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“His name was Rampukar, but he didn’t tell me that. Only a few days later I found out in a newspaper report. At the time, I couldn’t even ask him his name,” he recalls. Press Trust of IndiaAtul Yadav, the chief photography correspondent for “Couldn’t Say Much Further”udhar (there) ‘, which is where I was trying to go. “
On Monday, Yadav was driving through the Nizamuddin area of Delhi, when he saw Rampukar Pandit (as identified by the Hindi newspaper) Hindustan) barely able to hold your phone to your ear. “It was around 5.15 pm when I saw him sitting on the side of the road, just before the Yamuna bridge. I stopped my car and stopped near it,” he says. First commentand added: “Then I lowered the window and photographed the man before going out to see how he was.”
Photograph of Atul Yadav from Rampukar Pandit. PTI
Moved by the heartbreaking visual he had just captured on his Nikon D4s camera, Yadav went to ask about the man’s distressed situation. “His son passed away and was unable to go with him. When I asked him where he had to go, he repeatedly pointed in the general direction of the Yamuna Bridge, saying ‘udhar“explains Yadav, who remembers Rampukar later stating that he had to go somewhere in Uttar Pradesh.
“While I was talking to him, some policemen came and asked me what was going on,” says Yadav, “I explained and offered to drive him across the state border, but they told me not to let him in my car. they said yes”. be on the way and they would make sure I got home. “Later it would happen that udhar In fact, it was Bariarpur in the Begusarai of Bihar. According to him Hindustan According to the report, Ramkumar used to work in Nawada, Delhi, and upon learning of his son’s death, he tried to return home. Unfortunately, he had been detained at the UP Gate for three days before he was allowed to make the trip home.
Photographing the tragedy
When it comes to documenting human suffering and hopelessness, photographs like Nick Ut’s The terror of warRichard Drew’s The falling man, Raghu Rai Burial of an unknown child and Arko Datta’s photograph of Qutubuddin Ansari comes to mind instantly. It is for good reason, after all, that these disturbing images have come to define the tragedies with which they are associated: the Vietnam War, the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Bhopal gas tragedy, and the Godhra riots, respectively.
Yadav’s image from four days ago is no different. “There is no plan for this type of photography,” explains the PTI Photojournalist when asked if concepts like composition, framing, and lighting come to mind when trying to capture the tragedy. “I stopped, took a quick burst of images and then got out of the car,” he adds, “I couldn’t even lift the camera while talking to him, not caring about taking more photos of him.” “
Rampukar’s photo is far from Yadav’s only visual documentation of the immigration crisis so far.
A helpless pregnant mother who cannot hold her crying child and continue her journey. @PTI_News @PMOIndia @pankaj_shankar @nistula @PIB_India @PIB_Patna @UPGovt @amanthejourno @vijaysatokar @ABPNews @aajtak @CovidIndiaSeva @IRSnews @ArvindKejriwal @ BJP4India @INCIndia @yadavakhilesh pic.twitter.com/raCP4z1Pde
– Atul Yadav (@atulpti) May 14, 2020
“I took a photo of this very pregnant woman walking with her family on the side of the road,” she says of the image above, “she had stopped to rest because she was clearly exhausted, but so was her young son, who was crying because she will carry it. ” But his is not an isolated case, he points out. “One night I was driving down the highway and I met a group of people, some of whom were barefoot, who were heading home in a row by the side of the road in the dark.”
Migrants walk on the Delhi-Meerut highway to return to their places of origin @pankaj_shankar @nistula @PTI_News @myogiadityanath @yadavakhilesh @AkhileshPSingh @PIB_India @UPGovt @CovidIndiaSeva @PMOIndia @ kpmaurya1 @katiyar_rajesh pic.twitter.com/XM6lSHKtoK
– Atul Yadav (@atulpti) May 10, 2020
When it comes to moving images, here is one that needs no elaboration:
A @physically challenged person leaves after buying liquor at a wine store @pankaj_shankar @nistula @Spirit @CovidIndiaSeva @PTI_News @PIB_India @ArvindKejriwal @msisodia @ManojTiwariMP @DelhiBJP @AamAadmiParty @INCIndia @ BJP4India @MoHFW_INDIA pic.twitter.com/7OKdcr0q9Q
– Atul Yadav (@atulpti) May 5, 2020
‘I have never seen anything like this’
Throughout his career, Yadav has been assigned worldwide and is no stranger to covering tragedies and disasters. “I covered the 2004 tsunami in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, the 2005 earthquake in Jammu and Kashmir and the floods in the region just under a decade later,” he says, “but I have never seen anything like this. [ongoing coronavirus crisis] before; it’s a very different kind of challenge. “
Past disasters were different for two key reasons, he says. “First, in all the tragedies in the past years, even though there was a lot of suffering, people knew it would come to an end after a while and it did. Second, whether it was during an earthquake or a flood, people were always stumbling” . to help in any way they can. “Having no idea when the coronavirus pandemic will end and when life can begin to return to normal is a huge departure from the past.
“This leads to the accumulation of a lot of fear because nobody knows what to do or what will happen the next day,” he reasons, adding: “And although it is painful to see people suffer, you are simply not allowed to help on several occasions.” Referring to the need to distance himself socially and avoid contact, he says, “Even if you want to give someone a packet of cookies, you should put them on the ground and step back so that he / she can come pick you up. It’s heartbreaking.”
You will have a hard time finding a more appropriate word to describe the ongoing crisis encapsulated in Rampukar’s photo.
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