Watchmen
India has 7 million security guards, five times more than police officers and with an industry set to boom further in this decade of exponential infrastructural development, a planned city as much as Surat serves as evidence of the way in which people populate and move around certain territories and this contemporary architecture is unthinkable without the need of security which already seems to be an obsession in this country, with houses having metal bars across the windows and often closed in balconies too. Security stations today are architecturally incomprehensible without a poetic dichotomy between massive civilisation and although present in the urban landscape they pose a certain sense of humility as the borders between these urban landscapes converge with the guardians and the guarded. While modern society is used to draw boundaries and mark lands, this rapid accession has also created an parity in numbers of the guarded and the guardians that invariably extends to their respective lifestyles and so, the series documents just the mere stills arresting the lives they have spent with, at times only a stick and a chair as their company.
In an attempt to sketch a day of their life, this project is an inquiry of time that focuses towards projecting the solitude that accompanies with the watch-keeping.
