Street Noir

I took these photos last year, while tinkering with my new Sony Alpha native black and white settings. I work downtown, in the old central business district of the city, an early 20th century creation largely of British planners and Indian labor. Some of the buildings are pre-World War II stuff. The front office to my newspaper used to be a nightclub for WWII soldiers called "Funnels." With its teakwood flooring, I can believe it. The streets outside are a godawful mess but one thing that an Indian street can never accused of is dullness.

I miss taking these kinds of images. It's all strictly work from home now. Restaurants and shops have mostly gone bust. The streets lack their usual verve. Covid-19 has taken care of business real good.

In fact, I'm not sure I'll be able to take such pictures in a long while, maybe not till mid-2021, the way things are shaping up. This country is caught in throes of the novel coronavirus, and is paying for decades of poor planning and certainly, an out-of-control population,

The epidemiologists say the virus will go wherever people are susceptible. Heck, India's masses mean there is always someone susceptible.