Rohit Chawla’s latest book is about Goa, isolation and the company of dogs

The sea appears like an everexpanding sphere, alternating between shades of steel, silver and grey under the dark monsoon sky. Droplets of rain break the surface like tiny jewels. Two lone figures stand at the edge of the water. The human, with a hat on head and a fishing rod in hand, seems to be lost in thought. The black dog, with a medallion around its neck, on the other hand, is entirely focused on its human companion—calm but watchful. There is a sense of quiet companionship between the two. There is a poetic, almost paintinglike feel to this image. The photograph stays with you long after you have finished poring over Rohit Chawla’s latest book, Rain Dogs (HarperCollins India).

“(These) moving photographs of dogs in Goa during the covid era are a reminder that dogs are indeed poems with paws, and that those paws can leave their imprint on the hardest human heart,” writes politician-author Shashi Tharoor about the images in a blurb in the book. This series of images had rather serendipitous beginnings. In 2021, when people started retreating indoors during the covid-19 pandemic, Goa-based Chawla chose to seek refuge under the monsoon skies. He embarked on long walks on solitary beaches, bereft of tourists and locals, to get some exercise and break the monotony of the isolation. On several such sojourns, he found company in stray dogs. And that’s how these photos came about. “I was trying to form a frame around my vulnerability, my disparate thoughts, my inability to articulate those thoughts even to myself. Thus these images are the quietest, most introspective work I have ever done,” Chawla writes in the introduction.

The book is an ode to stray dogs, or streeties. He takes umbrage to the connotations associated with “stray” in common parlance. According to Chawla, to stray literally means to move away from a predetermined course of sorts, and to find that appendaged to the Indie dog is a travesty of sorts. “It creates a thrust of ‘unwanted, disowned, unloved’ on these innocent dogs. We use that word carelessly in a hope to absolve most of us of our guilt in discarding them,” he says.

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It is a thought shared by many authors and poets, ranging from Jeet Thayil and Santosh Desai to Anuja Chauhan and Javed Akhtar, who have contributed text to this book. Author Indu Balachandran writes in one chapter: “...the Indie dog smells of gutsy outdoor adventure, of innate instincts still intact, and the unbridled joy of being a dog— and nothing but a dog. She’s like the comfort of homecooked dal, rather than the ‘lentils fricasseed with rare oriental spices’ in the menu of a starred restaurant… .”

The format of images interspersed with text is new to Chawla, and was something that evolved with the idea of the book. Thconventional coffee-table format seemed past its expiry date for a subject such as this, which necessitated a certain intimacy in its physical form as well. The grey seascapes and the undersaturated tonality of the imagery express the quiet vulnerability that these forgotten dogs evoke within the artist. The title Rain Dogs came from Jeet Thayil’s poetic head. “Manu Joseph, the pop psychoanalyst of all things Indian, wrote a perfect unconventional foreword, and 30 other writers—united by their love for dogs—added an unpretentious gravitas to this love letter to dogs of all shapes and sizes,” elaborates Chawla.

The photographer has been shooting portraits for the past 40 years, and usually exercises a certain amount of control over the process. However, the images in Rain Dogs have a great degree of happenstance. The unpredictability of the period is reflected in the act of making these photos, with tempestuous seas, monsoon rain, and the dogs having their own rhythms. Often, the pouring rain would make the camera inoperable. Sometimes he would stand in the downpour for hours to get that moment of a dog reaching a particular spot. “The monsoon in Goa is a beast of its own, and I wanted to create quiet imagery during those bleak times as a record. Soon photographing the dogs against the landscape became a necessity of sorts for me—a therapy, if you will. I had lost someone close to me in the pandemic and this bond with the dogs sustained me,” says Chawla.

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Proceeds from the book and exhibitions of photographs will go towards registered animal charities in India. Although some of the images have a human presence, it is the dogs that take centre stage. According to Chawla, humans are a happy adjunct in this graphic milieu—their presence at times only reinforces the loving contact with dogs that sustained some of us during the pandemic. Most of the images emerged from chance encounters. For instance, the photograph on the book cover features a solitary migrant worker from Bihar, whom Chawla chanced upon one morning gazing at the horizon at Dream Beach, Vagator. “Though I mostly photographed him in the morning, one day all the elements came together—a fishing boat, the dog that mirrored his posture, and a portentous monsoon sky—to document life and longing in such bleak times,” he adds. “These images are records of those magic moments that happen to photographers rarely in their lives.

Given that the Goan landscape features as one of the central protagonists in the images, it was only apt that an exhibition of these photographs opened at the local Aguad Museum earlier this year. The show is likely to travel across the country in the coming days. “The images also paint a picture of the magnificent Goan monsoon, which cleanses and rejuvenates most, who are lucky enough to spend time here during that season. I make it a point to return home and put all my assignments and travel on hold for this special time of the year. The monsoon palette of Goa is unlike what you see in any part of the tropics,” he says.