PICTURE TALK
It was an early winter morning, and I was on the sets of BR Chopra’s film The Burning Train. The place was a huge railway shed somewhere just outside of Delhi, where railway engines would actually come for repairs-cum-maintenance. So, it was not a film set but a real-life location shoot.
When I was returning back from Chandigarh after attending the shooting of BR Chopra’s film Karm, in the car with him and Dharam Chopra, BR’s younger brother, who was the cinematographer on the film, BR narrated part of the story of The Burning Train that he was going to shoot in Delhi soon with Parveen Babi and many other top stars, including Dharmendra and Vinod Khanna.
He also told me that if I wanted to attend that shoot too, he would arrange to have me picked up from home. As I was very keen to shoot Parveen Babi, the first Indian actress to have appeared on the cover of Time magazine, I immediately nodded and accepted his offer to have me picked me up, as the shoot was scheduled for early morning.
When I reached the set, I found a crowd gathered there, Dharam and BR Chopra both very busy arranging the lights and directing people and preparing for the shoot. I decided to meet them later and went straight to the first floor to see if I could get some good pictures from a higher angle.
I was looking for the right angle to place myself for the pictures of the goings-on down below when I suddenly noticed Parveen Babi sitting alone on a sofa, smoking, lost in her thoughts. A streak of direct, early morning soft winter light was falling on her face and her raised hand. There was a very narrow passage with railings leading me towards her. I took every precaution not to attract her attention and very quietly and slowly started moving towards the sofa.
Parveen was sitting to take a few of her facial close-ups with that falling natural light on her face. I had taken only a couple of shots, including this picture, while I kept on constantly moving closer to her for fuller and better close-ups of her face with that lovely soft streak of natural light beautifully falling on part of her face, when she heard the sound of the shutter, looked at me, and became conscious of the situation.
Soon Vinod Khanna joined her, and they got into a conversation, but I concentrated only on Parveen Babi as long as that steak of natural sunlight was falling on her face, which unfortunately for me, didn’t last for long.
The views expressed here are the author’s own and The News Porter bears no responsibility.
