Most of my life has been spent in either Doordarshan studios or on stage and in the wings of an auditorium.
It is in the wings of Kamani Auditorium, where some of the most prestigious music performances take place, there is a specific table, chair and a table lamp for the compere (the only auditorium in Delhi which extends this courtesy to the compere) where I generally am during a show.
It is here, in the carly 80s that 1 1 observed a man of slender built, with a huge camera in hand, quietly go about clicking maestros, dancers and performances. He was there at every important and again, not so important event if the artiste was good.
Over the years, every expression, every emotion, be it a glance or a flick of the hand, every nuance of the artiste has been very artistically and aesthetically been captured by the lens, and preserved and immortalised by the maestro himself Avinash Pasricha.
His tryst with photography started very early in life. His father managed a photo studio in Connaught Place since 1930 and then opened his own studio on Janpath, New Delhi, in 1938 where Avinash Pasricha grew up watching him do studio portraits in a very meticulous fashion.
Those were early days, when he planned joining his father more as a business partner than as a photographer. He found it vastly entertaining, sitting behind a desk and attending to customers in English.
But destiny had a different path chartered out for him. He joined USIS, American Embassy as a Photo Lab Assistant in 1957. He then joined SPAN magazine became its Photo Editor in 1960. He worked here from 1960-1997.
As a photo-journalist he was constantly looking for pictures, pictures with a purpose. According to him, each picture must tell a story....without words.
It was sheer chance that his cousin took him to cover a four-day musicl festival, The Vishnu Digambar Jayanthi being organized by Gandharva Maha Vidyalaya at Sapru House, New Delhi, in 1966.
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