‘I meet my god through my camera,’ Raghu Rai said
- 19 hours ago
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Updated: 2 hours ago
As the evening drew to a close, it felt less like a farewell and more like a transmission. For every journalist who chooses depth over speed, Mark Tully returns. For every photojournalist who waits—truly waits—for truth to reveal itself, Raghu Rai breathes again.
By Suresh Nautiyal Greenananda
At the Press Club of India auditorium, where conversations have long carried the fragrance of ink and dissent, an unusual stillness gathered recently. It was not the silence of absence, but of deepened presence—when lives lived with integrity return to inhabit memory more powerfully than they ever occupied space.
Those assembled—journalists, activists, fellow travellers of distinct images, ground reality, and relentless truth—had not come merely to mourn. They had come to listen again: to a voice that taught a nation how to hear itself, and to a vision that revealed how it might see.
Two journeys met in that reflective quiet: Mark Tully and Raghu Rai. Around them, voices like Satish Jacob, Saeed Naqvi, Siddhartha Varadarajan, Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty, and Qurban Ali added reflections—each reminding us that journalism, at its finest, is not an individual pursuit but a shared ethical inheritance.
Naqvi recalled that in 1968, curiosity led them into the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh, where the Beatles sought something beyond fame. Rai, untouched by celebrity, responded instinctively—lifting his camera, capturing the moment, and leaving. In that fleeting act lay his philosophy: history does not always announce itself; it whispers, and only the inwardly alert can hear it.
Rai did not merely photograph events—he entered their pulse. His images of Indira Gandhi, Mother Teresa, or anonymous faces carried emotion, contradiction, and quiet revelation.
“I meet my god through my camera,” he once said.
For him, photography was not a profession but a prayer—an act of surrender to the unfolding truth of life.
If Rai was the eye that felt, Tully was the voice that listened. Over decades, he reported upheavals—from the Bangladesh Liberation War to Operation Blue Star and the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi—yet resisted the temptation of easy conclusions. He wrote not for distant spectators, but for India itself, grounded in its villages and small towns, wary of polished narratives that erased complexity.
As Jacob, Varadarajan and others reflected, Tully’s quiet rebellion lay in nuance. His book, India in Slow Motion, was not just a title but a philosophy: truth cannot be rushed. He lived within stories rather than standing above them, even as he faced expulsion during the Emergency in India and suspicion across political lines.
What united Tully and Rai was a rare humility before reality. They did not impose meaning; they received it. They allowed contradictions to breathe. In an age where journalism risks becoming a fake ritualistic performance, they remained witnesses—patient, attentive, and inwardly free.
As the evening drew to a close, it felt less like a farewell and more like a transmission. For every journalist who chooses depth over speed, Tully returns. For every photojournalist who waits—truly waits—for truth to reveal itself, Rai breathes again.
Their legacy does not live in archives alone, but in the quiet ethics of those who still believe that storytelling is responsibility. Somewhere beyond the noise, their presence lingers—like a voice that refuses to fade, like a lens that continues to see.
Because when truth is approached with humility, it does not disappear. It becomes eternal.
Suresh Nautiyal is Contributing Editor independentink.in
Photos: Suresh Nautiyal