TOM PIETRASIK | Photographer

Jaipur’s fifth annual literature festival gets underway today. According to festival director and author William Dalrymple, writing in last Sunday’s Observer newspaper, the gathering is distinctive for it’s egalitarian spirit. Still in it’s infancy, but already attracting a long list of literary luminaries, Jaipur has apparently so far avoided the need for VIP enclosures and green rooms. Dalrymple proudly recalls the assimilation of Bollywood celebrities into the genial mood of previous gatherings at Jaipur. Having attended a few of book launches myself, I fully appreciate that maintaining this atmosphere of innocent bonhomie will be a difficult task.

It was ten minutes into the launch of the biography “Two Lives” by Vikram Seth at a hotel in Mumbai a couple of years ago that I noticed Bollywood star Aamir Khan taking his seat in the audience. If Khan thought that his late arrival would go unoticed, he was sadly mistaken. As soon as the press photographers attending the launch caught a whiff of the actor, they immediately dispensed with Seth and converged on Khan. The photographers’ tactless display of celebrity-worship completely undermined Seth’s introduction as his soft-spoken words were lost behind a blur of flash lights and the fuss surrounding Khan.

The potential for such commotion is unlikely to distract William Dalrymple from the infectious enthusiasm with which he champions the Jaipur literature festival. When I took this portrait of him just before Christmas, Dalrymple was already wearing his director’s hat and eagerly anticipating the literary excitement.

At the beginning of December, Financial Times reporter Amy Kazmin and I drove out beyond the eastern fringes of Delhi and towards the dusty plains of Uttar Pradesh state. Barely an hour from the comfortable residential neighbourhoods of the capital, we entered a world where the cars of the wealthy give way to swarms of bicycles and diesel-spluttering buses. We were in the district of Ghaziabad and on our way to meet the family of Monika Dagar who’s suspicious death at the age of twenty-one presents a disturbing insight into the pervasive influence of caste in India.

Monika Dagar met Gaurav Saini in an online chat-room in 2006. Typical of the new generation of aspirational middle-class urban Indians, the couple were required to tread a fine line between tradition and modernity. Theirs was a relationship that crossed caste-boundaries and as a consequence invited the disdain of Monika’s conservative family. The Dagars are members of the Jat caste, a patriarchal and influential north Indian community that has at times used violence to defend caste purity.

Resolute in their love, Monika and Gaurav nonetheless married in July last year. The wedding was a simple – and legal – ceremony witnessed by only a handful of friends. Significantly the union was not blessed by any member of Monika’s family. As is the tradition in India, Monika decided to move in with Gaurav and his parents in a lower middle class neighbourhood of south Delhi.

A week after the marriage the police, accompanied by some of Monika’s relatives, raided the Saini household in the middle of the night and forcibly removed the couple. Monika was handed over to her family in Ghaziabad while Gaurav was taken into custody. He was held for 32 days, accused of abducting a minor and of rape. Gaurav was twice denied bail despite the fact that Monika was over 18 years of age and testified that she had been neither abducted nor raped by Gaurav.

Since his release from police custody in August, Gaurav has been unable to locate the whereabouts of Monika who it is feared may have become the victim of an honour killing. Monika’s brother reported that his sister died of pneumonia in September though no official has verified her death and a postmortem was never conducted.

Thanks to Guarav’s determined and often lonely search for justice, a Delhi High Court hearing at the end of this month will decide whether a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry will be opened into the suspicious case of his missing wife. Gaurav meanwhile continues the search for Monika who he believes is still alive. “I don’t know where to go and which path I have to follow,” he says. “I am just living on the hope that some time she will be back.”

Amy Kazmin’s compelling report on this disturbing case – the culmination of several months of investigation – was published alongside my photos in the Financial Times magazine last weekend. The story raises several crucial questions about the role of the Indian state in protecting its citizens and depicts a frightening picture of India that is far removed from the content and positive image that many would like us to see.

This was one of those assignments that presents a very real challenge to a photographer. Working after the event meant that I was obviously unable to capture key moments in this story. Of course neither Amy nor I were able to meet Monika and as a consequence Gaurav became the focus of our coverage. I felt it important that the viewer be able to understand some of the anxieties that he was experiencing in his struggle for justice while appreciating the environment in which both he and Monika were raised.

Ultimately, the Financial Times magazine editors considered the significance of the young couple’s relationship so fundamental to the story that their affection for one another had to presented visually. Consequently they chose to reproduce a number of “collect photos” from Gaurav’s camera and these formed the basis of the opening spread. As much as I would have liked my photographs to have appeared more prominently in the feature I was entirely sympathetic to the editors decision to place them behind Gaurav’s blurred snapshots. The relevance of these photographs lies not in their quality but in the awkward depiction of an innocent and apparently unexceptional relationship that is so difficult to reconcile with the horror of subsequent events.

Exactly five years ago, on the morning of December 26th 2004, I climbed aboard a dawn flight from Delhi to Chennai. I had been busy with photography assignments over the previous few weeks and this was an opportunity to take a well-earned break. I was looking forward to a bit of relaxation and had packed my swimming gear together with a couple of books and some Christmas gifts for the friends with whom I would be staying.

As we flew south, I noticed Irish reporter David Orr sitting a few rows ahead of me on the plane. David and I had worked together on a couple of occasions so I wandered over to say hello. David explained to me that he and his family were on their way to the old colonial port of Pondicherry for a vacation by the sea. Easing into his economy-class seat, it was obvious that David had already left the anxieties of work behind him.

It was two hours later, while disembarking with my camera bag that David asked why I had bothered to bring along all of my equipment. Surely, he wondered, a holiday wasn’t really a holiday if accompanied by the paraphernalia of work. I always like to travel light so I didn’t consider my camera gear a hindrance. And besides, as a freelance photographer, it seemed sensible to be prepared for the unexpected. As I explained, “what if something were to happen?” David didn’t seem particularly convinced by my argument.

As we waited beside the luggage carrousel, the faint Indian airport-aroma of naphthaline drifting over us, David hurried over to me. This time he was looking a lot less relaxed. In fact he seemed rather anxious as he confided, “You know Tom, I think something has happened.”

David explained that there had been an earthquake. He wasn’t quite sure about the scale of the damage or indeed which part of the country had been affected but something had definitely happened. Misinformation and rumours spread quickly in India and it was entirely possible that David’s information had no basis in fact. But as the two of us bid goodbye and I left the terminal it became clear that something wasn’t quite right. The shambolic fray of taxi drivers, hotel agents and touts that had gathered at the airport gate appeared wholly distracted. Instead of clambering toward exiting passengers, eager to ply their services, they were ignoring us all and talking amongst themselves.

I hailed a taxi and asked the driver what had happened. He confirmed there had indeed been an earthquake followed by a big wave which had struck the coast of Chennai. Many had lost their lives, he said. It was becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss this as rumour but I still didn’t know enough to satisfy my curiosity. As we bounced along Chennai’s potholed roads, I plugged my mobile phone into my laptop. The internet connection was frustratingly slow but I soon gathered enough detail to appreciate that something momentous had affected the region at about the same time my plane had taken to the skies above Delhi.

On arrival at my friend’s house, I quizzed my host Jyashree for what she knew. She said she had been woken at dawn with the clutter on her dressing table shaking furiously. And there was talk in the city of a devastating wave that had swept across the Marina beach. On the television, they were discussing something called a tsunami.

My mobile soon began to ring. I spoke to journalist colleagues in Delhi who were keen to understand what was happening on the ground in Chennai. A picture emerged of unprecedented destruction. And in the South Asia region, Sri Lanka appeared to have borne the brunt of the momentous waves. It seemed obvious that this was the place to go. I approached a couple of newspapers in the UK and ultimately the Times of London assigned me to travel to Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka.

So it was that I arrived in the small fishing town of Kudawella on Sri Lanka’s south coast, 24 hours after the tsunami had struck. There was a uneasy and rather confused silence about those first few hours, punctuated by cries of grief as bodies were dragged from the shore or discovered among the debris of fallen buildings.

As we all now know, the tsunami was a momentous event that affected the lives of many hundreds of thousands across South and South-East Asia. I would not have been able to cover the immediate effect of the waves had I not decided to carry my cameras with me when I departed Delhi that morning of December 26th 2004. As for David Orr, his holiday was postponed as he traveled the ravaged coast of Tamil Nadu reporting on events for the British press.

I have since returned many times to document the longer-term effect the tsunami has had on the lives of a group of children from the south Indian district of Cuddalore. The photographs displayed here are a small selection from that series and feature two sisters, Vijita and Vijyashree Viswanathan who I am sure today will be thinking of the mother and brother they lost to the tsunami exactly five years ago.

Between a seven day stint confined to a hospital bed with malaria (see post below) and an assignment for a British newspaper magazine, I was lucky enough last week to escape to the east Indian town of Puri in Orissa for a particularly pleasant beach-side holiday. I did very little but relax, breathe in the ocean air and stroll along the shore with my camera. It was, as they say, just what the doctor ordered.

The south-facing coastline at Puri looks out towards the Bay of Bengal, providing spectacular views across the ocean at both dawn and dusk. Above is the scene that greeted me after I emerged from my hotel room one morning at 5.30am.

Of course the crows were there before me, unwittingly contributing to the drama of the morning sky.

Puri attracts middle class tourists from across India and like all seaside resorts, offers holiday-goers temporary release from their routine responsibilities. On spotting me with my camera one afternoon, this unlikely gathering of bathers insisted I take their portrait. They weren’t interested in viewing the pictures I took and I can only imagine that the simple process of being photographed provided them confirmation that this was indeed a special day. As soon as their portrait was taken they turned to face the ocean and rushed straight back in.

Beaches in India are wonderful places for photographs and the scenes at Puri reminded me of a feature I photographed in black & white in 2002 on the community that congregates every evening at Mumbai’s Juhu beach. This is a photograph from that story.