A Sunday Picture
By: -
Vikas Haldar
 

Click! Clack!
 
Focus. Aperture width. Snap!

Damn! Lighting!
 
Sorry. As you can well make out, I am busy snapping photographs. I am a student with a lot of free time on my hand. I like to jingle around with photography and cameras and with all its other accessories, such as the filters, lenses, shots.
 
An orange filter here, a UV filter there, makes all the difference in a photograph.
 
I was once told –
‘A picture can speak a thousand word!’
 
‘And thus the picture speaketh.’
 
It started as a hobby. And now with it growing slowly on me, it’s become a compulsion. But wait!
 
Where am I running off? I wanted to report a story to you folks! It’s about the slime of the society.
 
I often visit this part of the city. Its rocky, its picturesque and on a spring-summers evening its heaven. It is also home to that, strata of society, which isn’t a stratum at all – the Prostitute. In other words, this is the story of a ‘Red Light Area’ as we refer to it.
 
               Like the Municipal Corporation trying to clean up the city, a host of Moral Police descends on this bunch of poor nothings. They possess the body alone, their soul support, their only means of livelihood present at hand in dire straits.
 
               These pimps, prostitutes have their ‘Hey Days!’ too, every once in awhile. When there aren’t enough stories “popping up” the newspapermen in league with the law enforcers will be ready to give these poor souls coverage on a ‘Human Interest’ story in the papers besides stripping them of their earnings.
 
               Moolah! For men on both sides, the reporters and the reported, except for the ones in custody.With no one of their own except they and their kind. Each girl for the other! No others in their knowledge living or dead; near or far; kith or kin.
 
               It was not so much the fascination or the dire need of the basest of sexual desires that drove me to their quarters, but something else. I’ll try my best to put it down on paper here.
 
                               As I may have mentioned before, it’s in this part of the city, where there are stored the filthy rich and their filthy riches. Just once or twice on an odd chance will you get to see a customer picking up his girl, who could well be romping about on the streets quite oblivious, till she would be successful in hooking somebody with that expert discerning eye for just that someone special.
 
               By the looks of it, you wouldn’t even have noticed her, but to that trained eye, she’s eye-candy for a night. Next day with a few bills of money stuck in her skirt she’s off, preparing for the next nights hunt.
 
               The camera goes click. “That’s some photo buddy!” My editor pats my back, drooling all over the photograph. I just gave in my story with the pictures. It’s on a sympathetic angle, a ‘human interest story’.
 
               “The marginalized in society. After all they, ‘the whore’ is just as much human as the rest of us.”
 
               The argument continues and the moral police descend with all their might on the likes of us, who try defending these poor wretches, ‘the whore’.
 
               Since I am on the subject of clicking photographs, I may have forgotten to mention about my new camera ‘Nikon F3’ with a 75 mm lens.
 
               Somebody shouts from the back –
               ‘By Jove! That must a cost a fortune.’
 
               ‘Yes. When I do my job, I do it thoroughly. And my boss, editor sees to it I am comfortable. That’s all I am concerned with. Somebody’s ready to pay, I am ready to deliver. Freelancing is heaven!’ 
 
               ‘What about the scrapes you get into?’ my friend asks me as he now joins in on the narrative, sitting over a cup of tea, with other people on tables around us. I am now in one of the news agencies cafeteria.
 
               The friend of enquires of me,
               “So what’s next?”
 
               I answer-
               ‘As usual, search for a new subject, this time on the roads.’
 
               I am driving and this scraggy looking child comes knocks on my car windshield. I slide down my car window. The urchin comes along side and says in Hindi,
 
               ‘Sahebji, take this magazine’, holds up an issue of some classified magazine, ‘only five rupees, take it. You’ll do me a good deed.’ Saying these standard lines he pushes the magazine in my face.
 
               Snatching the magazine I toss him a coin and drive on as the traffic lights change.

              I stop at another crossing and see on the opposite pavement, a man on crutches with bandaged hand and legs asking for alms from one vehicle to the next. He manages to cross over safely to the pavement as he notices the traffic meter count its last second before the traffic lights change.  
 
               It was something in me. I wasn’t satisfied so I picked up my camera and set out on the streets, late night. Wound my way through in roads and landed on one settlement of beggars.
 
               I tried to fit in with a pair of worn jeans and a kurta with a pair of Hawaii chappals. But how could I possibly fit in with this lot of misfits? The ‘beggars’ were smoking bidis and I had just lighted a cigarette. I found the King Pin.
 
               I went in his shack, was made to sit down, comfortably. He sat on a charpoy, folded up his lungi and addressed me in Hindi,
                ‘What can I do for you?’
 
               “I am a journalist. I want to write about you, your people.” I try explaining.
 
               The kingpin laughs boisterously,
               “Another one! They sent one more. Sympathy from the people, try making us all one! Ha! A pack of lies, no politician could do it, can do it. No social worker could! And now, neither can journalists like you!” His voice thunders in my ears as he dismisses me.
 
               I walkout. Snap a few photographs. While walking home I rewind the conversation with the 'Beggar King’ in my head. And truth of his words finally hit me. Those words seem to echo forever.
 
               The next morning I set foot in my editors’ office with the photographs and story. He hands me my paycheck, rests his arse on the chair and goads over the photographs. He lets out a chuckle from his fat throat,
               “Good! Good work boy! Get in more. I’ll see to your promotion on one of the regular beats.”
 
               “No.” I say under my breath.
 
               “What was that?” The editor says with a puzzled look on his face.
 
               I repeat, “No. Thanks, thanks for the short stint that I had.”
 
               The editor’s cherubic face lights up,
               “You tired of this already.” Flails his hand across the myriad of photographs spread on his table.
 
               “If this is what journalism is, an instrument of pity, to mock the poor and prod the rich to higher platforms, then, I am sorry, I can’t do it.”
 
               “I feel sorry to hear it, son. You weren’t bound to a contract, you can leave if you want to”, says the editor with no expression in voice or feature.
 
               I mumble a thanks and leave his office with the pay package in my hand. I drive home.
 
               A knock on the windshield, a small hand with a dirty cloth starts scrubbing the surface of the car. He taps the window on my side. I roll down the window further and drop a coin in the boys puny hand. For a moment I try looking in his eyes just to discern the pain in them, but can’t locate it. I guess. These urchins are used to this life, just as we are of shooing them off or dropping coins in their hands for their services.
 
               These are just some of the marginalized of the society. After all we make them ‘marginalized’. It is us who provoke them and later encourage them to such acts. It is an eternity, now and forever. The same as the eternity spent between the hand and the coin dropped to reach the awaiting palms.
 
               It is finally a life of the oppressor and the oppressed.