Parliament’s photographers

For,whenever the members of Parliament are to have their official group photograph,Gopal is the cameraman who is assigned the job of getting the 500-plus faces of the Lok Sabha or the 250 members of the Rajya Sabha into one frame. And he has to do it in two shots,for the Prime Minister and other leaders only have a few minutes to spare.

Gopal has been shooting Parliament and everybody in it since 1967,when the third Lok Sabha was in session and first-time Prime Minister Indira Gandhi looked on placidly from the centre of the black-and-white figures. Before him it was Gopal’s father Agya Ram Datt (the official photographer of the Constituent Assembly) and even before that,his grandfather Anant Ram Datt who put parliamentarians in front of the camera and asked them to smile. Jawaharlal Nehru obliged with a smart smile,Indira Gandhi did the same but Atal Bihari Vajpayee was clearly not smiling when the 13th Lok Sabha picture was being shot and Manmohan Singh seems to try out a grin in the 14th Lok Sabha shot but gives up midway.

It was Nehru who had commissioned the first group photo towards the end of the first Lok Sabha,in 1956 — and he didn’t do it in an official letter. “According to family legend,Anant Ram was walking down the Parliament corridors when Prime Minister Nehru stopped him and asked him to take a group photo of the Lok Sabha members. Ever since,our family has been taking the official group photo of the Lok Sabha every five years,and of the Rajya Sabha every two years,” says Anuj Datt,28,the fourth generation who started assisting his father,Gopal,behind the camera when the 13th Lok Sabha was nearing its end and Sonia Gandhi,a first-time MP,was the leader of the Opposition. “When she arrives for the shoot,everybody knows she’s here. She walks in briskly and sits straight on her chair without a slouch or the slightest wrinkle to her sari,just like Indira did,” says Anuj.

The camera is the Datts’ secret weapon — an Eastman Kodak which Anant Ram — a photographer to the British officers and Indian royalty — bought for Rs 100 in 1914 to shoot landscapes. The camera can turn a complete circle in seconds,and produce a flat picture of the 360 degree panorama. He began to tinker with his new purchase,making changes — that are now the family’s trade secret. “Looking at the pictures,it is hard to believe that the MPs were actually arranged in a semi-circle not in straight lines,20 ft from the camera,which revolves from one end to the other,” says Anuj.

Last week,after Gopal was rushed to the ICU with kidney failure,Anuj spent several silent moments in the family’s unpretentious shop in Civil Lines,staring at walls covered with large rectangular photos of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha members as well as those of delegates with the President at Rashtrapati Bhavan. The store-room has several more pictures,among them Gopal’s first shot of the Lok Sabha in 1967,with several members seated on the carpet,literally at the feet of those on chairs. “That’s a bygone era. Today,it is important to be very tactful with MPs while positioning them according to height and the clothes they are wearing. The savvy ones come in almost one-and-a-half hours before and position themselves behind the PM’s chair,because that’s the centre of attention,” says Anuj.

He also recounts how one Lok Sabha photo almost did not have Pranab Mukherjee,the current Finance Minister. “The front row chairs did not have his name,so he walked off. We had to rush after him and explain that his chair had been found to be defective and a new one was being arranged for him,” he recounts.

More than 60 members occupy a row,and there can be as many as eight rows. The first row is for the PM,the Leader of the Opposition,and the most prominent leaders of the Houses while,as the photographs of the 14th Lok Sabha shows,young MPs like Omar Abdullah,Jyotiraditya Scindia and Rahul Gandhi occupy the last row. “They can climb up the steps more easily than senior members,” says Anuj.

Preparation for the photographs takes almost a fortnight — the CPWD gives a fresh coat of paint to the background walls,the Horticulture department decorates flowers into patterns at the end of the chairs and the Datts check that the special film reel,7 ft in length,that has been ordered from Kodak in the US,is ready to use.

“We have to be careful that there are no pigeons in the background,” says Anuj. He’s watched as Gopal has commanded the MPs before the shoot — “My father gives out instructions from the podium and MPs have to listen carefully to hear him. If he’d used a mike,they’d have ignored him.” The camera begins to whir and if a Pappu Yadav is talking on his cellphone — that’s how he will be preserved for posterity.