In Mumbai Monochrome, photography and haiku conjoin to explore the unfamiliar in the mundane

For photographer and poet, Suhit Kelkar, the camera is a medium that allows him to capture the strangeness of mundane lives, the peculiarities of every day chores or the unwavering aesthetic of routine. Through Mumbai Monochrome, a collection of photographs that capture the cityscape in all its moods, he places dead centre the people who have made this much talked about city an energetic, complex and multicultural metropolis simply by way of their quotidian lives and occupations. Dissent, liberty and love are abundant not only in his photos but also in the haiku he puts down alongside each image which describes his perspective in measured, carefully chosen verses, sometimes recontexualising, at others removing the context altogether. Clicked in monochrome, the photos cast every familiar ritual in an unfamiliar light and observing them all with the haiku becomes an act of slowly consuming the same but delectable homecooked meal. In the excerpted haikus and extracted images that follow, Kelkar turns his gaze towards bloodlines, dogs’ leashes and India. *** [imgcenter] [/imgcenter] children’s sandals headed nowhere my bloodline [imgcenter] [/imgcenter] the dog’s leash in its own mouth I recall my obsessions [imgcenter] [/imgcenter] after wedding season cool water douses the horse’s memories [imgcenter] [/imgcenter] peeling but legible dissent outlasts the monsoon [imgcenter] [/imgcenter] disembodied hands those branches that I pruned [imgcenter] [/imgcenter] all the Tindering that I have skipped weighing scale [imgcenter] [/imgcenter] India three blind men and no elephant [imgcenter] [/imgcenter] flour mill my yearning for snow deepens [imgcenter] [/imgcenter] waiting monk his quietness speaks with the books [imgcenter] [/imgcenter] stag party only cola and rum date each other *** All photos: Suhit Kelkar