It’s been customary since 2007 to spend Christmas eve at Indra Cybercafé. Oh! Why that & what’s Indra Cybercafé? It’s a business “project” I started in mid-2006 and was realised only in April 2007. Anyway, we’re not going to talk about the history of Indra Cybercafé here.

So, like every year for the past 6 years, I was at VIP Commercial Centre, Shop No 223, that’s where Indra Cybercafé is situated. However, since I left the handling of business to family I visit the place rarely; only when they need me or during festive seasons. On 24th December I dropped in around 20h00 after work. Jush, Deepen, Anup & Vipine were busy around with the sales. The X-Mas eve crowd had started to grow. Kunal was there since morning taking pictures of people/children posing with our “in-house” father X-Mas; FYI, it was Deepen in that costume. Since around 18h00, Nilesh had come to continue the photoshoot.

With everyone busy around, I was like useless to the crew :P So, Jush gave me a bunch of flyers to distribute to people. They were the flyers for the photoshoot with father X-Mas. Alright, I thought this must be something I can do for sure. I stood outside along with Deepen & Navina (my cousin). Navina was faster at distributing the flyers and talking to people. I was more-or-less a standing clown not knowing what to do. In 30 mins, I distributed only 1 flyer. Well, I think I’m so used to talking FOSS & technical stuffs that other things looked so boring. I could not think of something creative to start a conversation with people around. Grrr … that’s so much not me!

Anyway, I left all the remaining flyers with Navina and came back in. I studied the modifications Jush & his team has brought to the cybercafé and looked how they organized the photoshoot. Something was ticking. I found the photoshoot a bit dull with families standing alongwith a young father X-Mas & we kinda had to force them to smile.

I thought of something & told Nilesh we gonna change the concept. I asked Jush if we had any reddish color around in cyber. Yup! We had some red abir from Divali’s rangoli that was left. I mixed those with water and made a bloody paste. We then asked Deepen (father X-Mas) to lie down dead and we gonna shoot as if we killed him. Everyone liked the concept.

Ok, a few words about the guy who gave life to those photos; Nilesh.

Nilesh Callychurn is a student at University of Technology, Mauritius. He’s passionate of photography & graphic design. A few years back he started a project called My Midnight Opera (name inspired by a Manga themed A Midnight Opera). In his spare time he works on freelance projects and shoots during weddings, fashion events or while doing some nature trekking. He plans to have his own studio in the coming years & present My Midnight Opera to a larger audience. In his own words, Nilesh explains that the “My” in his project’s name stands as a trust & a sense of proximity so that anybody could call it as “their own”.Wishing Nilesh all the best in his future endeavours.

At the time I wrote this post I didn’t have Kunal’s photos & his mini-biography. As I receive the fun photos I’ll write another post.