Documentarian busy capturing story behind Guru Ka Langar

Neha Saini

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Tribune News Service

Amritsar, September 7

Considered one of the biggest free community kitchen not just in India but in the world, the kitchen of the Golden Temple has been a subject of study as well as intrigue for many. Following an urge to explore more about what goes behind feeding over a lakh visitors everyday, a Kolkatta based photo-documentarian, Arijit Chakraborty, is in the holy city on a project to capture the ‘langar khana’ of the shrine in his lens.

Awarded the prestigious Preet Nagar Residency, Arijit has been capturing the unseen, unknown facets of the working of the Golden Temple’s kitchen. “I find it magnificent that the kitchen is functioning at such a large scale and they have been feeding people non stop for so many years. When I researched about the history of the place, I couldn’t find much information on the ‘langar khana’. My project aims to explore the unseen part of the process that goes into the functioning of the kitchen,” he says. The interesting part of the process, he says, is that every day there is a new person serving the food, or making chappatis or serving water. “There has to be some kind of drive, an inspiration behind making such an effort. I want to bring that out through my photographs,’ he says.

His initiation towards conceiving a project on langars happened during the tragedy of Kolkatta flyover collapse. “So many people died due to that and in that moment of disaster, I could see many members of the Sikh community in Kolkatta putting up small stalls and serving free food and water. It, somehow, made me curiosu on the entire concept. As a child, my visits to the local gurudwaras were often about eating the kadah parshad (offering made from ghee and flour),” he says.

Known for his portraits, his last project titled Yesterday, was based on an older belt of Kolkatta once called the black town. “My idea of capturing a city’s nature is to take a walk down its dingy alleys, narrow lanes that reek of its history and intrigues. In India, each city will have some common sights, but the different moods of its people, the expressions, the buildings that make for a picture.”

His other passions include music. He runs his boutique record label, working with local bands of Kolkatta. He plans to work on a photography project on the history of Preet Nagar as well.