So much love! I’m floored with the kind of appreciation that my Instagram family has shown to my first ever photo series ‘The Lockdown Era’. That people have been able to connect with these photographs and opened doors to conversations is an added bonus. There has been, however, an interesting question that has repeated itself in the messages I’ve received for these photo series: “How did you make your parents pose for these photographs?”

My answer is: “I did NOT make my parents pose for any of these photographs?”

The Lockdown Era is a photo series that gives a glimpse into the life of this senior citizen couple as they struggled and sailed through the lockdown. Just like every other Bengali couple in every other city in any part of the world. Originally meant to be a set of Instagram photographs only, somewhere I felt it was too honest not to be shared – these are photographs of a simple routine, speaking of lives shared for over 45 years that may speak volumes to you.

The Why

The idea of The Lockdown Series stemmed from boredom and sheer laziness to write. Bogged down with that unsettling cycle of chores-work-chores-work, I was contemplating some daily journaling to record these lockdown days. But between writing for work and writing for the blog, I just didn’t have it in to settle down with a paper and pen. Until a seemingly random conversation with the parents gave me an idea. The idea of documenting their life which has been caught in this endless loop for over 2 months now, days melding into each other, marking a date in the calendar but noting no other difference.

The How

Clicking the photographs wasn’t easy though. I am not a trained photographer. And I am not known for my patience. Not a great combination when it comes to ideas that need perseverance and technical skills. But when you’ve got nothing to do other than sit at home and work, you end up finding ways to break the monotony.

I broke my monotony by training the camera on my parents and hounding them for nearly 3-4 days, risking their irritation and the collective sanity! The idea was to get the parents used to the camera until they would be comfortable enough not to be conscious of it. I started with being hopeful and ended with being delighted. Used to my antics, the parents continued to be tolerant of me shadowing them in two days flat. I continued to follow them over the next four days and clicked as many photographs as I could. The photographs were examined, checked for ‘cannot be made public’ aspects, edited (Lightroom rocks!), given a green signal by the parents and only then shared on social media.

The Lockdown Era, the photo series continues on my Instagram account. For regular updates, you can follow me there (click here) and switch on notifications for posts, stories, lives.

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