Sarabjeet Garcha
Two Photographs
Two Photographs
A hilltop shrine
with a flag aflutter across
the river behind a warrior-saint wielding
a sword in the
photograph, stars glimmering on
his long skirted kurta and arrow fletchings
sticking out diagonally
from the left crook of shoulder and
neck. Just one tier below, on the wall, it
was as if the
glint from Guru Gobind’s jewelled
sword had doused Grandad’s backcombed silky hair
aglow in the
black-and-white four by six of the
newlyweds’ bliss, the bride’s right cheek so close to
the groom’s left that
the metallic rub of the nose
ring must have made itself felt on the other’s
skin, for the loop
of the ornament had almost
a half-and-half background of shame-flushed skin and
the white curtain
of the photo studio, swaddling
some wall that absorbed the forties’ bustle of
an old village.