Just before a little fern leaf, creeping up a foliage-covered Himalayan mountain path, is crushed underfoot and trampled into oblivion, someone’s camera lens zooms in on it, freezing its image forever. Just after the sun has set over the sea at Kanyakumari, someone’s camera shutter clicks to capture the moment of descending darkness. Everyone knew Ranajit Singha (1937-2001) as poet and folklorist. But an exhibition of his photographic work (September 24-27, Gaganendra Pradarshashala), revealed that he was also a sensitive photographer, who used his poetic sensibility to focus on the extraordinariness of ordinary things and the humility of things high and mighty.

So in little green-gold fern leaves, glistening like emeralds in the sun, he saw the grandeur of glittering gems. And the magnificence of the sun’s last rays melting into a vast ocean is transformed into one magical, if spiritual moment. These are only two examples of the nearly hundred photographs put on display by his wife Madhuri Singha. Incidentally, it was her Zikon camera, received as a wedding gift in 1963, with which the poet started out as photographer. And she is the subject of many of the photographs. But there are others — both black and white and colour — spanning subjects as diverse as landscapes and literary figures, mountains and morning joggers.