A snake on the neck: An assignment with a difference

Picture Talk

In the early days of my career, when an untrained and unknown lensman’s pictures started getting lapped up by most of the top publications in Bombay (now Mumbai), like the Illustrated Weekly of India, Dharmayug (both from the Times of India group), Eves Weekly, Onlooker and Screen, to mention a few, and Hindustan Times of Delhi, I decided to spend most of the year in Bombay, as the city had more (and better) publications compared to Delhi’s.

I also decided to work on a freelance basis and only for magazines instead of daily newspapers. I always loved having my freedom to work when I wanted, with whom I wanted, and on whatever kind of work or assignment I wanted to do. For that reason, I preferred the magazines over the newspapers.

I constantly kept on refusing job offers from both magazines and newspapers because taking up a regular job with any of them would have deprived me of my freedom and forced me to shoot only what my employers (newspapers/magazines) wanted me to do and shoot daily.

Many a time it was surprising to me too that while others were looking for regular paying jobs with a daily newspaper or magazine, I kept on declining job offers.

Magazines allowed me the freedom to work at a more relaxed pace and also gave me the chance to work with several publications and I could choose the variety of work I wanted to do. Many job seekers used to ask me to get them a job. One such job aspirant who had approached me thrice to get him a job was a person, who is now the chairman and owner of a well-known TV channel.

The cherished freedom

Let me admit that I had to ultimately forget my most cherished freedom and my initial stubborn refusal to take up a few regular jobs for the sake of getting a PIB accreditation where five years’ experience as a staffer was mandatory’.

My first paid job as a staffer was with a magazine which accepted the salary demanded by me. The magazine’s owner agreed to let me work for other publications as well.

I can proudly say that I have never hankered for any award or reward in my life. I was always of the view that if my work was good enough, I would be rewarded. If no award worth mentioning has come my way, I have no regrets at all; I didn’t do anything to get any.

An editor friend of mine with whom I worked for decades in different publications he had edited, including India Today, says it was my “laziness”. He may be partly right. I always loved to experiment with different techniques and create something different rather than run after getting an award.

One thing is sure, though. My refusal to take any regular job with a daily or a magazine did deprive me of a regular income, and other benefits, facilities and opportunities, which any such employment would have brought along with it.

It was very early in my life that I decided not to follow the beaten path. I wanted to do something different than what most other employed photographers were doing. Perhaps my love for art and painting in my school and college days helped me to make a quick decision about what to do and the kind of work I have always loved to do all my life.

I hated using the flash gun so portraiture with available light became my favourite and a major part of my work. From my early childhood, my favourite subject was drawing and painting and my real ambition was to become a painter.

The quest for something different

During my college days, I had access to lots of books on the works of old masters in the college library and I was fascinated by their works as drawing and painting had been my favourite subject all along. My favourite old master was, and is, Rembrandt. His best work is in colour, mine is in Black and White.

In Bombay, my first meeting was with Dr Dharamvir Bharati, editor of Times of India’s Hindi weekly Dharamyug, who had become my favourite after reading one of his plays in my college textbook. Meeting with him developed a deep friendship followed by cordiality with all his staff.

My next most important choice was the meeting with the most important, respected and admired editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, Khushwant Singh.

After finding Khushwant Singh’s (KS) official direct landline number (of course, there were no mobiles then), I called him up one morning and introduced myself. The intro was just an unknown name without any reference. KS not only readily agreed to meet me the very next day but also invited me for a breakfast of vada chatni with him early the next morning. That I was very nervous to meet such a great man goes without saying.

I was right there on time and after having breakfast he saw a few prints of the work I had carried with me. KS remarked that my work was excellent but useless for his publication, as he always carried pictures relevant to the story being published. However, immediately next he offered to publish them as a photo feature in the next issue of the weekly along with my bio.

Now, that was the very first ever photo feature published by an unknown photographer until then. My small biodata was written by then-friendly Onlooker editor, M J Akbar.

That very first meeting and the breakfast with the great man turned into a life-long association with him. From Bombay to Delhi, whichever publication he edited, New Delhi magazine, Hindustan Times, and after leaving it all, whenever he needed any pictures, I was his first choice.

Years later Mrs. Fatima Zakaria, senior most editor of the weekly, who used to sit just outside KS’s room in the weekly office, told me, when she too had become very friendly with me, that I was the only one who was allowed to enter his room freely without ever asking his secretary.

From the day of my first meeting with him, KS always admired my work. And I always kept all my appointments with him and also delivered on time.

The legendary figure

Dr Dharamvir Bharati was the other man who had so much respect for my work that he never kept me waiting even for a minute. One day he called me and introduced me to a guy from Karnataka who had organised a big snake show in Thane near Bombay to make people aware that the most feared creatures called snakes were harmless as long as humans did not disturb them.

Dr Bharati, seriously, but with a smile on his face and constantly looking at my face, said that none of the staffers were willing to take the risk of shooting the reptiles. He asked me if I could take that job as a challenge.

Yes, a challenge it was, shooting a venomous King Cobra from three feet away and many other varieties kept in the open. Of course, two guys were assigned to help me shoot and protect me from any mishap.

After I finished taking the pictures, the organiser asked me if I could hand over one of my cameras to him for five minutes, as he wanted to take a picture of me. As I gave him one of my cameras, I had no idea what he had in his mind.

He shouted something in Kannada and two guys quickly ran inside and came back with a big python and put it on my neck without any warning, asking me to hold his neck and his tail firmly! The organiser asked his two men to move away, leaving me alone holding the big python.

How I felt that moment holding that big python on my neck is amply visible from the expression on my face. The organiser quickly took a couple of quick pictures of me holding that python, and the guys came back and quickly removed the python from my neck and took it away.

The organiser thanked me profusely with a parting remark that it was the rarest of rare chances for me to have been photographed with the python, which I might never get again. He was right.