You can find her outside D-Block, Connaught Place. She is there at 10 am and stays as long as she can. She is 65 years old and has been setting up this roadside stall for 30 years now.
Like several other passer-bys who tour CP daily, I walked past her with my camera hung around my neck. I stopped beside her to photograph a litter of pups and she called out to me, “Are you a journalist?”
“No, I just like clicking photographs.”
“Oh. So why don’t you click me? I’ll pose!”
One photo, and she was bubbling with joy. At first, I thought how does it make a difference to her? This isn’t going in the newspaper, right ? I showed her the photo and she exclaimed, “I look bad. Wait!”
She tucked her sari tidily and smiled at the camera.
“I like this one. Thank you.”
Being captured was probably synonymous to being noticed, of having a place in someone’s mind, even if it wasn’t a journalist.
The following week, I visited her again and gifted her a printed copy of her photograph. I watched her eyes brimming with gratitude and she held my hand.
“Thank you. Very much.”
The best kind of happiness is the one you get by making someone else happy.
