Chapter one
The age of innocence
Children before the world has got to them. Easy smiles, open faces and nowhere in particular to be.
An India that is no longer there
Black and white photographs of people across India,
made on film in the 1970s and 80s.
With forewords by Manjula Padmanabhan and Lillete Dubey
How the book came aboutChapters
Chapter two
When childhood was a burden
Children, and girls most of all, doing work that should never have been theirs.
Chapter three
Belonging
People who belong to the land around them and look like part of it.
Chapter four
Pathways life offers
Roads and streets from a time when few people owned a vehicle and the traffic was mostly feet and bicycles.
Chapter five
Presence
Faces that look straight back at the camera, with nothing to explain.
Chapter six
The stillness of time
A slower pace. Time to stop, sit down and let the day go by.
Chapter seven
Solitude
People alone with their thoughts, saying nothing at all.
Chapter eight
Fortitude, grit, endurance
The strength it takes to get through an ordinary day, and how rarely anyone notices it.
Chapter nine
Where lives meet
Work, talk and company, wherever people come together.
Chapter ten
Return to innocence
Back to the children, where the journey began.
Amar Talwar
Amar Talwar was taking pictures long before anyone paid him for them, and turned professional in 1981. Through the 1980s, freelance assignments took him into villages and small market towns, to camel fairs and along empty highways. He photographed the people he met there with real warmth, and they smiled back. Later the stage, and then films, took over his life, and the negatives were packed away. He still crosses the country by motorcycle.
Read moreThe photographs
Shot on film
Every picture began as a black and white negative. There was no screen to check and no second look. Rolls went off to a lab, and it was days before anyone knew what had come out.
Nothing staged
None of it was set up or polished afterwards. He shot what was in front of him, quickly and honestly, and caught people as they were on that day.
Another India
Quiet streets and an unhurried cyclist. The country in these pictures is only 35 to 45 years away, and it has almost gone.
The story
From the road
Pushkar, 1981
Up before dawn for silhouettes against the sky, then a climb up a steep hillside for a view from above.
Between Madurai and Kanyakumari
He got off a bus to photograph a boy minding goats in a field, stepped on sharp stubble and limped for days. He still thinks it was worth it.
Neela Gumbad, Delhi
A rainy day at a busy roundabout, and a small girl with an empty plate waiting for a gap in the traffic.
Nizamuddin
Abdul, the rickshaw driver who took him round the neighbourhood whenever he felt like going out with a camera.
Bhadrachalam to Chennai
A boy on a train in the early 70s, probably the oldest picture in the book. He would be an old man by now.
The streets of Delhi
Days off spent riding round the city on a two-wheeler, camera bag over one shoulder, looking for ordinary people.
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