The Pub manager

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Jack Donovan, NYPD detective turned pub manager of the Donovan’s Pub in Woodside talks about his job and the future of the pub. This pub was closed two years later.

Land of lost reflections

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At the heart of backwaters in Kerala, thatched house boats dot the waterscapes that proudly pinned the land over the international tourism map. Meanwhile, Elsamma, a house wife living some canals away from the house boats struggle to find drinking water for her family amidst all its water bounty.

Abundant water and greens often get easily equated to prosperity, but that’s not the case always. Perhaps that’s the paradox of Kuttandu to a certain extent. Geographically Kuttanadu falls in the Vembanad deltaic region, form a sensitive ecosystem of backwaters reclaimed land and a network of canals that lies at or below sea level. The peculiarities of the region showcased in umpteen number of tourism ads across the globe has brought world acclaim to Kerala as a superbrand over the years. But the so called ‘development’ brought with it farm effluents to unauthorised landfills blocking the free flow of water in its labyrinth of smaller canals. What lies beneath the green carpet is stagnant polluted water enveloping an entire region dependant on these waterbodies for livelihood.

Ladies' Night out

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Year after year, there’s long night behind the smokey Pongala day in the city of Trivandrum.

Every year millions of women devotees participate in the ritualistic ‘boiling over’ offering to the Attukal amma that turn the city into a smoke oven. The pongala eves are usually busy for women, finding the spots for their stove, last minute shopping and some fun and frolicking in the streets away from homes. Otherwise rare, women for a night confidently takeover the footpaths. Though considered a women only festival, soon you will find women are just customers of a show run by men. The attempt here is to capture the many facets of women as seen at night and their wishful prayers for the smokey day ahead.

Occupy Wall Street

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OWS was the culmination of 3 years of unrest I witnessed in New York city, what started as US housing bubble burst in 2006. The undercurrents echoed in several other parts of the world in many forms questioning the existing norms and institutions. Unrest in the middle east heightened with Gaza blockade, Tunisian and subsequent Egyptian uprising against their regimes. Eventually reverberations were heard in the western hemisphere to ‘Occupy’ the ‘isms’ that let the winds of financial unrest across the globe. New York city responded to the global anxieties at different levels. On the surface, it seemed calm and hopeful after the recent elections and Obama’s presidency. But sparks of unrest flashed in various smaller demonstrations for climate justice, support for Egypt, against blockade in Gaza and finally boiling into the Occupy movement. This is a four month documentation from its starting day on September 17, 2011.

Angel Wings

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The world of Margot Carr – a New York city based street mime artist.
(2011)