India in Black & White: City Life

A I D N I

IN BLACK & WHITE

CITY LIFE

CITY life in India. On the streets, it’s overcrowded, overwhelming and utterly chaotic. Yet India is also a place soaked in spirituality, not least in the city where everywhere there are pockets of serenity and order.

This book captures some of the everyday moments from towns and cities, across India.

In black and white

(opp: the old part of Hyderabad, capital of Telangana state)

OVERVIEW: poor air quality is a major concern in India.

From above, it hangs in a heavy, dark, all pervading coloured smog, a haze of particles that can obscure views of the ground. You feel it in your nose and throat

(opp: a power station on the outskirts of Delhi, the city with the worst levels of air pollution in the monitored world)

SPACE: there’s not enough of it in most cities, but especially so in India. In Mumbai, it’s estimated that over 40% of people live in slums - a life under a hot tin roof in one of the most densely populated cities in the world

(opp: Mumbai (Bombay) where slum communities sprawl across the city, spreading into and filling every spare space)

PEACE: even the most developed cities in India have somewhere to get away from it all. Public parks and sites of ancient monuments offering trees, shade and space, though rarely well maintained, are always popular

(opp: gardens amongst 16th and 17th century tombs.

Qutub Shahi on the outskirts of Hyderabad, southern India)

SERENITY: temples are everywhere in India, and remain an important part of everyday life in the towns and cities. Some are tiny, and hidden away while many are spectacular in scale, ornamentation and daily ceremony

(opp: devotees worshiping Shiva in a small, ancient Hindu temple, under the ground in a slum community of Mumbai)

WORK: outside of the uber smart office blocks and luxury hotels, a lot of people work in much the same way they would have done decades ago. Manual labour, tiring, traditional jobs with long hours in cramped spaces

(opp: delivering a huge and heavy load of washing for a thriving laundry business in one of the slums of Bombay)

HOME: the slums of Mumbai are home to over 9 million people, and in the maze of narrow lanes and alleyways there is a strong sense of community. But there is little privacy, or space and open drainage is a common feature

(opp: back from shopping, a mother and children climb up to their home in one of the large hillside slums of Bombay)

HEAT: when the air hangs hot and still in India, there can be little relief in the shade and none indoors.

Without an electric fan, the conditions are intense and tough in a room in a slum, especially under a metal roof

(opp: at work in a laundry in one of the slum communities in Bombay. The work is split between several small rooms.)

CROWDED: on buses, trains, bikes and mopeds, all human life over-loads the roads, travelling in examples of transport that appear barely likely to reach the destination in one piece, while magically usually doing so

(opp: street scene in Kolkata; heading west, heavy goods delivered on foot; heading east a typical, jam packed bus.)

STREETS: while there are many cities with nowhere to live except where you create it yourself, in Kolkata millions are faced with the challenge and must endure climatic extremes including months of heavy monsoons

(opp: a woman cleans away the litter outside her makeshift home, on the crowded streets of Kolkata, in West Bengal)

INDIVIDUALS: even in the busiest cities where people are crushed together most of the day on the streets, people are people who remain individuals focused on their own lives, finding their own way to get through it all

(opp: a woman absorbed in her own thoughts carries her child in the streets of a busy town in Kerala, southern India)

SNARL UP:

there’s a useful guideline that applies to

most cities in India, and that’s to remember that most people want to get to the same place as you do at the same time, on the same roads. Plan ahead. And stay calm

(opp: a tuk tuk (auto rickshaw) driver in the heavy traffic of New Delhi, a city where gridlock is a word you get used to )

TRADITIONS: some things never change in India. You can get an Uber now, especially on the main routes, but the old ways of getting to places are as popular as ever, especially for the shorter trips in the tight, narrow lanes

(opp: pedal power, door to door, provided by the ubiquitous cycle rickshaw wallah on the busy streets of Old Delhi, India)

EQUALITY: there is little equality in cities. Even stuck in traffic (for those fortunate enough to be a driver or be driven) there is the aircon/no aircon divide. For those without, opening a window lets in choking exhaust fumes

(opp: hot and intense, but some space to think: a passenger in a yellow cab in the intensity of Kolkata, formerly Calcutta)

STREET SPA: a lot of what in other cities in the world might take place indoors in purpose-equipped conditions takes place on the streets in India. Men form sociable queues for a shave, ear cleaning and eye wash

(opp: personal services are a common sight on the streets of Kolkata, including a perfect shave with a cut throat razor)

ROUNDABOUTS: everyone on the roads of an Indian city knows where they’re going, but they don’t necessarily care about how they get there, or what the rules of the highway say they should do. Call it freedom

(opp: it’s never easy to negotiate a safe way to cut through the traffic, here at a busy intersection in old Hyderabad)

PACE: there’s room for all approaches to life in India. It’s the way life is: old men sit quietly playing cards together on one side of the street, while bright young things flash by on motorbikes on the other. Together, but apart

(opp: one moment on the streets of Jaipur, where life stands still on the pavement and flashes by in a blur in the road)

DRAMA: every city has never ending reels of dramatic moments, on a small scale, spontaneous scenes that take place between people every day.

But with so many

people on the streets of India, there’s even more to see

(opp: are they together? is it a crisis? will they find someone to help? or is it a simple coincidence of complete strangers?)

COMMUNITY: in the slums of Bombay, living in confined spaces with lots of other people who share similar experiences, in much the same conditions, can create strong, visibly cooperative and supportive communities

(opp: a woman doing the washing, sitting on the front step of her home in one of the slum communities in Mumbai)

PLAY: cricket is the big game, the national passion, that you see everywhere across India, from the big metropolitan poster sites featuring the big star players to IPL on satellite TV and the tiniest alleyways in the slums

(opp: boys from a nearby slum community find more space to improve their cricketing skills on the streets of Bombay)

COMPETE: I first came across Carrom when exploring the lanes of a slum in Mumbai. It’s a traditional Indian boardgame played by several players. Despite their help, it seems the winning technique will take years to acquire

(opp: the moment of flicking the striker, as a group of young men play to win Carrom in a slum community in Bombay)

CO-EXISTENCE: religion is central to the lives of millions of people in India. Living together, in competitive and densely populated cities, while accommodating different beliefs, is a tribute to the way that India works

(opp: a family walks together in the Jama Masjid mosque, Old Delhi. Built in the 17th century it is the largest in India)

ABOUT HANDHELD FILMS: l am Paul Dyer, a UK photographer, based in a small village in the heart of the Cotswolds, England. I’ve been visiting India for over 30 years now, and it remains a very special and inspiring place to me. I like pictures that tell stories, images that say something about how we feel, where we live and what that means to us.

For many years before I started taking pictures, I worked as a writer and creative director. In advertising, simplicity and focus are everything.

I hope you see - and enjoy - the same kind of qualities in these images

(above) portrait of a boy in one of the slum communities in Mumbai

(right) tuktuk drivers in Nizamuddin, the mainly Muslim area of New Delhi

(above) people on the mudbanks in Kolkata, heading out to bathe in the River Hooghly

(left) nine children on a rickshaw, on the daily school run, Old Delhi

© Handheld Films 2021

www.handheldfilms.co.uk