Shyam Tekwani

They were still shooting when I raised the camera. The last two “jawans” (infantrymen) had not yet fallen. My hand found the aperture ring: f/8 for depth, 1/250 to freeze motion. Fujichrome 400, because that’s what was loaded. The technical decisions came faster than the moral ones. Midday light that admitted no mercy, though mercy was not the word that occupied me then. I was thinking of exposure, of aperture, of how to hold a lane inside a frame without losing its edges.