Published by Fw:Books, Bharat Sikka’s Ripples in the Pond weaves documentary sensibilities with a sense of the fantastical to portray the daily life of Makharda, an Indian town increasingly threatened by industrial pollution.
It was by chance that Bharat Sikka first came across Makharda, on the outskirts of Kolkata. Invited there to lead a workshop, the photographer was immediately struck by the town’s timeless, melancholic atmosphere. The scenery reminded him of his childhood and the popular television series Malgudi Days, which famously captured the quiet rhythms of rural India.
But the initial nostalgia soon gave way to a growing unease. A true natural haven, Makharda is encircled by industries steadily encroaching on its land, threatening the very future of its inhabitants. What had begun as a photographic ode to the past, steeped in the town’s quiet serenity, shifted tone. Taking the form of an old Indian administrative file—a format that at first glance seems to freeze the narrative in gentle nostalgia—the book reveals a more critical perspective: a quiet indictment of industrial pressure on rural life.
Avoiding a strictly documentary approach, Sikka drew on the realm of the fantastical to create a symbolic narrative around the pollution consuming the town. The book embraces a form of magical realism, subtly altering reality to expose its deeper truths.
In Ripples in the Pond, water emerges as the central character. Much like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, the reader enters the narrative through the silhouette of a water bucket on the cover. They are welcomed by the many ponds that dot Makharda. During his own explorations, the photographer noticed an iridescent sheen on their surface : an oil slick. Water is the first casualty of industrial activity. In this narrative, it also becomes a haunting force embodying a lethal modernity, seeping between images of everyday life to emerge as an ever-present threat.
The book is pervaded by a disquieting atmosphere that disrupts the town’s apparent tranquility. The quiet beauty of everyday moments, the lush natural surroundings, and the solemn faces of the inhabitants are disturbed by digital glitches contaminating some of the prints. These visual distortions mirror the degradation of the landscape itself : photography no longer merely documents the disaster, it experiences it.
Yet these glitches are as much poetry as they are pollution. In this subtle tension lies the book’s power. Blurring the line between beauty and menace, just as it straddles the boundary between the fantastic and the real, Sikka’s work transforms mere observation into an experience both captivating and disquieting.
Part homage to the past, part ecological fable, Ripples in the Pond uses the codes of magical realism to expose the industrial threats facing rural India. Moving beyond a contemplative portrait of Makharda, Bharat Sikka offers a visual meditation on the fragility of our landscapes in the face of relentless modernity.
Bharat Sikka — Ripples in the Pond
Published by Fw:Books
Softcover
152 pages
26 x 32,5 cm
First edition
2025
