Curiosity

When you are clicking pictures of children, it is very important that they are completely comfortable with yours and the camera’s presence in their space. I make it a point to click as candid pictures of children as possible, because once they become aware that they are being observed they go into a shell and their expressions and body language become rigid. But sometimes, very rarely though, this reaction can produce good pictures.
At the sacred lake of Kacheopari in Sikkim, where I clicked these pictures, there is a small Buddhist temple, which is taken care of by an old priestess and her grandson, the subject in these photographs. When I entered this temple, I thought to myself, it is probably smaller than bathrooms in my house and yet, when one kneels in prayer inside that small room, lit by many candles, one feels as if the temple grows in size. The physical size of the space didn’t matter anymore, because it served the purpose, it was supposed to – giving the feel of total silence and peace.







This boy was a very inquisitive curious little fellow. All the while I was there, he kept stealing glances at the camera hung around my neck and kept pointing to it and asking questions in Sikkimese to his grandmother, who simply ignored him and went about her sweeping and cleaning, totally ignoring us too. The first picture I got when he tiptoed into the room, a while after his grandmother firmly told him to play outside. (That’s his silhouette in the background). And the second picture I clicked when we were just about to leave and now he was unabashedly staring and pointing at my camera, probably indicating that I leave it for him! That’s when I decided to promptly take a picture of him. Hence, the shy and curious expression and the face hidden behind the arm.