Tamil Nadu teens capture India’s labourers in pictures

The elderly woman looked stupid far away, and her hands were crouched over a cigarette basket and surrounded by hundreds of cigarettes.

This photo is one of the several students taken by Rashmitha T in her village in Tamil Nadu, featuring neighbors who make traditional Indian cigarettes called Beedis.

Rashmitha told the BBC, “No one knows his work. You must tell their unprecedented stories.”

Her photographs were recently published in an exhibition of Indian workers with an invisible perspective in EGMORE MUSEUM in Chennai.

All photos were taken by 40 students from the Tamil Nadu government and recorded their lives of their parents and other adults.

From the quarry workers to the weaving, welding machine, and the cutter, this photo emphasizes the various roles performed by about 400 million workers in India.

For example, many BEEDI rollers are vulnerable to lung damage and tuberculosis due to dangerous work, Rashmitha said.

“Their house has a house of cigarettes. You can’t stay long.”

She told the BBC that she only earned 250 rupees ($ 2.90; £ 2.20) each time they rolled 1,000 cigarettes.

In the Erode Earth, Jayaraj took pictures of his mother Pazhaniammal as a brick maker. She saw that she poured clay and sand mixtures into the mold and formed a brick with her hands.

Jayaraj had to wake up at 2 am to take a picture because my mother started working in the middle of the night.

“She must start early to avoid the sun in the afternoon,” he said.

He added that he really realized the difficulties he had to endure only when he started the photo project.

“Mother often complains about headaches, leg pain, hip pain and sometimes stun.”

In the Madurai region, Gopika Lakshmi M captivated his father Muthukrishnan in an old van.

Her father must be dialysided twice a week after losing his height two years ago.

Lakshmi said, “He drives to a nearby village and sells goods despite dialysis.

“We don’t have a luxury at home.”

But despite his serious condition, her father continued his cruel daily life and “looked like a hero,” GOPIKA said.

It was not easy at first to take pictures with a professional camera, but it was easy after several months of training with experts, students said.

Keerthi, who lives in the Tenkasi area, said, “I learned how to adjust the shooting, shutter speed and aperture at night.

For her project, Keerthi decided to document Muthulakshmi’s daily life in front of the house.

“My dad is not good, so Mom takes care of both the store and the house,” she said. “She wakes up at 4 am and works until 11 pm.”

Her photograph describes her mother’s struggle when she supplies the shops through long -distance trips through public buses.

“I wanted to show a picture to improve the life of the children,” she said.

MUKESH K spent four days with his father and recorded his work in the quarry.

“My father stays here and comes back home once a week,” he said.

MUKESH’s father works until noon at 3:00 am and works for a break and works until 7 pm at 3 pm. He gets poor amount About 500 rupees a day.

“There is no bed or mattress in the room. My father is sleeping in the vacant cards’ box,” he said. “He was sunbathing because he was working under the hot sun last year.”

Students between 13 and 17 are learning a variety of arts, including photographs, as part of the initiative of the Tamil Nadu School Education Department.

“This idea is to be socially responsible for students,” said Muthamizh Kalaivizhi, the head of the entire loan development program of Tamil Nadu public school.

“They recorded people around me. It is the beginning of social change to understand their lives,” he added.

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