Hum Bajate hain ….. is the thought that came to my mind when i saw these 2 bandwala children at my last jaipur wedding shoot. Let me build this up. I particularly take care of capturing the getting ready of the bride and groom as i feel it is very important to capture the excitement, efforts and moments during this time. Here I was waiting for my bride to go to a parlour to get ready. Plan was that i will accompany her from her home to the parlour and will come back with her after making some amazing pictures. During my wait period, I realised that these bandwala brothers were curiously looking at me and the camera as though they wanted to know the way it works.I saw this look on them as if commanding me to click their picture. I didn’t dare to not to click their picture. And the result was amazing. I wondered how people ask me to give poses to make them look great and here are these bandwala brothers, to whom i never said anything and they just did what they wanted.
I asked many things to them. I asked them how old are they? The elder said “I am 12 , He is 10.” I asked them about their education, to which they replied that they had left their education when they were in 4th std. Reason being, they never had interest in studies and everything went above their head. This answer made me feel bad. From the conversation, I understood one thing that they were not dumb by any chance. In fact they were smart, really smart. A thought that came to my mind was “Its not that children don’t want to or can’t study, they just don’t have the curiosity to know something new by the way our education system works.”I did a 10 min shoot with them and the pictures that i got were really amazing.
There was one more incident that happened in the evening, which i probably will never forget.
We (me and the bride ) came back to the venue within a couple of hours where she got married. During the baraat, They had called for 2 Bands for some reason unknown to me. 1st band which consist of 12 pro and the other one being these two bandwala children. These 2, sensing that there is a competition, accepted this challenge gracefully. They “Rocked that evening”. But eventually scummbed to the 12 pros.
Unfortunately they could not get any tip probably because of 2 reason.They were just 2 of them playing and none to collect the money and as soon as someone tried to tip them the other team’s manager would take that money from them. Looking at me shooting people dance, these 2 gathered around me and started playing dhols as intense as they could. I was watching everything and felt a mixed feeling of proud and awkward. I believe i have shot more then 40 weddings in last 2 years and never such a situation arise in front of me. To be honest i really felt happy. Hence i thought of tipping them and gave them a 100 rupees note. They were so happy with this gesture that their intensity for playing dhol, had no limits. It was an embarrassing situation for me, but beneath i really enjoyed that moment.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Below are more pictures of those bandwala children that i shot of them. Have fun, feel their energy and style. But remove sometime and do think about the bigger point.
