2006, Self-Portrait on a FujiFilm Analog digicam. Barefoot Resort, Havelock, Andaman Islands.
To me, it’s unimaginable to see how far I’ve come since I shot this {photograph}.
Bombay to Bangalore by aircraft / bus ( I don’t recall ). Bangalore to Pondicherry by highway. Again to Bangalore by highway. Bangalore to Havelock ( mixture of flight and boat and highway ). With two buddies. These pants I’m sporting? I purchased them in Bangalore and I nonetheless put on them in 2020. The slippers? Bata rip-offs of Birkenstock. I used to be into the ganjis just like the black one I’m sporting. I nonetheless have them in a large number of colours.
The scars on my legs are from some bizarre bacterial / fungal an infection that induced pus-filled cysts from my ankles upto my groin. And so they had been motherfucking painful. They appeared out of the blue, regularly disappeared over the course of some years.
A day after this picture, I crashed my motorcyle into the aspect of a highway whereas driving it on Havelock. I vividly recall my panicked long-winded laughter after my buddy picked me out of the filth ditch. I had torn my shirt however I used to be fantastic in any other case. The bike’s clutch broke. It was a Yamaha RX-100. We had crimson snapper for dinner that night time.
I feel my ex-husband and I had filed for divorce nevertheless it had not been finalized on the time of this picture. We each discovered it absurd that the decide advisable obligatory “counselling” earlier than submitting. I informed him that counselling ought to be obligatory earlier than marriage not when it had been mutually determined by the couple that the wedding wasn’t working anymore.
I stop smoking in 2013. I had began smoking someday throughout 2003/2004. Looking back, I used to be smoking as a result of it appeared like the one factor I had any management over in my life. Sure smoking is injurious to your well being and I don’t suggest it. However, so long as you retain me out of vary out of your passive cigarette smoke, I’m not judging you for the alternatives you make about your individual well being & life.🙏 The hair appear to be getting barely longer.
2006, Self Portrait in a mirror. This was on the images studio on the place I used to be now working at. I neglect what the idea behind the shoot was.
After quitting my campus placement MBA job in 2004, I freelanced for a bit as a graphic & internet designer and was finally employed at a printing press in Bombay to setup and run their Graphic Design Studio. I employed the group besides one unique worker. Each time there was a break in work, I’d gander over to the picture studio. If I used to be fortunate, I’d get a slice of pizza. On slower days, we may even fuck round experimenting with self portraits and idea shoots.
That is the place the place I first noticed lights being utilized in a studio setting. I noticed how shoots truly occurred. How the expertise was employed. How a lot photoshop truly goes into making the quilt of {a magazine} – I met one of many ladies who was positively wizard stage – it was an out of physique expertise watching her work. How stars had been allowed to throw tantrums to a sure extent. These had been massive shoots for nationwide stage magazines and their cowl stars.
I consider throughout this time is after I shaved my head for the very first time. I don’t have any pictures from then sadly. I bear in mind the top of the images studio strolling by my desk within the graphic design division and asking me if she may run her fingers on my cranium stubble 😛 “For the reason that shopper is giving us lakhs of printing enterprise, let’s do their graphic design at no cost.” was once adopted by “Why isn’t the graphic design studio making any cash?” After six months of this nonsense, I stop. My wage was tied to a sure share of the revenue made by the design studio and I by no means ended up getting nay of that as a result of there was no revenue. And so they refused to boost my wage. shrug
I stayed in contact with the picture studio group for a few years. I even moved in with one in all them after I wanted a spot to remain after the divorce. I didn’t wish to go away Bombay due to the divorce. I needed to go away it by myself phrases. Oh how that got here again to chew me within the ass finally!
This sequence began as a result of I dug up my archives for older portraits for the “Naina Redhu’s Mane Points : Earlier than And Throughout The Lockdown” for TheVoiceOfFashion.com after which I made a decision that I want to dig a bit deeper and undergo the pictures and my story from annually beginning with 2005 – as a result of pictures previous to that can should be scanned. I’d get round to scanning finally. I flip 40 years previous in 2020.
