Photographer Karishma Pranjivan keeps going back to Rajasthan, and keeps pointing her camera at the things everyone else walks past.
Karishma Pranjivan has been to Rajasthan more than once, and it still gets to her. “Rajasthan specifically has always been a magical place for me,” she says. “No matter how many times I go, I still can’t get over its majesty and ethos.”
The majesty is what most visitors come for: the forts and palaces of India’s largest state by area. Pranjivan’s camera kept drifting somewhere else. “I really tried to capture the spirit of each scene and place we visited as authentically as possible by focusing on the details that caught my attention most,” she says. “I loved the really mundane and ordinary things, capturing everyday moments or seemingly boring details was something I was just inherently drawn to.”
So the pictures that follow are of a peanut seller’s cart with a smoking clay pot in the middle of it, a marble bowl of marigold petals in an empty courtyard, two women talking in a lane, goats on a doorstep.
That is where she finds the colour. “I believe that traditional dress as well as architecture is what really sets Rajasthan apart in regards to colour,” she says. “It’s so rich in history that you can really feel as though you’ve stepped back into time walking around in almost any city or town. It has this regal and almost fanciful charm which you can really get lost in.”
She spent her days wandering the streets of Udaipur and Jodhpur, the city known for the blue of its old houses, and stayed in a former palace turned hotel in the hills outside Udaipur. “The hotel is perched on top of a hill which overlooks the Rajasthani Village of Delwara,” she says, “so you really feel as though you’re immersed in it all.”
The last frame in the set is a sign from the Archaeological Survey of India, white letters on navy: “Sustain your heritage and feel glorious.” It is exactly the kind of seemingly boring detail she says she was drawn to.
“Colour is something which is synonymous with India as a whole,” she says, “but I definitely think that colour in Rajasthan is unlike any other region.”
Words by Braeden Alexander. Photography by Karishma Pranjivan.
