Dutt, popular for his role as a do-good gangster in the
“Munnabhai” films, was sentenced to six years jail in 2007 for
acquiring illegal weapons from men convicted for the 1993
attacks that killed 257 people.

He served 18 months but then was out on bail, fighting the
conviction until a court in March ordered him back to jail.

Projects worth up to 2.5 billion rupees ($46 million) and
the fate of several Bollywood movies hung in the balance after
the March ruling, but the actor was said to have wrapped up
filming for most pending projects in the last few weeks.

But at least one film, the third “Munnabhai” comedy in which
Dutt was to reprise his role, has been put on the back burner.

Dutt returned to prison late on Thursday night. He was later
expected to be moved to a jail in the western city of Pune.

Clad in white kurta pyjamas and sporting a traditional Hindu
“tilak” mark on his forehead, Dutt waved at waiting reporters
before leaving his house amid heavy security. The actor was
accompanied by his wife and sister.

Television showed Dutt being taken to a Mumbai court. He was
swamped by media at the court complex and had to beg reporters
to move back so that he could get out of his car.

“I have to surrender,” the actor said, gesturing with folded
hands. “Please move back! I need to go upstairs.”

The beefy action hero was the most high profile of 100
people involved in the Mumbai bombings trial, which ended in 12
people receiving the death penalty and lifetime sentences for
others.

In 2007, Dutt was cleared of conspiracy charges in the
attacks but found guilty of illegal possession of an AK-56 rifle
and a pistol, which he claimed he required to protect himself
and his family during a period of rioting in Mumbai.

In March, the Supreme Court reduced the 53-year-old actor’s
sentence to five years and ordered him back to jail, but in
April it gave the actor four extra weeks of freedom to finish
some of his Bollywood films. A last-ditch petition was dismissed
by the court on Tuesday.

Dutt is best known for his turn in “Lage Raho Munnabhai”, a
comedy about a gangster espousing Gandhian values that won the
popular film prize at the National Film Awards for 2006.

(Additional reporting by Shilpa Jamkhandikar; Writing by Tony
Tharakan, Editing by Elaine Lies and Michael Perry)

Dutt, popular for his role as a do-good gangster in the “Munnabhai” films, was sentenced to six years jail in 2007 for acquiring illegal weapons from men convicted for the 1993 attacks that killed 257 people.

He served 18 months but has been out on bail ever since, fighting the conviction.

In March, the Supreme Court reduced the 53-year-old actor’s sentence to five years and ordered him back to jail, but in April the court gave the actor four extra weeks of freedom to finish some of his Bollywood films. A last-ditch petition was dismissed by the court on Tuesday.

Bollywood had reacted with shock to news of Dutt’s sentencing with the actor seen by some fans as a victim of his star lineage and fame.

With two failed marriages and a history of drug abuse in his young days, Dutt is seen as the film industry’s enfant terrible who failed to handle the pressure of being a celebrity child. His father Sunil was a popular actor-politician who married actress Nargis.

Clad in white kurta pyjamas and sporting a traditional “tilak” on his forehead, Dutt waved at waiting reporters before leaving his house amid heavy security on Thursday. The actor was accompanied by wife Manyata and sister Priya, a ruling Congress lawmaker from Mumbai.

Television channels broadcast footage of Dutt being taken to a Mumbai court in a grey-black vehicle. The actor was swamped by media at the court complex and had to beg reporters to move back so that he could get out of his car.

“I have to surrender,” the actor said, gesturing with folded hands. “Please move back! I need to go upstairs.”

TV channels said Dutt was taken to a prison in Mumbai at night but was expected to be transferred to another in Pune.

The beefy action hero was the most high profile of 100 people involved in the Mumbai bombings trial which ended in 12 people receiving the death penalty and lifetime sentences for others.

In 2007, Dutt was cleared of conspiracy charges in the attacks but found guilty of illegal possession of an AK-56 rifle and a pistol, which he claimed he required to protect himself and his family during a period of rioting in Mumbai.

The actor is best known for his turn in “Lage Raho Munnabhai”, a comedy about a gangster espousing Gandhian values that won the popular film prize at the National Film Awards for 2006.

Dutt, who has 1.1 million fans on Twitter, hasn’t tweeted since March.

Projects worth up to 2.5 billion rupees and the fate of several Bollywood movies hung in the balance after the Supreme Court’s ruling in March but the actor was said to have wrapped up filming for most pending projects in the last few weeks.

At least one film, the third “Munnabhai” comedy in which Dutt was to reprise his role, has been put on the back burner.

(Additional reporting by Shilpa Jamkhandikar; Writing by Tony Tharakan)

Rescue workers using cranes and bulldozers continued to search through the wreck of twisted steel and concrete after the seven-storey building collapsed “like a pack of cards” on Thursday evening, officials and witnesses said.

A shortage of cheap homes in Asia’s third-largest economy has led to a rise in illegal construction by developers who use substandard materials and shoddy methods in order to offer rock-bottom rents to low-paid workers.

“The building collapsed like a pack of cards within three to four seconds,” said Ramlal, a local resident. “It just tilted a bit and collapsed,” he said. Residents said laborers paying rent of around $5 a day had lived in the building.

The building, which was in a forested area in the city of Thane, had been made using poor materials and without proper approvals, said Sandeep Malvi, a spokesman for licensing authority the Thane Municipal Corporation.

He said 72 people had been killed and 36 injured had been admitted into local hospitals. “There may still be more bodies inside,” Malvi added. “The rescue is still going on.”

As the sun rose on Saturday, around 100 workers from the national disaster relief agency continued to use jackhammers and other equipment to cut through the pile of metal and concrete.

The woman dragged from the building on Saturday was found after workers heard her voice and used camera equipment to pinpoint her location under the rubble. A 10-month old infant was pulled from the debris on Friday.

The Deputy Municipal Commissioner of the area has been suspended following the collapse, which the state chief minister said was due to the building being built illegally, local media reported.

Police said they were searching for the builders and would charge them with culpable homicide in connection with the disaster.

“Unauthorized constructions are a product of unavailability of affordable housing,” said Lalit Kumar Jain, president of the Confederation of Real Estate Developers of India.

A sharp rise in property prices in densely populated Mumbai over the past five years has put housing out of reach for tens of thousands of lower earners, many of whom moved to the city in search of jobs, and who now sleep on the streets or in slums.

In 2012, India’s urban housing shortage was estimated at nearly 19 million households, according to a report by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation.

(Additional reporting by Aditi Shah and Danish Siddiqui; Writing by Henry Foy; Editing by Michael Perry)

By Vivek Prakash 

It’s one of those things that you just have to do. Ever since I moved to India, I’ve always wanted to photograph Holi celebrations in north India. As a kid growing up here, I played with colored powders and water in the streets with my friends. As an adult, I’ve been lucky enough to have the chance to return with my camera. I had been looking forward to this assignment. I was expecting a riot of a different kind, a riot of color and noise – and that’s exactly what I got.

GALLERY: FESTIVAL OF HOLI

Holi is celebrated widely across India, but it is more popular in the north of the country. The epicenter of all the action is in a triangle of villages around the city of Mathura – the fun begins at Barsana, then moves to Nandgaon, Vrindavan, and Dauji before finally finishing a week of rolling celebrations in the region where the Hindu god Krishna and his consort Radha are thought to have been born and lived. It’s a festival that celebrates the arrival of spring, but in this region it also has special significance as it celebrates the story of Radha and Krishna and their love for each other. The enthusiasm of the people is unmatched – the energy combined with sheer numbers make for fantastic scenes drenched in water and color. It makes for delicious pictures. But I have to admit, after having covered it for the first time, it’s harder than it looks to get a great picture. Keeping your equipment dry and operational is a big challenge.

On my first day of coverage, I arrived at the village of Barsana early in the morning and headed straight for the main temple where celebrations would take place. I was at first disappointed as the morning session at the temple was a bit subdued. However, by the time the temple re-opened at 4pm it was a different story. There were thousands of people waiting to storm the entry doors. Inside, a sea of bodies heaved against each other, amid projectiles of colored powder and buckets of orange colored water being flung everywhere. It was hard to hold your position steady enough to shoot pictures, let alone compose something nice. At one point, there was so much powder that photographers were completely caked in it – nostrils and lungs were full of red dust. I wished I had brought a surgical mask instead of a scarf to shield myself.

In an odd tradition, as soon as the fun at the temple is over, people head out into the street for “Lathmar Holi”, in which men from the neighboring village of Nandgaon sing provocative (and sometimes really lewd) songs at women, who then use huge wooden sticks to “beat” the men as they crouch on the ground while holding a shield. I thought it would be just a little bit of fun, but the women really do go for it and I would not want to be caught under one of those sticks! This scene repeats itself the next day in the village of Nandgaon, where there is another huge temple rush – albeit a bit easier to manage as there’s space to move around at that temple. Then it’s the men from Barsana’s turn to be beaten by the women of Nandgaon.

In Vrindavan, the Bankey Bihari temple is tucked away in a small meandering alley. The crowd is unbelievable – the streets are jam packed with revelers headed there, the queues to get in are extremely long, and there is no space to move inside. Devotees constantly smash into each other and push and shove as they make their way to the front of the temple to get a glimpse of the resident deity, all the while shouting slogans and under clouds of flying powder and under torrents of water.

At a shelter for widows who have been abandoned by their families, I was lucky to experience one of the happiest things I’ve ever witnessed. The widows, who traditionally would have shunned celebrations of any kind for fear of social reprisals, threw flowers into the air as they celebrated holi for the first time. Women were crying tears of joy, laughing and singing. I felt moved enough to put down my camera and just take in the bliss for a couple of minutes.

After discussing our coverage with my Chief, Ahmad Masood, we also decided that although the temple scenes are spectacular, they present a problem because day after day, the pictures start to look quite similar. To add variety to the file, I wandered for hours in the narrow lanes around the village to try and get a sense of the mood of Holi in my pictures. My favorite picture of this entire assignment (a boy gleefully spraying blue colored foam as his friends duck out of the way) was found in the alleys of Vrindavan.

In the days that followed, I concentrated my efforts on shooting more of the action on the streets of Vrindavan to add as much variety to our file as I could. I’d decided that even though there were more celebrations in the temples and in the widows’ shelters, it was on the streets that we would find the really fun pictures.

Our coverage finished at the Dauji temple, where I wandered in the tiny village before the “Huranga” celebration which marks the end of Holi celebrations in the region.

As a photographer uninitiated in covering Holi, I was surprised by just how intense the experience is. Not only are you shooting two to three sessions of Holi every day, but you’re trying to make different pictures which add variation to the file over the course of a weeklong assignment. You’re doing that while drenched and caked in colored powder and constantly wiping your lens to keep it dry and clean.

I wore the same T-shirt for all 7 days of coverage. The color is impossible to remove, so you are saying goodbye to whatever clothes you wear for Holi. I lost a pair of slippers outside a temple (you can’t enter with footwear – my slippers were a cool pair that quickly got nicked). I walked about 3km back to the car barefoot. I wound up buying two sets of 60 rupee slippers instead, not wanting to lose a good pair of shoes to this assignment. One pair of board-shorts tore in Nandgaon (thankfully in a place that didn’t outrage anyone’s modesty) and I’m planning to throw out a pair of North Face pants when I’m done with this job.

No one has any mercy on photographers and you get as covered in color and water as anyone else. People are constantly smearing the stuff all over you. My scalp is still pink and I have patches of color all over my body. The color hasn’t come off with soap or shampoo, but I’m told by experts that caking myself in chickpea flower mixed with yoghurt and then taking a shower does the trick. I wonder if that will clog the drain at my flat in Mumbai.

I was told all sorts of scary stories about dead cameras, ruined lenses and trashed equipment. Well-prepared photographers have lost two or three bodies to Holi. I asked around and took all the advice I could about how to best “Holi-proof” my gear so that I could continue shooting without destroying it. My basic Holi coverage kit contained non-scratch cloth, cling wrap, waterproof covers, nail polish remover, gaffer tape, scarves and handtowels and a dry belt pouch to carry dry items and spare lenses in.

I prepped my cameras and lenses by wrapping them in clingfilm to protect them just in case water somehow got through the rain covers – it’s better to be doubly safe. It also makes your camera difficult to operate and it’s very hard to judge what pictures are good on the back of an LCD screen covered in food wrap and then a translucent waterproof cover. I shoot in manual only. Changing the ISO and aperture became a real issue as it’s very hard to recognize which buttons you need to push under all that wrap. I was surprised because I can usually change all that without having to look at the camera, but I found myself searching for the right buttons all the time. Luckily, as annoying as this was, I got used to it after several days and I credit it with saving all my gear. I’ve managed to walk away without having any gear damaged, except for a lens filter which smashed when I slipped and fell down a set of stairs in the hotel.

Not bad for 7 days of Holi coverage – losing just one filter, a pair of slippers, board-shorts and a t-shirt. In exchange, I’ve had one of the best experiences of my  life and walked away with many very happy pictures. I’d come back in a heartbeat. But maybe next time, with a water-resistant point and shoot instead of a 5dMkIII and 1d MkIV to worry about!

By Vivek Prakash

Where I live is not the India of most people’s imaginations or memories, and it’s hardly the India I once knew as a kid.

My Mumbai has easygoing cafes, organic markets, swish malls, expensive restaurants serving great food and wine, fabulous nightclubs and raucous house parties. The idea that this India is any less “real” than bad infrastructure or the world of Slumdog Millionaire is misguided.

India has many crosses to bear – I acknowledge that. I’ll be the first one to complain about crumbling roads, horrid traffic, corrupt politicians, impossible bureaucracy and the gulf between rich and poor. But you’d better get used to the idea that slowly but surely, generational change is taking place. My Mumbai is probably the India of the future.

When I’m outside this country and I tell people I live in Mumbai, their first response is usually a mix of bewilderment and concern – I assume this is from the reputation it has as a glorified dump with quaint colorful traditions, best cliched in popular movies like Slumdog and Monsoon Wedding and books like Shantaram and Beyond the Beautiful Forevers which mostly deal with life in the slums. The initial reaction is usually followed up with something like “you must love it as a photographer.” Yes, I suppose I do – it’s a magical dump of over a billion, easy fodder for lazy pictures of beggars at car windows and smiling street kids.

The so-called “real” India. Guilty as charged – my archive contains more than its fair share of these pictures. But they tell only one part of an incredibly complicated story. And it’s not easy to have access to shoot the other stuff.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working closely with someone to tell you a different story through my pictures. I’d like you to meet MissMalini.

35-year-old Malini Agarwal exemplifies what aspirational India is all about. She’s bubbly, energetic, and describes herself as “India’s blogging princess” and a “social media Jedi”. Huffington Post last year named her as “without a doubt, India’s most famous blogger” – you can’t argue with that, her blog, MissMalini.com, gets over 550,000 unique visitors a month. Hers is a business that exists in the “new” economy opened up by the internet.

She’s self made – after having grown up overseas as the daughter of a diplomat, she returned to Delhi, from where she worked and traveled as a dancer. She came to Mumbai, and as it was for so many of us, it was love at first sight. Seduced by the city with all its grit and glory, she moved down to work as a content producer for a website. That led to working for the website of a popular tabloid newspaper and then at Channel V.

A friend suggested she try her hand at blogging – so she did – and in a short while, she found that her blog was getting over 200,000 hits a month. So she devoted more time and energy to it. Nowshad Rizwanullah, her 32-year-old husband, is an ex-banker who quit his job to work on the blog with her full-time.

You can say what you will about the content MissMalini provides – a steady diet of Bollywood gossip, fashion, food and entertainment – but you can’t argue with the numbers she’s pulling. Her target? The upwardly mobile 18-35 Indian woman. Her formula of making the stars and the lifestyle accessible to the lay person is really working.

Social media is at the heart of everything she does: there was hardly a moment when I didn’t see her using a laptop or a phone. In the back seat of a car late at night, heading home from a cover photo shoot for a beauty zine, her face is lit up in the glow of light from her phone. On the floor of a night club, she’s tweeting. At a sushi making class at a five-star hotel, a picture goes up on Instagram, even as she herself is followed by a film crew. When she’s in the office – located on the third floor of a building with no lift in a tidy suburban apartment complex, where sari-clad women are doing household chores as you pass – she’s sitting at her desk, leading a small team that knows everything that happens in Bollywood, and all the cool goings-on in this city and beyond.

In light of all the recent news and developments about the Indian woman’s place in society, it’s been nice to be able to put the spotlight on a woman who breaks all the often-repeated stereotypes about what it means to be a woman here. Not to detract from the gravity of those stories, but it’s important to remember that there are many different narratives about women. It would be irresponsible not to reinforce positive ones.

You won’t find Malini cooking Nowshad’s dinner at home. She’s either too busy blogging from her office, having dinner out with him as they review a new restaurant, interviewing a Bollywood personality or at an event on the social circuit. At night, you’ll find her in a club somewhere, enjoying the evening with her friends and Nowshad.

In writing about celebrity, Bollywood and all things related, Malini’s becoming something of a celebrity herself. Even in India, social media is proving to be a transformational force. I’ve spent a lot of time with her over the last few weeks, and I can honestly say I’ve had a great time hanging out with her and her friends. I hope the story I’ve put together tells you something about this other equally “real” India. It’s full of people like Miss Malini and her friends.

And it’s full of people like me – as much an aspirant as anyone else in this city. I’m strapped into the front seat as a heady mix of technology, liberalism and energy combine with the world’s largest upwardly mobile class to transform it from a cliched magical dump to a complex work in progress where each part is as real as the next.

Updated February 12: Reflects change in visitor figures to the site and changes company name

By Vivek Prakash

Mumbai has very few green open spaces. One of them is Shivaji Park, a large field in central Mumbai where people gather to play and practice a variety of sports.

GALLERY: INDIAN POLE GYMNASTICS

Tucked away in a quiet little corner of this park is a small building outside of which you’ll see some interesting performances if you walk past in the early mornings and evenings. There are ropes hung from bars about 20 feet off the ground and wooden poles about 8 feet tall – you’ll see kids suspended from the ropes and climbing up the poles to perform a variety of gymnastic postures that fall into the “can you really do that?!?” category.

This is the Shree Samartha Vyayam Mandir, which has been around for over 80 years, and the sport is called “Mallakhamb.”

The name is a composite of two Indian words – “Malla”, which means “strong man”, and “khamba”, which means a wooden pole.

I’ve always been curious about what exactly the sport is all about, so I met Uday Deshpande – whose day job is at the customs department – but who comes to the park mornings and evenings, seven days a week to conduct Mallakhamb classes. I mentioned that I was interested in doing a story on this amazing sport, and Uday invited me to photograph a number of demonstrations and classes. He told me the sport has been around for a long time – since the 12th century – but became more popular in the mid-1800s and now has a strong following in India.

I’ve always thought the poses were amazing when walking past the area – but being present for entire classes upped the “wow” factor for me.

The girls are dressed in bright red leotards and do warm-ups before the class. They perform on the rope – I was told it requires a lot of mental strength, because the rope is gripped almost entirely by lateral movement of the toes, and initially hurts a lot. Students must learn to get past the pain in order to perform the “yogasnas” or yogic poses. Girls swiftly climb up the ropes and suspend themselves in unbelievable positions – upside down, on their side, and in a variety of yogic postures including the lotus position. It requires strength, flexibility and concentration.

The boys come dressed in bright orange trunks and perform on the pole, which is applied with castor oil to assist with grip and to reduce abrasions on the skin. There are no fancy tricks and there is no extra equipment – the students must hold themselves up using the strength of their bodies only. Feet wrap around the top of the pole; powdered hands grasp it and thighs tighten as they suspend themselves into a huge variety of yogic poses. Flat, upside down, one foot on top of the pole, arms out looking like Superman in a pair of orange trunks – I was astounded by some of the postures.

Uday told me that it’s a sport for everyone, and that with a little training, anyone can do it, as long as they are mentally tough. He has classes for people in their 40s and there are even people in their 80s who practice Mallakhamb from time to time. His group even travels to Germany once a year, where a group of people has been training for over a decade and is growing rapidly.

I told him I’d be keen to try it sometime, but maybe I should go to the gym for a little while first and build up my strength a bit more.

Are you this flexible?

Many things are uncertain in Mumbai – the weather, the possibility of an appointment actually happening on time, the chance of getting through the city without hitting some obstacle or other…

But one thing is perfectly certain: you’re wanted at the traffic jam, they’re saving you a seat.

If, like me, you think owning a car in Mumbai is a pointless waste of time, you will take a taxi several times a week. So your place in Mumbai’s permanent gridlock is likely to be inside a Premier Padmini taxi, a vehicle I have come to think of as the grand old dame of Mumbai’s streets.

The car is not a sexy young model. It is a solid, dependable companion. Clad in a black and yellow uniform, it is an anachronism still plodding through the city streets nearly fifty years after it was first designed.

Gallery: Mumbai’s ancient taxis

But nothing lasts forever. A couple of years ago, the government issued an order that all taxis over 25 years old have to be retired. So before they vanish from Mumbai’s streets forever, I set out to find out everything I could about these taxis.

The Premier Padmini is a funny looking thing. In an age where you see everything from Tata Nanos to massive GM four-wheel drives on the roads of Mumbai, these dinky little cars are a slice of the 60s, a throwback to an era of per-liberalisation India.

At first glance you might be fooled into thinking they are Fiats. You wouldn’t be far off the mark – the design is based on the vintage Italian Fiat 1100-series range of cars which were a hit in the 1960s. The Indian company Premier Automobiles licensed and manufactured similar cars in India, and these became known as “Premier Padmini”. They were produced between 1964 and 2000, when the last Padmini rolled off the production line.

These cars have almost no electronic parts. They are made of heavy, solid metal and although the top speed of a recent model is theoretically around 119km/h (74 miles/h), I wonder if any of them can make it to 60 (37 miles) without shaking themselves apart.

Power steering? Who needs it. Nothing a bit of elbow grease can’t fix. Air conditioning? Forget about it! You live in a sultry humid city, you should learn to love it. Electric windows? I don’t think so, use the handle to roll it down. Suspension? What suspension? Just remember you’ll feel every little bump on your way home tonight.

Here in Mumbai we love to hate the Padmini. They are uncomfortable, hot, steamy, and funny smelling. But when they’re gone, we’ll miss them.

This old car has become an icon on Mumbai’s roads. We’ll miss her like New Yorkers miss their checkered cabs.

The drivers will miss them too. A door handle, I was told at a yard which specializes in Padmini parts, costs about 90 rupees ($2). A headlight can be found in Chor Bazaar (Thief’s Market) for about 250 rupees ($5). If the body gets holey or rusty, there are a dozens of garages that will fix it up for next to nothing. If you were looking or a door handle, a headlight or a fixup on a newer, flashier cab, you’d have to pay 10, perhaps 20 times as much. No wonder drivers want to hang onto them. Taxi drivers eat, sleep and work out of their Padminis. Their shabby khaki and white uniforms match the old cars perfectly.

I read a story in CNNGo which quotes Anthony Quadros, the head of Mumbai’s taxi drivers union: “We have trusted this Padmini like a second wife for the last 40 years. You still love your wife even though she gets old.”

But time and tide wait for no man – and no taxi either. Each year, hundreds of Padminis are being taken off the roads, sent to scrap yards, where they are pulled apart for whatever can be salvaged and reused. Local media estimates that Mumbai’s taxi fleet is around 51,000 strong – of which some 8,000 are at least 25 years old.

I spent the better part of two weeks working on this story, just watching our beloved Padmini going to places where she was fixed and spruced up, seeing her on the streets day and night, getting to know the drivers who are her trusted companions. I like my air conditioning, but I too will find it hard to say goodbye when the last Padmini taxi retires.

So, venerable Premier Padmini, let this be my way of saying goodbye to you. I hope the pictures I’ve made will help keep you in our memories long after you’ve disappeared into the grey of Mumbai’s skyline, never to be seen again. I want my photos to be your eulogy, a record of what you meant to us.

Goodbye old girl, I will remember you.

It’s an experience I will never forget. I have no children of my own, but when the day does come, maybe I’ll be just a little bit more prepared for it.

I had come a long, long way from my usual cosmopolitan stomping ground of Mumbai, to a place just about as far interior as you can go in India. I was about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the Rajasthan border in the state of Madhya Pradesh, in a village of about 700 people. This is very, very small by Indian standards. There were dusty roads that a car could barely fit down, mud houses, a scorching heat during the day which turned to a deep chill at night.

I had many ideas in my head and many questions too – what kind of emotions was I going to experience and witness? Should I be excited, or should I feel like an intruder, given the subject matter I was here to shoot? I had come a long way to shoot this, but now, standing in this little rural community health center with my camera, I felt conflicted.

Out here, in a remote place bordering a wild national park where camels from the Rajasthan deserts roam in search of water and foliage, medical services – let alone medical services for women – are at their most basic. Chharchh is big for this region. Most people are still living in tiny hamlets on the edges of fields and rivers, in small communities so isolated that when the rains come, they may not see other human beings for 3 months until the flooding recedes and the road becomes passable again.

I came to answer a question that had been in my mind since I did a story on a village full of bachelors last year – what about the flip side of the coin – what about women in rural India, what were maternity services like for them? I wondered how, in the deep interior of this vast country, anyone could provide meaningful and safe services. I worked in close coordination with a few doctors and facilitators from the state government, who were trailing an innovative idea in partnership with UNICEF.

In Chharchh, I took pictures of the community health center, which officials referred to as a “sub health center”. I shot routine checkups of pregnant women who had come from outlying villages.

At the clinic, the idea and the process was explained to me. If a woman out in a field was about to give birth, she or her relatives could call the attention of a local rural health worker – who lived in the area and spent time in the communities long enough to be trusted. The health worker then calls a central hotline, the first of its kind in India, which takes down the details of the woman, her husband and father’s name, and the village or location where she is. Within minutes, someone at the hotline rings the nearest community health center, such as the one in Chharch, and an ambulance – which is actually nothing more than a Maruti 800cc van with a bench in the back and an oxygen tank for emergency cases – is sent out to find the woman. In the remotest part of India, this is a clever idea – and I wanted to see how it worked and how the women were better taken care of as a result.

At about two o’clock in the afternoon, a call came through – someone was already in labor, and she was in a field on the far outskirts of Chharchh, bordering the national park, some 15 kilometers (9 miles) away. We rushed to the van and the driver raced out of the village on a dusty, potholed road. The road to the pickup location was nothing more than gravel. We picked up a community health worker who knew where to find the woman along the way, and arrived in a very small village set on the top of a hill. The road was so bad from here that we couldn’t drive any further.

I walked down the hill with the health worker, and reached a crossing where the road dissolved into a small river and there was nothing on the other side except rocks and mountains in the distance. We both scanned the horizon for a pregnant woman. We knew her name was Anguri, and she was 26 years old. Neither of us could see her. Then, we started to hear shouts in the distance, and we edged closer to see her.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I had come to see what maternity services were like in rural India, and what was before me astonished me.

Out of the horizon appeared a woman wearing a blue sari. She walked slowly, stumbled a little, clutching her stomach and her sari, a sickle still in her hand from when she was harvesting a small field in the distance.

Still carrying the sickle, and carefully lifting her sari up to keep it from getting wet, Anguri stepped on stones to cross the river – while in labor and moaning “hai Ram! hai Ram!!” (Oh God! Oh God!!)

She stumbled her way up the hill to where the maternity ambulance waited, as a relative carried her belongings behind her, folded into a bundle on the top of her head. She was helped into the van by her relatives and we rushed back to the clinic along the same gravel road.

On arrival, she was checked by a nurse. Her hemoglobin levels were recorded, she was weighed and her blood pressure and temperature were taken. Then, a doctor – one of just three staff at the clinic – helped her across to the labor room.

I started to feel guilty, like an intruder, a thief waiting to steal pictures of something very private. What right do I have to be here? Was it right for a man to intrude into this space, where the most sacred of things take place – the birth of a child to a mother? On the one hand, I felt excited because I’d never seen it before. I was trying to keep my presence of mind but I was being swept up and torn in two directions. First, I couldn’t believe I had the privilege to witness this – the cricket for a conscience that looks the other way. On the other shoulder was a voice that kept asking, what right does this thief have to steal this picture out of deepest India and send it around the world?

I tried to steel myself and stay focused on the job. I’m still not sure how I feel about it, but I convinced myself that it was worth my being there to shoot this. I went to Chharchh to shoot a story on rural maternity services in India, and to try a tell the outside world a little something about how we treat our women, and how we are trying to make it a little bit better by trying to provide innovative services even in such remote locations.

Anguri sat on the maternity table, beads of sweat building on her face. She sat motionless for a long time, seemingly oblivious to the nurses, her relatives, and to me. She was eventually coaxed to lie down, and was examined again by a doctor.

Soon afterwards, she started to moan loudly and call out for her god to save her. I have never heard a sound like that before and I am sure I’ll take it with me to the grave, as fresh as the day I heard it. The doctors, nurses and her relatives were doing their best to make this painless and quick for her. I was just trying to stay focused on shooting pictures.

In a short while, Anguri gave birth to a baby girl – her third child. I was still conflicted; partly privileged to be able to document such a delicate moment, and partly disgusted by what I had just done.

As the baby lay on the table, and Anguri lifted her head up slightly to look at her, I realized that she had been carrying this inside her for nine months. She dropped her head back down with a sigh after catching sight of the newborn. I didn’t understand how I should feel as a witness to this. Maybe it was too much for me, or maybe I was never meant to understand it in the first place.

She lay on the maternity table for a good hour after giving birth. After she was able to walk again, Anguri’s relative tenderly placed her hand on her back and led her to the tiny post-maternal ward to rest and recover for a couple of days, her new born baby by her side.

This facility is basic, but it is spotlessly clean and the staff do their best to really look after the women who come in. I suppose it’s better than Anguri giving birth in the field in which she was working before the health worker and ambulance brought her to the clinic. There is no doubt this is basic – but it’s a start, it’s sterile, and the chances of survival for the baby are much higher and the chances of complications for women like Anguri lower. This is where I felt that even though the clinic was small, the state government had the right approach. Just three years ago before this service started, women like Anguri would have had no choice but to give birth in fields and dusty roads, on dirt floors and rocky paths. This is a start.

I returned to Shivpuri a couple of days later, to a district hospital where local doctors and UNICEF had allowed me to shoot larger-scale rural maternity services. This was a lot more organized, and the same ambulance service was bringing rural women to the hospital to deliver their children. I was impressed at the scale of the operation – they were delivering somewhere between 50 to 80 babies a day, a remarkable number that otherwise would have been born in deplorable conditions in the outlying villages. The wards were spotlessly clean and meticulously managed.

Other state governments in India are now starting to sit up and take notice of the Madhya Pradesh model – having seen for myself the kinds of conditions into which a child could be born in deepest, darkest India, I can only applaud the effort being made to safely deliver children and take better care of mothers. Every woman who comes in to a clinic or hospital is tracked in an online database provided by UNICEF. Health workers pay follow-up visits and check on the health of the child and the mother, as well as educate women on the importance of breast feeding, immunization and the ABC’s of cleanliness at home.

In India, our women face enormous problems, especially in rural areas. This is small, but it’s a start.

I’m still not sure how I feel about having documented this story. I like the pictures, I think they’re strong and tell a story that people should pay attention to. But a small voice still tugs at me, and I sometimes feel guilty, like I intruded into an experience I was never supposed to be a part of.

Cliched as it may sound, I have walked away with at least one thing – a renewed respect for women after documenting Anguri’s journey to deliver her child.

(View a slideshow of images here)

There are a couple of stories I’ve been waiting to do since I heard that I’d be moving to India last year. Maybe it’s part nostalgia, part fascination, but I’m happy to be able to interpret these stories visually, finally.

The last time I was at a circus was some twenty-five years ago. My father brought me to the Bandra Reclamation in Mumbai to see it. I can’t remember which one it was, maybe the Apollo Circus? I remember the smell of fresh dirt and popcorn. There were fireworks. There was a dome where three people on motorbikes rode on the walls without crashing into each other. There were big cats; lions and tigers with some jumping through flaming hoops. I was wide-eyed and thrilled. I’ve dreamed of seeing and photographing that show for years.

Twenty-five years later, I came to the very same location, with a camera in hand. When the Rambo Circus pitched tent, I jumped at the chance to spend a few days documenting what Indian circuses are like. This place has been in my imagination for so long.

The performers and artists live in tents all around the giant performing tent. It’s been air-conditioned and fire-proofed now – a tactic designed to keep the dwindling audience numbers interested. India has changed a lot since I last sat ringside, now people are used to their creature comforts and safety.

I photographed the lead clown and his assistants as they got dressed and put on their make-up. I spent long hours chatting with them about what circus life was like over a cup of chai. It’s still old-fashioned and beautiful, they wear brightly colored, if dated, clothing and still let out a big clown smile when they are all made-up and ready for an act.

There are a range of performers – not just clowns, but acrobats, marksmen, animal trainers and their animals. Some performers have come from as far as Uzbekistan and Ethiopia to be part of Rambo’s two-hour extravaganza.

Performers walk tip toe on poles high above the circus ring; there are trapeze artists who perform in the dark wearing glow-in-the-dark clothing. There are performers who ride upside down on horses and others who do acrobatic stunts in a hoop which an elephant holds on its trunk.

I loved the color and the noise. The smell of the popcorn and dirt was still there, as were the amazing performances and slapstick comedy.

Looking around the tent on weekdays, I felt a little sad to see that the plastic seats were mostly empty. India has moved on. People are now sitting in air-conditioned multiplexes in malls watching movies from cushioned seats.

The owner of the circus told me that since India got tough with its animal rights laws, they haven’t been able to use monkeys, lions or tigers in the show; it’s made it difficult.

It shows that India is developing – for good in many ways. We can’t enlist wild animals in circuses like we once used to. But I can see why the audiences don’t come in such large numbers any more – the child in me wanted to see a lion or a tiger leap through a flaming hoop once again. I guess dogs just don’t have the same majesty, talented as they are.

The circus had the general sense of something that was going to disappear in the coming decade.

As I write, it occurred to me that many of the pictures that my colleague Danish Siddiqui and I have shot this year deal with a fast-disappearing India as the country marches on without looking over its shoulder to see what’s being left behind. We’ve photographed traveling rural tent cinemas where audience numbers are in decline, villages where there aren’t enough women for men, people who say they have been dispossessed of their land for nuclear power plants and steel factories.

Will the circus go the same way? As optimistic as I’d like to be about it, I know I’ll be surprised if the great Indian circus lasts more than a decade – or even a few years – in its present form.

So let me make an invitation to you, if you are ever in India, track down a circus near you and go and see it – you’ll make the owners happy, and get to see something that might not last too much longer, a last gasp of the faded glory that was pre-liberalization India.

They live, eat and sleep together, sharing mattresses on the bare floor of an empty room the way a married couple usually would. All but a handful are unmarried — a living example of India’s rapidly worsening gender imbalance.

Census data released earlier this year revealed there are 914 girls for every 1,000 boys born – a sharp fall since 2001 when the ratio was 933 girls for every 1000 boys.

“I have been looking to marry since I was 15,” said Vinodbhai Mehtaliya, a 23-year-old Siyani farmer.

A decades-old Indian preference for male children, who are seen as breadwinners, has led to the skewed ratio, aided by cheap ultrasound tests that assist in sex-selective abortions and female infanticide.

Siyani, in Gujarat, shows the decline. Here, some 350 men over the age of 35 are simply unable to get married — out of a total population of roughly 8,000.

“I’m lucky I got married 20 years ago” said 42-year-old Laljibhai Makwana, who works as a diamond polisher in one of the village’s small workshops. “If I was young here today I would never get married.”

The absence of women is obvious in the village’s bumpy, tiny lanes, where cows wander freely, especially in the evenings.

“There is little industrial development or infrastructure here, so people are poor and uneducated,” said Prashant Dave, the 41-year-old owner of a small flour mill who said he was lucky to be married.

“There are too few women and they leave for better prospects.”

Among the group of men living together, men perform all the tasks which are traditionally the domain of women: sweeping, cooking and cleaning.

The situation has also led to another reversal in custom, with some women and their parents asking for a lot of money from men to allow men to marry them, an inversion of the usual dowry system in which the woman’s family has to pay the man’s.

At sunset, as the day’s work ends, groups of unmarried men gather around the village tea stalls and tobacco shops, lacking wives and families to go home to.

“I’ve given up looking,” said Bharatbhai Khair, who is single at 45 and has been trying to marry for 25 years.

“The women want more money for marriage than I can afford.” here

(Editing by Elaine Lies)