I was on a lifestyle photo-shoot assignment on the beautiful Rajmahal Hills in Jharkand district India. Reaching the primitive and protected Pahariyas tribes was not an easy task.  We were shooting in one of the villages on the hills and it suddenly  began to rain.  I quickly covered my camera with a scarf and entered a small house for better protection. The walls of the house were plastered with cow dung.  The fragrance from the rain-soaked mud outside,  the warm sweetness of the cow dung and the smoke bellowing from the firewood inside the house created a mesmerising scent that cannot be bottled.   The only source of light was the small door behind me.

And I see right in front of me sitting still, this perfect face.  A face that you cannot take your eyes off.  Her beautiful marble eyes reflected the light coming from the door like a rainbow from a prism. It had to make an impact on me.  I had to capture this face.  I gestured for permission and she relented.
I opened the aperture to the full,  with minimum ISO and a very low shutter speed,  I had to let her in through the lens.  And it was as if time stood still.  Her stillness almost like a statue carved out of marble and my still reciprocation,  despite having no tripod, had a story to tell.

This woman is the mother of 2 children.  Her husband works on a farm as a labourer earning a meagre salary.  This woman looks after the household  cooks for every one  and makes both ends meet despite the abject poverty.  She travels at least  2 kilometres downhill and spends a few hours collecting droplets of water from an almost drying stream. She then carries these pots of water back to her family doing a 2 km uphill journey.
And yet,  there is no  complaint.  No regrets.  This stillness speaks a lot.  Her eyes penetrated through the glass and my temple and has nested in my brain.  The pain,  the contentment and the innocence all over her face.
Two days later after a nice shower at the hotel,  we go to Kolkata Airport to catch a flight to Mumbai.  The flight is delayed by just 15 minutes  and I start complaining to my assistant.  And the image of this content woman came back to me in a flash. And I  felt ashamed within myself.