Glimpses Of A Less Privileged Kolkata

ARKA DAS

Does it ever occur to you exactly how fortunate we are. living and enjoying life full-throttle? Do you ever realise the fact that while we relish so-called delicacies and sip the wine in the warmth of a cosy restaurant, in the same city, at the same time, thousands of hungry children scrounge for food from the garbage dumps?
Well, looks like not too many of us an: even interested in acknowledging such facts. But for Kurt Sauter, Rolans Masalskis, Arnis Shablovskis and many more back home in Switzerland and Latvia, the flipside to our apparently prospering society stood out like a ghastly wound. Contrary to what most people would resort to for helping the situation viz. raising funds, organising charity programmes, the works — what Sauler, his family and friends did was more necessary, more immediate.
They fed the hungry, organised makeshift street schools to teach children and their mothers English, collected warm clothes for those to whom a loincloth seems a luxury. Kurt's son Andre and his friend Christian Stanley — both five-star chefs at hotels in St. Moritz and Zurich — stood by his side. No, all this wasn't carried out to secure an evangelist's status. As Kurt would tell you, all they did was just sharing their privileges.
The ongoing exhibition of Andre and Christian's photography at the West Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts is both a testament and a documentation of the efforts this handful of people put in to better the lives of those who are deprived of the privileges.
Being a top-notch photo-journalist, moving with screen stars, models, designers, Kurt Sauter didn't really need to turn his life around the way he did.
But his very first visit to Kolkata in 1996 made him think about his own privileged situation. "All this while. I was leading a satisfied life, making money, raising children, hankering after material things. But I wasn't really happy. The idea of sharing privileges took root at that point," states the affable Swiss photographer. "I've been so fortunate that my son Andre and his friends realised my needs to do what I've been doing."
Sauter doesn't have to elaborate: Andre and Christian's black-and-white photographs, along with the haunting strains of Rolans' flamenco guitar, portray the precious moments of interaction between the two communities.
It is a joy to see Andre and Christian in these photographs — more akin to punk-rockers than gourmet maestros — mingling with homeless children at a small central Kolkata eatery, sharing a moment's conversation with aged street-dwellers at Kalighat. or pushing the food-vending cart through a busy Mirza Ghalib Street. The images reflect a purity of joy most of us have never experienced.

Hindustan Times