The photographs by Waswo X. Waswo in INDIA POEMS: THE PHOTOGRAPHS (Gallerie, Rs 1,750) intend to transport the viewer to a “nebulous Otherworld”, from which men and women with wizened faces and cows with doleful eyes stare out serenely. Rajahs take elephant rides in Jaipur, hooded figures hold eternal council on the ghats of Pushkar and a rickety dog has only its shadow for company (right). It is that Incredible Indiyah seen once in a dream and lost since in a nightmare of globalization. Waswo’s eye for the exotic seems to have specialized in picking out gorgeous young men who remind one of the punkha-puller with his “divine physique” in E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India. The photograph on the left, entitled ‘Rupesh with a medallion’, is an instance of this fascination.