En route
by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Often referred to as the "Silicon Valley" of India, Bangalore reaches out to the skies with its glass and concrete tech parks, much like the aspirations afloat in the city. However, a parallel world, of vibrant and lively neighbourhoods with a more reticent disposition, also coexists. My daily commute to work at the International Center for Theoretical Sciences is a journey through these fringes of Bangalore, where people's lives and environments become a single organic entity.
"En route" tries to capture the fleeting emotions of this entity, going from placid and playful to high drama and chaos, often within the blink of an eye.
I liken this to an "Opera" with its mercurial movements, animated characters and atmospheric settings. The photographs, moreover, are shot from a moving (speeding!) bus, which lends them an urgency, and a consistency in perspective which almost seems like "a view from the box seats", although the distance between the drama and the audience at times vanishes. The series is yet another humane manifesto emerging despite the troubled times.
