Men – Pondicherry, India.

It has been a while agin that I went for shooting and hence, I’m again puling a photograph from my archive. Hope to get better at shooting someday by managing my time better.
Anyway, I photographed them couple of years back in Pondicherry, during one of those early morning visit to the rocky beach. Well, honestly one doesn’t need to go anywhere to see this kind of discussion on any and almost topic by morning walker groups. Even i used to go out regularly till my college days where many known and unknown faces used to get together, including myself and used to share a lovely bonding between the group.

I think among all the men that meet during their regular walk or exercises, I would divide the theme into 2 broad categories; One before the newspapers are delivered (like the above) and the others with newspaper, and preferable a tea or coffee in hand. I always found the pre newspaper discussions to be more close to heart than the post newspaper arrival discussions, where the theme changes as per the headlines, and eventually everybody adding expert comments around all sorts of local and global issues. Having said that, I have a huge respect for the early risers and have seen many productive discussions as well as came across many great minds in our locality, whom otherwise I would have never known. Most of these people usually love the nature and used to wake up to feel the fresh air and early sun rays and not compelled by medical problems like diabetes, losing weight etc.

Well, but the sad part is with the change lifestyle, presently these “Addas” (short meetings) are dying down too, with most of the people rushing in the morning hours are trying to address some health issues . They are all walking fast and trying to walk even faster but mostly alone with the rush to get back to work as soon as possible, missing the feel of morning “addas” with sweet tea and newspaper.