This series is a tribute to the elderly people I meet along the way — often unplanned, sometimes brief, yet deeply memorable. They are travelers of life: villagers waiting by the roadside, elders resting under trees, or faces that appear and fade through my journeys across India. In a world where one might come across thousands of faces and remember only a few, these portraits slow that moment — not to claim knowing, but simply meeting. Knowing someone requires familiarity; meeting or encountering is about presence — a shared instant, a recognition of being.

 

Each portrait is made on film, slowly and thoughtfully, then handprinted through alternative processes and later gifted back to them. It is my way of remembering these faces through the tactile beauty of analog photography, where the photograph belongs as much to them as it does to me. I like to leave a part of their story untold — an unknown that keeps the curiosity alive. Each image becomes a leaf from their life’s book, drawn from faces in passing, remembered in stillness.