Backyard beauties

Famous children’s book writer Frances Hodgson Burnett in his book The Secret Garden narrates the story of Mary and how she finds the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine. Aruna HarPrasad has some similar stories to narrate through her photographs of interesting creatures that reside in her garden. The recently concluded exhibition in the capital titled “Wild & Free in Kas-a-Bebinca” captures Aruna’s journey of 12 years of setting up a wild garden at her home, Kas-a-Bebinca, in the village of Assagao in Goa. Now that garden, spread over an acre, is a little ecosystem in itself. There are insects, reptiles, langurs and eight resident dogs.

“The idea of setting up a wild garden came to me from my favourite artist Salvador Dali,” shares Aruna and narrates, “My husband and I visited Spain a long time ago when Dali was still alive. I was fascinated by his work and always wanted to meet him. We were in the area where he lived, and I knocked at his door — an old, rugged looking door — a shabby-looking old gardener opened the door. I introduced myself, and informed him I am here to meet artist Dali. He called me inside but we couldn’t communicate properly because of language barrier. What I saw was mesmerising, the gardener was throwing seeds everywhere. It was an unkempt garden with all kinds of bushes, plants and weeds growing. As he ushered me back, I told him that he looked very familiar. He smiled as he closed the door, that is when I registered he was Dali himself, and what he showed me was almost like a fantasy land.”

Aruna, who started her career as a filmmaker, and later started her own production house — Kas Movie Makers, has worked on several international feature films such as Gandhi, and won awards for her documentaries. Talking about the shift from filmmaking to photography, she says, “I used to do recce for many directors, and they always used to ask about the angle from which I took the shot. My angles became the reference shot for many movies and commercials. That is when I realised that photography is not about the camera or lens one uses, but the angle from which it is captured. An image gets a whole new dimension or meaning from the angle it is shot.”

The exhibition featured around 70 works of insects, caterpillars, butterflies, langurs and frogs. “Its focus is not on the bigger, more boisterous animals like lions and tigers, which are considered more majestic, but on the smaller, colourful creatures who bring so much beauty in the world. There is an entire world growing in the shadow of the thicket and that is the world you will see in this exhibition,” points out Aruna.

Her images of the creatures in her garden are intimate, without the sheen of professional wildlife photography. She shares, “The colours on the wings of a butterfly, the garden bug with a pattern on the back or the frog with an almost-translucent skin — none of the works on display has been colour corrected. I have ensured that what you see is what I captured. The idea is to celebrate the beauty of the small wonders around us.”