Hampi journals: Where it began

I still remember the first time I came to Hampi in December 2013. It wasn’t a planned journey. It was curiosity, more than anything else. I had a camera, but I didn’t quite know what I was looking for. I was drawn to the scale of the place, the stories everyone spoke about, the monuments that stood like markers of time.

I came here as a hobbyist. I left with questions I didn’t yet understand. The stone chariot was where I stood the longest that day. Like most first-time visitors, I was pulled towards it. Its form, its balance, its presence, it demanded attention. I walked around it, trying to capture it from every angle, thinking that the photograph was somewhere in those attempts. But just behind it, there was a sculpture I hadn’t noticed at first. It didn’t call out loudly. It didn’t compete. It simply existed. Something about it made me pause. I didn’t put much thought into it then; it just felt like it deserved a black-and-white image.

It was the Kalinga Mardana, a mythological event where Lord Krishna danced on and subdued the poisonous serpent Kaliya in the Yamuna River, symbolizing the victory of good over evil. The Legend has it that the serpent Kaliya had poisoned the Yamuna River, harming the people and cattle of Vrindavan. Krishna jumped into the river, battled the snake, and danced on his multiple hoods to crush his pride and venom.

At that point, I had only just begun learning photography, and I didn’t delve deeper into why I was drawn to it. It wasn’t an afterthought but I wasn’t yet aware of what it meant.

I took the photograph and moved on.

Today, when I return to that same sculpture, I realize that moment was not accidental. That image had already begun to shape the way I see. When I look back now, I know this is where it all began, the play of light and shadow, the texture, the way form carries meaning. It held the foundation of how I would eventually approach photography.

Every time I return, I find myself going back to that sculpture. Not to photograph it immediately, but to observe it. To stand there and recall that first moment when I made the image. I have tried to recreate it. I have tried to look at it differently, from other angles, under different light. But to me, that first image still holds something I cannot recreate, a sense of freshness that belongs only to that moment. It has been years since I made that photograph. Yet I have never felt the need to revisit it in the way I would with other images. Somewhere along the journey, I realized why. I had internalized it. I haven’t felt like looking at it again, because it is still present within me. That connection hasn’t faded, if anything, it has stayed exactly as it was when I first saw it.

Also read: Through my lens: A decade of discovering Hampi's timeless ruins

Some images are meant to be made only once. Some images are meant to be returned to, not through the camera, but through memory, observation, and understanding. That sculpture became one of those for me.

The first time I came here, I didn’t know what I was seeing. Today, I understand that I was witnessing the beginning of something, even if I didn’t have the awareness to recognize it then. Hampi didn’t change. The sculpture didn’t change. But I evolved. And each time I return, I don’t go looking for a new image. I go back to that same place, not to recreate what I made, but to understand what it made me become.

This is where it began. Not the journey to Hampi, but the journey into how I see.