Light and shade... .

PHOTOGRAPHY is black and white, it is light and shade. You paint with light. And leave something to your imagination. Each one of us imagines things in a different way. Colour photography is like looking at ordinary things, as they are. You don't have to imagine. Because of colour, people have forgotten about the real light and shade. They depend so much on the colour.

I like colour sometimes - on TV or in films. In our country, the light is such that there is too much contrast of light and shade. People keep running after colour and our pictures don't come out as good as those of foreigners who do real colour work. Had I taken my pictures in colour in those days, they would not have lasted even a few months. You saw my prints 50-60 years old. They look the same as they did then. See the light and shade, the moulding. You don't see all that in colour pictures.

In those days, you had to manipulate the camera before taking each picture. I had to use a yellow filter to get the cloud effect. Then the exposure, distance, focussing. Then, crank the film. Flashbulbs were not incorporated. We had to carry big bulbs in one bag. And then throw it away. One bulb for one picture. So we even had to carry the dud bulbs in another bag. We carried two or three cameras because each could take not more than 12 pictures. So many things had to be done before you took one picture. It was like - take it or miss it. That was where cooperation came in. If I was changing my film, I would ask another photographer to take another picture for me and he would.

I had to carry the camera and the stand in wooden boxes in both arms. Donkey's load. I used to cycle all over Delhi from one function to another until 1955 when we got this car, which is downstairs. I used to wear a sari in the beginning. I had to be on the bicycle in a sari with all these things on me and go about. I fell and tore my saris also. Once I fell down and broke my camera into three. Fortunately it happened after I had taken the pictures and the film was saved. And my sari was torn. After that, I started wearing Punjabi dress during the day.