Pani Maharaj - Swami at the Ganges

Pani Maharaj - Swami at the Ganges
Shot by my son, Rajeev Chachad

This self-portrait is one of my favourite photos. It is not a true self portrait as it was clicked very reluctantly by my son. I bribed him $5 to do it. It does define me as a person of Indian origin, so much so that I decided to make it part of my logo in addition to the Marathi Devanagari script font.

The Ganga. The holiest river in the world. The most polluted river in the world. The Swami is performing "Surya Namaskar - paying homage to the Sun" whilst bathing and meditating at Benares, on the banks of the Holy Ganges. The time is early morning. The sun is rising to his right.  You can see the waters flowing in the background. This photo was shot in my studio.

The idea of shooting a saint or sinner (take your pick) bathing in the Ganges has been swirling on and off in my head for decades.  Ever since I unknowingly dispersed glasses of refreshingly cold, dangerously nauseating, potently toxic Ganges water to my friends after a game of cricket, soccer or "aba dhubi" around 1978. You see my father had gone to the Ganges and filled up bottles of water and brought it home.  He decided to store it in the refrigerator along with bottles of drinking water. Well, nobody told me!!! Since our household was one of the few that had a refrigerator with clean, filtered, boiled and ice-cold water, I invited all my friends over for refreshments and served them - you guessed it - the toxic Ganges water!!!  Later, my father questioned me about where the holy water was, and the deed was revealed.  Fortunately, nobody died or even fell sick as a result.

Back to the photograph.  The photo was shot using a single source of light to my right and front, with a white card to my right to simulate ambient light which may reflect off the waters or diffuse light from the sky. I wet my hair to show that I had dipped myself a few times under the surface. Having set everything, I had to transform my mood from being myself, directing my son about when to click the shutter, into a swami face that exhibited no expression or an expression of  serene peacefulness in a deep meditative trance within 12 seconds. I practiced this several times but I had no idea what I would look like. Finally, I went and shot the waters of Lake Morton in Lakeland, Florida and gently introduced them around the Swami.  I even had the brilliant idea of having a human corpse floating in the background for authenticity, but I was sternly warned by family members not to do so for fear of embarrassment of living in the same household as me. The end result and effort was very pleasing.

On a historical note, Pani Maharaj was a freak, quack, crooked Swami in Bombay when I was growing up who whispered tantric mantras into jugs of water and the drinker of this elixir was miraculously cured of all illness and maladies.  All at a price; most of his clientele were rich, affluent Indian ladies with too much time and money on their hands. It was rumoured that the problem he fixed most frequently was infertility as most of the women who visited him regularly ended up getting pregnant!!!

Dhanyavad and Namaste!