Chapter 37: The Photograph

Jai's Experimenter exhibition opens on a Friday in May — the month when Mumbai's heat reaches its annual maximum and the city becomes: an oven with traffic, the oven that makes you question every life choice you've ever made including the choice to live in a city that is, thermodynamically: trying to kill you.

But the gallery is air-conditioned. The gallery is: a temple of controlled temperature, the temperature that art requires (twenty-two degrees, constant — because photographs warp in heat and paintings crack and sculptures sweat and the art world's relationship with climate is: obsessive). I arrive at seven, wearing white because the heat demands white and because Sunaina has influenced me more than I will: admit.

The exhibition is titled: "Haath" — Hands. Jai's curated selection — thirty photographs from the twelve-year archive, all of hands. His mother's hands in Varanasi. A potter's hands in Kutch. A surgeon's hands in a hospital in Chennai (the gloves catching fluorescent light, the hands inside the gloves doing something that the photograph doesn't show but that the photograph implies: saving). A child's hands holding a cricket bat in Kashmir. A fisherman's hands mending nets in the Sundarbans. A weaver's hands at a loom in Varanasi — the thread between fingers thinner than thought, the thread that becomes: fabric, the fabric that becomes: clothing, the clothing that becomes: identity.

Hands. The body part that does: everything. That makes chai and holds cameras and signs divorce papers and touches the faces of people we love and is: the first thing we use to reach for the world and the last thing we use to: let go.

The Experimenter crowd is: not the Seaside Fitness crowd. These are art-world people — the people who Jai didn't invite to his gym exhibition because "they look at photographs the way accountants look at balance sheets." But Experimenter invited them, and they've come, and they're looking at Jai's photographs with the specific attention that art-world people bring to: new work. The attention that is: partly aesthetic, partly commercial, partly the attention of people who make their living from: recognising talent.

Jai stands in a corner. Not hiding — occupying. The corner that Jai occupies in the same way he occupies: every space — minimally, efficiently, with the awareness that he is: present but not performing. He's wearing a white shirt — not the black-shirt gym uniform but white, the white that I've never seen on Jai and that makes him look: different. Not transformed — revealed. The white revealing what the black: hid.

"You look good," I tell him.

"I look: uncomfortable."

"Good and uncomfortable are: not mutually exclusive."

"They are for me."

A woman approaches. Roshni Talwar — Experimenter's founder, a woman whose reputation in the Indian art world is: formidable, a word that means she has opinions and the power to: enforce them. She's small, sharp-featured, wearing the kind of minimalist black that the art world prescribes as: uniform.

"Jai," she says. "These are: remarkable. The Varanasi hands — we've had three inquiries about purchasing the print."

"Purchasing?" Jai's voice carries the specific tone of a man who has not considered that his photographs have: monetary value. That the images he made for: the practice of seeing can be: bought. The commerce of art — the commerce that exists because art exists in a world that runs on: money, and the world that runs on money requires: art to also run on money, which is: the tension that every artist navigates and that Jai has been: avoiding for eight years.

"Three inquiries. One from a private collector in Delhi. One from the Kiran Nadar Museum. And one from —" She pauses, the pause of a gallerist about to deliver: news. "The Museum of Modern Art. In New York."

"MoMA."

"MoMA. They're building an exhibition on South Asian documentary photography. They want to include: four of your prints. Haath would be: one of the featured series."

The silence that follows is: architectural. Not the silence of absence but the silence of: a structure being built. The structure that Jai is building in his mind — the structure of: this information. MoMA. Four prints. The Museum of Modern Art wants his work. The work that he hid for eight years. The work that a woman on a treadmill told him to: show.

He looks at me. Across the gallery. Through the art-world crowd. Through the people holding wine glasses and examining his photographs with the attention of: professionals. He looks at me and his face does something I've never seen. His face: opens. The closed face — the Jai-face of minimal expression and compressed emotion — opens. Like a door that has been: locked for eight years and that has just been: opened by a key he didn't know existed.

"Yes," he says. To Roshni. To MoMA. To the world. "Yes."

After the opening. The crowd thins. The wine is: finished (the art world runs on wine the way the gym runs on chai, the respective fuels of their respective communities). The photographs remain on the walls — illuminated, seen, the seeing that Jai waited eight years for and that is now: happening.

We sit on a bench in the gallery. Jai and me. The bench that galleries provide for: contemplation, for the sitting that art requires when art is: too much to take standing up.

"I need to tell you something," Jai says.

"Tell me."

"The photograph. The one I showed you. On the treadmill. My mother's hands."

"I remember."

"She died. Three months after I took that photograph. In Varanasi. At the ghat where she made diyas every morning. She had a: stroke. At the ghat. With the clay still on her hands."

The sentence. The sentence that arrives the way Sunaina's Vikram story arrived — quietly, devastating, the sentence that rearranges your understanding of a person and of: a photograph.

"The photograph is: the last one I have of her. Not a portrait — her hands. I didn't know it would be the last. You never know which photograph is: the last. You never know which morning is: the last morning she'll make diyas. You never know which hands are: the last hands you'll hold."

"Jai —"

"The photograph went into a hard drive. With everything else. I stopped shooting after she died. Not because of Vikram — the way Sunaina lost her husband. Not because of a truck. Because: my mother's hands were the most beautiful thing I'd ever photographed and the most beautiful thing I'd ever photographed was: gone. And the camera that photographed them felt: treasonous. The camera that recorded the last image of her hands felt like: the instrument of a goodbye I wasn't: ready for."

"And now MoMA wants those hands."

"Now MoMA wants those hands. And my mother's hands will hang in a museum in New York and people who never knew her — people who don't know that her chai was: terrible (worse than Jaya's, and Jaya's is: punishing) and her diyas were perfect and her sari always smelled of sandalwood because she put: sandalwood in her cupboard because she believed sandalwood keeps: evil away — people who don't know any of this will look at her hands and see: beauty."

"They will."

"And that's: enough. That's — Mar, that's enough. I've been carrying this photograph for twelve years. Twelve years of: her hands in a hard drive. And now her hands will be in a museum and people will see them and they won't know: the story. But they'll see: the hands. And the hands are: the story."

I put my hand on his. The hand that held the camera that photographed the hands that made the diyas. The hand that stopped and started and is now: holding mine in a gallery in Colaba where his mother's hands are: on the wall, illuminated, seen.

"She would be proud," I say.

"She would say: 'Jai, yeh sab chhodo, chai banao.'" Leave all this, make chai.

"That sounds like: every Indian mother."

"That sounds like: the best Indian mother."