It’s so easy to doze off in the post-noon sun, isn’t it? Back it up with Bengaluru’s surprising cool bursts of breeze and you have the recipe for a perfect snooze. So what if it’s in a park? Or on the way back from work, in the bus? Or at the bustling bus stop waiting unendingly for that bus?
Bengaluru photojournalist K. Venkatesh, with his eye for the quirky, vividly captures ordinary folks taking a nap at public places in the garden city. The result is a photo exhibition ‘Ordinary Folks At Siesta in Style’ that opens today in the city. Venkatesh is well-known for using eunuchs as models for the first time in India, and has earlier done an elaborate feature on the transgender festival and rituals at Koovagam (Tamil Nadu); he’s also produced perhaps the country’s first transgender calendar.
Any time is a good time to doze off. But the best time is the afternoon — anywhere, and in any posture, says Venkatesh. With an uncanny eye for detail, Venkatesh freezes the various postures, moods and conditions in which these “lucky ones” revel, unmindful of what others may think. Many of them are from nearby towns and villages, on a day’s trip to the city on errands or here without shelter, to make a living, he observes. Tired or exhausted, these folk have nowhere else to turn in for a nap, but public spaces.
Shot in bus stops, railway stations, parks, autos, buses, cars, offices, and markets across the cosmopolitan city, the candid photos of the nameless people bring a smile on your face. It’s almost surreal to see a young man on a shiny granite bench at the bus stop, his feet perpendicular to the ground — something that would give any one of us a back ache. Or the number of homeless people who seek shelter in the railway stations, sleeping in a neat circle around a pillar, their bags sometimes turning pillows. My favourite — a man sleeping blissfully on a bench in Cubbon Park, unmindful of the water sprinklers spewing water all around him. Venkatesh captures the whole scene through a curtain of falling beads of water. “In whatever condition or situation these unknown folks might have been, they have spotted the most perfect of locations, with the right ambience to rest at mid-day, switching off from this mundane world, undisturbed by the hustle and bustle around,” he says.
Venkatesh’s biggest rue? That security guards and cops play spoilsport, shooing them away from these places. “It’s unfortunate that even resting or sleeping in open spaces is treated as a crime or an offence liable for penal action. Sleep is an activity that causes no harm or loss to any other, leave alone being a threat to law and order and society at large,” he laments.
The exhibition is on view at the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, from September 28 to 30, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. For details see beyondfocus.in.
