‘Dance of Colours’ (ART)

Right from the beginning, they said I was bound to have a career in photography – reporting from Balochistan, understudy for Raghu Rai, doing portraiture of Bollywood stars. You're not supposed to remember events when you're that young, but I do: a newspaperman had come to our house to talk to my dad about his music. He had come with a photographer, a woman with a huge, clunky Leica camera around her neck – with a big red button. The Leica people, evidently, liked big red buttons just as much as 16-month-old babies did, and when she leaned down to show me her camera – pop!

I don't remember the whole event, of course, but I do remember that blinding white explosion. I also remember when she came back a few days later – her face had evidently seared itself into my brain at the same time as the flash had gone off. Although she didn't have her camera along this time, she did have something else: a black-and-white portrait of a smudged, pudgy little hand, and my left eye off in the background, crystal clear. From out of that blinding light: me.