Raghu Rai (1942-2026) | A thousand photographs and a million words

Language may be used to obfuscate the truth. An image never lies. Raghu Rai’s countless images often with their quiet optimism and occasionally brooding pessimism, never did. A testimony to a country as much at ease with the gentle religiosity of the eternal refugee, Dalai Lama and the endlessly healing Mother Teresa as the silent eloquence of a frame of Satyajit Ray film or the stately presence of Indira Gandhi captured in a frame sitting in her office, signing some papers even as her Ministers, all men, stand around her.

Then there were timeless frames of a blind Muslim beggar finding his way leaning on the shoulder of a mentally-challenged Hindu girl and another one of a chaiwala precariously perched at the gate of a moving train with his tray, cups and saucers.