When the ruler of Sharjah, Dr Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed Al-Qasimi, and his wife visited Kerala late in 2017, there was one person in Pathanamthitta who looked at the press coverage with a tinge of nostalgia. Sindhu, who owns a photo studio in Konni, Pathanamthitta, reminisces about how she used to be a regular invitee to the palace to take photographs of the royal family.
“To this day, I have no idea why I was chosen from among the scores of women photographers in Sharjah. I was called to the palace to take portraits of the Sultan’s wife and daughter, which I did although nervous and overwhelmed. In the years that followed, I was called several more times and was fortunate to be treated with respect as a professional,” muses Sindhu.
A native of Lakkoor village in Pramadam panchayat, Pathanamthitta, Sindhu had no intention of becoming a photographer. “It was pure coincidence’, she says about the circumstances that led a plain village girl to land up in a rather unconventional job. “One family friend, Manoj, owned a studio in Konni and I started working there as a receptionist. Out of curiosity, I learned how to take passport-size photo. I was doing this for some time when the opportunity to work in a studio in Sharja came my way.”
Sindhu was still relatively a novice in the profession when she landed in Sharjah. But she enthusiastically picked up the nuances of the profession, even while finding a foothold in the foreign land. “Only after I went to Sharjah did I get the opportunity to cover a wedding. It was an exhilarating experience, quite exotic for someone like me. Over the years, I went on to shoot the weddings of Arab, Egyptian and Pakistani couples.”
Somewhere in the midst of all this, the young Malayali photographer was singled out to take the family pictures of the royal household. “I was all jittery”, remembers Sindhu. “Thinking back, I laugh at the picture of myself in that palace, with my red bindi and sindhoor.”
She bid adieu to the NRI life and came back to Pathanamthitta in 2011. She is happy that her studio in Konni is doing well, although it keeps her busy most days. Husband Raveendran Nair and son Harikrishnan, who is doing BBA, help her out with the running of the studio.
“People are still amused when they see a woman photographer shooting weddings or other events. Some people ask me if it is a hobby. But photography was never a hobby to me. It came to me as a means to lead a dignified life and I embraced it whole-heartedly,” says Sindhu. But the laurels reserved for the pioneering expatriate woman photographer from Kerala has no takers other than Sindhu.
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