I remember taking a picture of my mother standing before her childhood home in Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh, three years back on film. The house which was called 'Kamala Nivas' in her name, was to be demolished soon and I knew how much this photo would mean to her 10 years down, when the place would be no more. It made me realise the importance of taking pictures for one of the simplest of its purposes - to preserve memories.

I have always known that my time in London is ephemeral and have wanted to document my stay from day one. As its almost coming to an end, it has become crucial for me to create a narrative of my life in the city through memories, for me to look back. The foremost ideal of my photography has come to serve this purpose.

I have had a film camera with me for the last 4 years, including for the majority of my stay in London. It takes me around a month to shoot and develop a roll of 36 shots. Over time I have observed how the delay in immediacy in looking at the pictures, changes your relationship with it. More than thinking of the picture at the moment when I take the shot, it compels me to look at it in retrospect, serving as an exercise in experiencing what the passage of time does to a photograph. This attribute of film photography has helped me understand the kind of images that would hold significance.

One of my favourite places in London is the steps by the Regents Canal on Granary Square, Kings Cross. Every time I walked from the station to the steps, I pass by a bridge over the canal from where the steps present themselves in their entirety. The view gives me a momentary glimpse of all the times I have spent on it. I figured with time, the memory of it would epitomise everything Granary Square has meant to me. I had to take a picture of it, for this simple photograph of how I see it almost every day, would matter over time.

My parents recently visited me at my home in London on their maiden trip to Europe. Their stay was something I had not dared to think about one year ago, when I was living with them in Chennai, struggling to make ends meet. This trip for me was a representation of the turn around of things in this one year. I wanted a tangible certainty of my parent's presence, capturing full portraits of them on film at places that had meaning to me in London, photographs that would stand as a testimony to the importance of the trip. 10 years down, looking back on the picture of my parents wearing trench coats, standing at the door of my home in Camden Town, would be the pinnacle of my memory.

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Photo Essay, published in Scroll.in

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Documentary Film, commissioned by USAID

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Photo Story, published in scroll.in