95 Mani Villa
Life is a mosaic of experiences and a plethora of emotions layered within the two basic emotions of love and fear. I still ask myself what i was trying to photograph during my solo trips to an ancestral land with so much history stored within the walls of this one surviving British row house on the outskirts of Jhansi, a sleepy, one-horse town yet an integral junction in hinterland India.
Was I trying to capture the last few years of memories I had left, in fear or celebrating the 9 decades of Dhanji Anklesaria’s beautiful existence, in a quest for his affection probably?
A lot of my understanding of my grandfather came from my mother, Ferengez. She spoke of him with loving, admiration and awe and of-course trepidation. He was a strict disciplinarian, a demanding father and there were parts of him reserved and difficult to penetrate even for her. I tried best to comprehend.
The more time I spent around him, the more I was amazed by his zeal for life, unknowingly, I was building my own personal understanding and my own relationship with a man i had only seen over summer breaks growing up, but could not fathom more for i was lost to all the drama that had ensued before and after my mother decided to elope with my father. Now these “grown-up” trips enabled me to get closer to nana but also uncovered some of his numerous and layered idiosyncrasies.
He was compassionate. Compassion, which many people call faith, faith in the Supreme Being. He was a proud Zarthusthi, following the religion in spirit rather than in ritual. He saw his God in the marvels of nature and the universality of music.
These fleeting moments were documented bringing alive experiences shared between my grandfather and me, in silence and in reflection, to immortalise these unsettling murmurs, the legends he left behind or the human in his own story of life.