles of her earring, or the green, glittering eye make-up she wore. A true beauty, in every capture. But that was just it. Behind the posh material around her stomach, was a deep, glaring gash of frozen blood. The wound was visible, but only to the eyes that focused hard. As if a force strong enough to knock someone off their feet, attacked her stomach with a poisonous passion.
Or the handprints that decorated my muse's shoulder, peeking out from the collar of her dress, to mock and to challenge the eyes that resided in light, to acknowledge the darkness within her.
My eyes were mocked the most by the jarred, crisscrossed lines that covered the insides of her left wrist. As if she had taken a knife, a sharp edge and danced with it till the lines deepened, flirted with death a few times, probably purposely riling it until the extent was drawn and the life stood to be snuffed out.
