living and loving the life of a photographer

If you're following the Indian contemporary music scene, you must have noticed a blip in your radar this week. The launch of Raghu Dixit's eponymous album was noted by magazines as diverse as Tehelka and Marie Claire (just two of many to which I subscribe). Raghu's first video from the album is Hey Bhagwan. Thanks to YouTube, I don't have to buy a TV to watch it.

The entire video was shot on a crispy, clear weekend way back in December 2006 in Mumbai, mostly at Mehboob Studios and the Bandra Band Stand area. I accompanied Raghu and his band of talented musicians to shoot the stills and to get some candid moments with the group. What an education it turned out to be! All those nagging questions about what goes on behind the making of a film were put to rest just by watching the director Siraj Bhattacharya, who made it all look so easy.

There is a saying that in the film-making industry at large, everyone's related to everyone else. So, the chain of relationships went something like this: Siraj is the drummer for rock band Pentagram, whose lead singer is Vishal Dadlani, who is one half of the Vishal-Shekar music director duo, who were thinking about founding a record label (Counter Culture Records) when they stumbled upon Raghu at a Bandra pub singing "I am in Mumbai waiting for a miracle". Nice story?

Back to Hey Bhagwan. The story here was that Raghu, a small-town guy, comes to Mumbai to make a living with his music. As he wanders about, he meets simple people and finds happiness in parting with his material possessions until he's left with nothing but his music. In the last scene, Raghu gives away his guitar and ascends to the heavens!

See the complete series

I salute those who can dream up such ideas and those who can execute them so beautifully. Sadly, the clarity and simplicity of the message is lost in the slicy-dicey editing. But I hope I did it some justice to the extent I could without getting in the way of Siraj's camera.

See the Raghu Dixit Project blog