.one too many.

last week i had to fly to a certain city,

for a certain publication,

to photograph a certain individual

(mystery is in short supply).

like the sucker i am,

i agreed to make it a one day affair,

meaning no hotel and

no travel day.

this means flight in the morning.

flight at night.

lots of torture in between.

in order to not delve into the depths,

i thought i’d photograph the day.

mostly it’s just photos out of a taxi/airplane/train/tuktuk window

and the food i ate in between.

so if you’re not interested,

you don’t have to stay.

we begin early early…

i wish i could photograph the look i get at airport security…

8am.

ambassador taxi.

Jagdish knows only one word in english…

punctual.

something you don’t hear about very often in the West

is the high number of airport annoucement booths

that spontanously go up in flames.

big problem

the shame of a nation.

jet-airdoesitbetter also.

non-veg-canepari strikes again.

originally i was going to lather some mango pickle onto that lonely sausage,

but instead i went another direction…

boom!

flying into Bombay,

Azadnagar Shantytown sits adjacent to the international airport.

and you can’t avoid a trip from the airport to the city without passing through Dharavi,

the biggest slum in Asia.

boom!

lunchtime!

samosas and a miranda.

automatic on a workday.

artfag is the word your looking for.

it’s now 230pm.

i’ve been up since 6am.

i’ve had two meals.

i’ve traveled 500km.

i’ve used 3 different types of transportation.

and i haven’t even begun to work…

i’m bored.

but eventually,

i took my portrait.

i wasn’t the only one who wanted dude’s attention though…

i was sandwiched between NDTV and MINT.

woe is me.

and voila,

my work day is done.

maybe i should have added a few images from the shoot,

but i didn’t.

get over it.

after the pleasent 2-hour drive through mumbai traffic

coming to the city

i decided for to take the local train back

and finally,

the tuktuk ride.

it is also a ritual to take down a strawberry milkshake at the end of every work day.

cafe coffee day (great name!) at the airport solved that problem.

after all that,

my prepaid taxi is the last last last taxi

as far away from the terminal as possible,

in the deepest nether regions of the airport parking lot.

at this point,

loathing is beginning to settle in.

but finally,

home at last.

burt reynolds aka destroyer aka little old chinese man

greets with a smile.

here are the stats.

1000 km.

3 taxis.

2 planes.

1 tuktuk.

1 train.

2 samosas.

7 cups of chai.

1 strawberry milkshake.

1 breakfast sandwich.

7 rolls of film.

1 portrait.

boom.

CANEPARI OF THE DAY

“his heart says ?”

a la prochain.

canny.