Morning on MG Road

I arrived at half past six, when the shutters were still down and the only conversation on the block was between a chai vendor and the boy he had sent for change. The city had not yet decided to be itself for the day. The air smelled faintly of rain that hadn’t fallen.

I waited on the corner with the camera at my chest, watching how the light moved between the awnings. There was a brief minute when a man walked past in a checked shirt the same colour as the sky, and the geometry of the street folded around him, and I made the picture without thinking — which is the only way I know how to make pictures that work.

By seven the auto-rickshaws had arrived and the morning was over.