“Being creative, developing the ability to love and becoming human are synonymous. Whenever we fails to be creative, we lose the ability to love. We begin to ‘use’ a fellow human being instead of reaching out to her. We become aliens to ourselves, to the society and nature, we become  cruel,”
Yeshawantha Chitthala, one of the greatest novelists of India.

“In today’s tumultuous world if ‘love’ is still alive, it’ll express itself in the primal nature and when we confront the brutality that is within us”.
S. Diwakar, writer.

Over the last few decades conflicts have increased exponentially across the world – environmental, economic, religious, linguistic – in every facet of life. Nearly 8 billion of us are crowding the earth and these conflicts are threatening to cause major devastation in the near to mid term future. What could be the reason? (This line was written in 2019)

As Noam Chomsky says “In a way, all of this explains the economic devastation produced by contemporary capitalism that you underscore in your question above. Really existing capitalism – RECD for short (pronounced “wrecked”) – is radically incompatible with democracy. It seems to me unlikely that civilization can survive really existing capitalism and the sharply attenuated democracy that goes along with it. Could functioning democracy make a difference? Consideration of nonexistent systems can only be speculative, but I think there’s some reason to think so. Really existing capitalism is a human creation, and can be changed or replaced.”

It’s a fact that today just 1% of earth’s population has cornered 90% of the wealth. This coupled with our tunnel visioned definition of success, has pushed the growth of RECD through the stratosphere and spawned a frenetic race to garner wealth. It feels as if the entire world is chasing a mirage. This phenomenon has placed enormous and unsustainable pressure on our resources – water, air, soil and minerals. Hence when the basis/fundamentals of our society today itself seems to be unsustainable, how do we find sustainability in any of the elements?

This is a visual exploration and a developing commentary on the conflicts caused and that plaguing us, stories of those who are deeply effected by it, of who have consciously shunned it and those who have embraced it. I hope to explore RECD through my photography over the next few years, slowly.