When Karan Kapoor first started taking photographs of Goa in the early 80s, he wasn’t consciously documenting anything in particular. Everything that he was drawn to, everything that caught his mind’s eye, both familiar and unfamiliar, is what his Nikon FM SLR took in. That nearly three decades on, these images would show Baga as a quiet expanse, home only to local fishermen and their tribe as opposed to the frenzied free for all funfair it is today, was not even a fleeting thought that crossed his young mind then.
Once was Goa
One part of Kapoor’s travelling exhibition, aptly titled, Time and Tide , takes you on a trip to a Goa that once was. It is not the Goa of chooda-clad newly-weds with their hubbies riding pillion on hired Activas or the packs of pot-bellied boy-men boisterously lapping up the waves in their VIPs doubled as swimwear. It is also not the sunset, sunrise, landscape of sea and rock imagery that everyone from everywhere in the country makes Goa out to be.
Kapoor’s Goa takes you back in time. It lets you glide over farmlands and the unexplored countryside, awash with rituals and ceremonies that you witness like an insider would. His frames welcome you through huge French windows of local homes, bursting with languid light onto piano and violin lessons in progress, on rooms cluttered with antique furniture and a sense of eternal susegad. A local feast here, an exorcism there, Kapoor’s camera seeks out the everyday and the ordinary as much as the peculiar and the exotic. Of the seminary he shot at Rachol, Kapoor says, “It was so different from the India we know…tucked away, forgotten, mysterious…romantic. And very Portuguese.” Rachol in Kapoor’s words was ‘‘a nice bike ride away’’ from his family home in Santo Vaddo (in North Goa), a treasured haven to which he returned every Christmas and Diwali to spend quality holiday time with his siblings and parents. So familiar was he with the community that his neighbours often ended up becoming the prime subjects for most of his photographs. Like the gentleman dressed in a suit for his daughter’s wedding or the fishermen tugging in their boat, which Kapoor reminisces was probably the last time that boat was ever used.
Standing still
One feels the ease of time on hand well indulged in throughout his work, both in his Goa series as well his sensitively-captured portraits of the Anglo-Indians in Mumbai and Kolkata that form another part of the show. Kapoor couldn’t agree more on this as he remarks, “Well, that’s what you have when you’re young right? All the time in the world.” He couldn’t be more glad, he says, to have worked on these two projects back when it was possible to. What makes personal work like this special is its timelessness, quite unlike most commercial work that, “after a point, no one really cares about much”.
The 54-year-old Kapoor started out as a photojournalist after short stints as a model and actor and an apprentice to Govind Nihalani, when he was cinematographer for Kalyug during the years 1980-81. Growing up as the second child to actors Shashi Kapoor and Jennifer Kendall Kapoor gave him a solid exposure to cinema in a very behind the scenes way. He recollects an assortment of professionals from within the industry visiting his home day in and out. That is, in addition to the heap of film festivals and screenings that the Kapoors attended regularly. Being inspired by photographers like Raghubir Singh, Raghu Rai and Mary Ellen Mark also shaped his ways of seeing and creating images.
Fading communities
The second part of the show, the Anglo series, which Kapoor also worked on in the 1980s came about through his up-close and personal interactions within the community in Kolkata. Kapoor was privy to the city’s Anglo Indian community’s social gatherings, sing song parties and celebrations owing to his bunch of friends from La Martiniere and a girlfriend from the city. While the younger members he knew had moved on and would eventually emigrate out of the country, it was the older generation caught between two worlds, slowly “fading out” that piqued his curiosity; much like the character of Violent Stoneham, an Anglo-Indian teacher, that his mother played in the film directed by Aparna Sen – 36, Chowringhee Lane. Kolkata, unlike Mumbai which was home to him, was new and exciting as it made him eager to explore and observe the unfamiliar. One of his favourite images of the series - of the very cowboy looking Mr. Carpenter with his hat - is also from Kolkata, though Kapoor quips, “…it really could be from anywhere. Like maybe, the 1930s Dust Bowl in America even.”
Through his Mumbai portraits he introduces us to a Victorian mansion in Lovers Lane, Byculla, that looks straight out of a fable, which housed members of the community, many of whom were ex-seamen from the Mazgaon docks close by. We wonder if it’s still around or has been replaced by just another high-rise like most of the old city of Bombay has. Changing times bring with them the threat to histories that shape our culture and inheritances.
Translating this threat to photography where digital technology has replaced analog, Kapoor shares another piece of insight. Looking through his contact sheets, he realised there were days of absolutely no shooting in between, where all he did was spend more time with his subjects. With only those many rolls of film at hand, one was forced to slow down and take it easy, where the shutter is released, driven more by the need to capture the essence of the moment than the fear of missing out on it.
Time and Tide opens at Tarq from September 23 to October 16, after which the exhibition will travel to Bengaluru, Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Delhi, until April 2017.
To accompany the exhibition, Tasveer will also present a book featuring reproductions of the photographs in the show and original texts by writer and historian, William Dalrymple and the English actor, Felicity Kendal, who is also Kapoor’s aunt. The book will also be available online at www.tasveerbookstore.com
Tejal Pandey is a Mumbai-based freelance photographer and writer
