This is a document of what I have seen, experienced and heard when I traveled on the No. 9 compartment of the Mumbai Local trains. There are many things about the Locals that surprise me every time I travel in one. There are so many interesting people that you meet in the compartment. They are friends who meet only in the locals, who share their lives for the time they travel together and then go their own way. There are many incidents that made me want to do visual ethnography such as experiencing a “bhajan” group (groups which sing religious songs) in a men’s compartment, hearing of groups of men who meet on the same local everyday so as to play cards, Women who have formed groups in the train and have kitty parties which are named after the time or number of the local trains etc. I wanted to see this different world and experience every bit of it. When I started going by train I realised that it was too vast a subject to cover so I started concentrating on the women’s compartment only and that’s when I realised that its a small world in itself and had many kinds of incidents that I could write on.

In the year 1949, the great humanitarian Baba Amte being moved to the core by the physical trauma and social stigma of leprosy afflicted people, set up the Maharogi Sewa Samiti on a piece of 50 acres of uninhabited, barren and rocky land in Warora, Chandrapur District, Maharashtra. The initially the activities were limited to the medical treatment, training and rehabilitation of the leprosy stricken. However, due to the unique nature of services rendered, over the years, it grew to such heights as to embrace within its ambit a wide spectrum of downtrodden and marginalized people as the physically challenged, the deaf-mute, the blind, orphans, tribal people etc. Muralidhar Devidas Amte was born at Hinganghat in Central India, on the 26th of December 1914. As the eldest son of a wealthy Brahmin landowner, Muralidhar was protected from any material deprivation. His enormous energy was happily absorbed in an idyllic childhood with long hours of play, pranks and wrestling with other boys.

Storytelling or the verbal narration is an art that makes stories more immediate. Storytelling is an oral tradition. It is known to use several media such as painted scrolls etc. to enhance the telling. However the control still stays with the teller. I wanted to add one more dimension to the already existing art of storytelling i.e. to make it more tangible in the physical sense of the word and a personal experience. I also wanted to let the child learn storytelling and use the same tangible characters to create multiple narratives. Stories and Storytelling have always fascinated me. As a child I always loved to listen to various stories told by my grandmother and my mother. Also I used to love making up stories with the innumerable toys that I had. Remembering my days of wild imagination I wanted to create a similar platform for children that could allow their thoughts and imagination to be free.

“Exploring innovative approaches and techniques in Macro Photography” is a project in which I will be exploring and learning the different facets of macro photography. I will be exploring techniques used to do macro photography and present the images in a novel way. In doing so I will increase my knowledge and enhance my skills of macro photography. At a later stage I will be combining Macro photography techniques with time lapse photography to give the project a whole new dimension.