Piyush Mishra

By far the weirdest shoot I ever did. Postponed by more than a month, since he was filming something in the U S of A. The shoot was finally scheduled for 4 pm at his house, which is 5 minutes from where I live. I reach, his wife tells me he's asleep. I told her that he had given me time, so here I am. He came from his room wearing a black vest, limping towards me while I was talking to his wife. His eyes were red, and he didn't look too well. I told him it's okay, I'll go back, we could do the shoot some other day. He doesn't talk, he mumbles, and he mumbled something about a stroke. And that I should take his picture now. He washed his face and sat by the window, and mumbled some more about what kind of a photo I want and yawned.  He has a study room with pictures of Brando and Pacino, where we sat and had some tea. It was tempting to shoot in there, but then he'd be a bit overshadowed by the men on the wall. To know more about him click here.

See - Link

Lack of sense or lack of space, I can never know the real reason. This picture was one of the images that was to go with Rahul Bhatia's story on the Bandra Worli Sealink. The story can be read in the current issue of the magazine. Also, please go over to Blindboys, a new online photography magazine,(yes, I know it's a bizarre name, but what the heck, it's a start!) to take a look at some more images from the Kasab movie, incase you had to strain your eyes, in that disaster of an attempt at making a slideshow.
P.S. : Came across this recently on allie's blog.

A better edit

This is just a test, will be uploading more slideshows soon, and of course, a brief intro and captions for the above. These are some of the images from the making of this low budget movie based on 26/11 called Total Ten. They let me hang around their sets for almost the entire film, but they didn't allow me to be there when they shot a controversial scene where they hang Kasab. They have a party happening on the 15th, a completion party, though I highly doubt they will be allowed to release the film since thé matter is in court. A case in point would be what happened to AnuragKashyaps Black friday. Incase you wish to read the story that appeared in the current issue of the magazine I work for, click here.

Birthday bum

So the bastards won, all of em, and strangely  Shashi Tharoor won too, excluding the lefties. Now they owe us some good governance, good roads, and the same old, water and electricity, without having to bother about a non co-operative ally. Unlike the state assembly elections, the colour, the madness, the frenzy was a bit sloppy. The visual potential this time was rather low, just like the turnout. After Priya Roncon's exit from the counting centre, we celebrated Dinesh Parab's(Outlook) birthday. We just needed to vent, so we kicked him quite a bit, also, as Anand Shinde(maroon, Asian Age) observed, Dinesh was wearing saffron. Pal Pillai(red, AFP) tried to stop Sachin Kadvekar(Fotocorp) and Anand, but he and I decided to join in too. 

P.S. Priya Dutt is married to an event organizer called Owen Roncon, the guys who do the One Tree Festival. Most people doubt she would have ever won had she come in to the field as Priya Roncon!

Noble Heartbreaker

That's what his T-shirt reads. Shot this during a break at a rink hockey match, somewhere, way back in 2008, a day before I left for the Roots Festival. An interesting match it was. Most people had come to watch Dhanraj Pillay in action, but, old angry man that he is, picked a fight, howled at the opposition, screamed at the referee, and was chucked out of the rest of the game. After the match was over, he was still howling, in his undies, in the dressing room, and for a brief moment he came outside near the rink, in a fresh T-shirt and the same old undies. Most of us got bored of his nautanki, so we consciously didn't take any pictures. It's funny, when you stop filming all these publicity crazy morons,they sober down in a second! 

The ones that didn't make it...

in a story on what kids think of the world around them. It was the cover story for our magazine's third issue.

Here they are...

Nikita D'Mello(12), loves to climb scaffoldings, total tomboy, has bashed up a couple of boys in her neighbourhood. She said, "We do keep an eye on what our teachers wear.I like my teachers to wear a mix of things, not just Saris."

Soham patankar(11) believes in monsters, "they do exist", he insists. His mom said he makes some super chocolate pasta, which is oddly very spicy. "It is okay to mix sweet and spice in food. It is okay to have combinations"

Rubina Qureshi(9), as cliched as it sounds, needs no introduction. She did recall our meeting from once before. Has a severe 'Ringa Ringa' hangover, keeps playing it on her new cellphone. "I believe in God, but I don't get time to pray"

 

Ayush Khedekar(9), happens to be the only kid in his school to have a laptop and a cell-phone. "If I become more and more and more famous, and become very proud, all the fame will go down"

Too see the ones that did, click here

Accidental tribute to James Nachtwey

This one's from the fire that broke out in the slums near Bandra station. I was on my way to drop my dad home, when I saw huge flames and smoke near Bandra station, but I couldn't respond immediately. I had to go to Mahim, drop my dad home, and then I dumped the car and hopped on to a train...a train after some 2 years. I had almost forgotten what local train travel felt like. Anyways, there's the story of this one guy who saved some 12 lives before he succumbed to the flames, which most papers didn't carry. This photo is quite similar to a James Nachtwey image of a man trying to extinguish a burning car in a similar fashion(Deeds of War). The similarity is purely accidental, and of course his photograph kicks my photo's ass all the way to Timbuktu!