Aashvi Agarwal - a 14-year-old student from Kolkata's La Martiniere for Girls school brought Delhi to a standstill when she launched the most exhaustive and iconic book on Ayodhya on August 3 at the Bikaner House in Delhi.
Aashvi Agarwal at the book launch event.
Launched just days before India's 77th Independence Day and what was an incredibly proud moment for her parents Hemant and Nidhi Agarwal, the book "The Promised Land" for the first time looked at the sea of faith that inundated the small town of Ayodhya soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Ram mandir.
Agarwal, who studies in the 10th standard looked at the human emotions that ensued after the opening and has documented through over 300 photographs the ocean of people that visited the Mandir in the first five months since its opening, merging it with Ayodhya's architecture, traditions, and heritage.
Agarwal has been mentored by one of India's most powerful visual storytellers Kounteya Sinha who just recently won the Nelson Mandela Leadership Award at the University of Oxford. He is a multi-award-winning journalist and photographer.
Aashvi Agarwal with Kounteya Sinha.
Kounteya handheld and trained Aashvi in the art of storytelling through a camera - teaching her the nuances of human emotion from scratch - over the six months under his landmark programme called LOF - leap of faith where he is creating a generation of youngsters that achieve impossible milestones three to four decades ahead of their time.
The biggest stalwarts from India's corridors of power - in an unprecedented show of strength - from the most varied fields - sports to cinema, diplomacy to arts, governance to literature - came under a single roof for the first time ever. As Bikaner House burst in the seams, hundreds of India's biggest names pouring in beyond capacity, the list of guests of honour included:
Amitabh Kant - iconic bureaucrat and India’s G20 sherpa, Sanjev Sanyal - leading economist and member of the prime minister's economic council.
Aditi Rao Hydari - the heartthrob of the nation and multi award winning actor.
Mary Kom - one of India's greatest sporting heroes, Padmashree and Olympian medalist.
Muzaffar Ali Ji - Padmashree, iconic director and an institution in himself.
Bhaichung Bhutia - Padmashree and the greatest son of Indian football.
Divya Dutta - one of Indian cinema's most powerful and revered actors.
Gul Panag - actor par excellence and a brilliant photographer herself.
Sanjeev Kapoor - Padmashree and India's most renowned chef.
Bilquis Mir - the first Indian to be appointed a judge at the Olympics and a kayaking and canoeing hero of India who has come all the way from Kashmir for this evening.
Yatindra Mishra Ji - writer and poet, The Prince of Ayodhya.
Barnali Chattopadhyay - one of India's most iconic vocalists and the voice of Heeramandi.
Sauraseni Maitra - Tollywood's top movie star.
General G. D. Bakshi
Indian cricketer Anjum Chopra
The evening also saw the who's who from the royal families pour in including Nawab Kazim Ali Khan of Rampur, Yuvraaj Yatinder Mishra of Ayodhya, Maharaj Kumar Ranjeet Sinh and Maharaj Kumari Kalpana Kumari of Wankaner, Kanwarani Kamini Singh of Seohara and Kanwarani Ritu Singh of J&K among others.
According to Agarwal "The construction of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya was an event of significant cultural and religious importance for India. This book does not look at the history of the land or its tryst with conflict or controversy. It is a pure representation visually - through photographs the faith of the people who visited the site in millions soon after its opening. It is a pure human story of emotion and devotion".
Agarwal who spent a lot of time photographing in Ayodhya along with Sinha also says that the opening inspired her to talk about how faith plays an important role in the lives of each individual and how people see it from different perspectives.
The book - a series of black and white photographs has been called by one of India's top art curator and critic Uma Nair as "historic and unparalleled".
In the preface she says "To expect a 14-year-old student to decipher the nuances of a subject as complex and mature as this would usually be far from reality. And even if it is done, to expect the storytelling to be so supremely powerful, so layered, so humane and above all so gripping would be near to impossible. But Aashvi Agarwal has done what is impossible - with the warmest eye - tell the story of one of India's greatest moments in decades with absolute elan - a book that will go into the annals of history as iconic and pathbreaking".
Nair added "To steer clear of any politics, any political affiliation or personal agenda and produce a narrative that is completely human, searching out raw emotions of faith in the moment of its birth in a country as secular as India is a masterclass in storytelling and documentation".
According to Nair, these images merge a personal style with Indian spiritual and cultural heritage, resulting in an album of memories composed of an aesthetically resonant fusion of the two.
"Aashvi’s debut reveals a unique style that is indeed a distinctive blend of traditional narrative techniques with modern style human graphics, creating a fresh and innovative testimony of the magic of monochromatic, cinematic moments in the city of Ayodhya at the Ram Lalla temple. Aashvi captures simple humans as individual, visual characters creating a charismatic choreography, rather than components of a whole. She masters formal narratives naturally even as she explores the flowing rhythms of this millennium in this holy city," according to Nair.
Sinha who mentored Agarwal says "Documenting Ayodhya or a human congregation of that gigantic size and nature isn't for the faintest of hearts. Aashvi took to it like a fish to water. It was a hidden hunger that emerged like a voracious beast - the shutter didn't stop. You will see the result in this book".
Sinha praised Aashvi's parents Hemant and Nidhi Agarwal at the opening and said “I wish every single child had parents like you two. To a father so committed to his daughter and a man so committed to his country”.
The brilliant decor of the evening was done by the Founder of KOI and one of India's most phenomenal creative minds Oiendrila Ray Kapur.
This book has been designed by Mumbai’s top artists and the creative genius duo of Aniket Mitra and Priyam Agarwal who just recently designed the entire visual language and graphics of the Anant Ambani wedding.
Aashvi's journey also saw some of India's top photographers and filmmakers from Sinha's team help her hone her skills - Rana Pandey, Debasis Kundu, Nilayan Chatterjee, Snehadeep Das, Nishan Das, Arnab Ganguly, Soumya Karmakar, Shubarup Sadhukhan, Nihal Jaiswal and Debmalya Das.
