Raghu Rai (Dec 18, 1942 — April 26, 2026). R.I.P.

Raghu Rai with Sudeep Sen March 5th 2024. Photographs Sudeep Sen

I was privileged to know Raghu Rai. He was a very kind, generous and spiritual human being. In his memory, here is an ekphrastic poem I wrote in 2013 responding to one of haunting signature photographs. The poem was published in my book, Fractals: New & Selected Poems | Translations 1980-2015 (London Magazine Editions). While I was taking this sequence of portraits we discussed many topics; reminiscing about the intricacies of human frailty, the joys of Indian classical music, and the inner and outer landscape of poetry and photography. We enjoyed a glass of 18 year old The Macallan together, and that was practically the last chance we had to talk to each other intimately.

Sudeep Sen

RAGHU RAI PHOTOGRAPH

   On a river-bank, abandoned clay-idols

of goddesses wait for their last rites.

   An old widow clad in a white cotton sari

looks on, awaiting a similar fate. 

   A cow, half-hidden behind a gigantic tree,

her bovine-head resembling a decapitated

   hunting trophy, nailed to the trunk.

Everything is calm — the river rippleless —

   a boat plies on, lazily. An emaciated

boatman rests on his long bamboo-oar,

   waiting for the meagre wealth clay deities 

provide once they dissolve — an ungodly 

   immersion in the polluted river. Death, life,

ceremony, sacrifice, serenity, ferocity —

   frozen meditatively still, find umbrage

under the scant-leafed large old tree.

   Kolkata, misted on the horizon

across the river’s far edge, looms sprawling —

   entirely unaware of a captured drama

waiting to unfold at the city’s periphery.       

Sudeep Sen

Sudeep Sen is the International and Poetry Editor at Ars Notoria and a leading international poet whose prize-winning books include: Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (HarperCollins), Aria (A K Ramanujan Translation Award), Fractals: New & Selected Poems | Translations 1980-2015 (London Magazine Editions), EroText (Penguin), Kaifi Azmi: Poems | Nazms (Bloomsbury), Anthropocene (Pippa Rann, Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize), and Red. Edited landmark anthologies include: The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry, Modern English Poetry by Younger Indians (Sahitya Akademi), and Converse: Contemporary English Poetry by Indians (Pippa Rann). Blue Nude: Ekphrasis & New Poems (Jorge Zalamea International Poetry Prize), Rock, and The Whispering Anklets are forthcoming. His photography represented by ArtMbassy, Rome/Berlin, is part of private/public collections. The Government of India awarded him the senior fellowship for “outstanding persons in the field of culture/literature.” Sen is the first Asian honoured to deliver the Derek Walcott Lecture and read at the Nobel Laureate Festival.