I first spoke to the inimitableRaghu Raion a sultry July afternoon in 2012. I do not remember how the call came about - what I do recall, however, is his booming voice at the other end of a mobile phone, as I rushed out of a busy print newsroom, evading the cacophony of organised chaos and settling down at the farthest corner of a somewhat deserted staircase, sweat already puddling around my elbows and legs. I started talking to one of the greatest photojournalists India has ever seen.

I woke up today to the news of his demise, after a prolonged illness, at the age of 83 - a great loss indeed. A protégé ofHenri Cartier-Bressonand the man who created some of the most iconic portraitures India had ever seen - including that of Mother Teresa, before I knew it, I was transported some 14 years back and a conversation that followed – a legend, humouring a toddler in journalism with his incessant questions – patient, jovial and a treasure trove of knowledge.

Raghu Rai passed away on April 26, 2026

And even now, as I write this, I remember, somewhere between scribbling notes and wiping sweat off my forearms, I realised I wasn’t just conducting an interview -I was being let into a way of seeing.

Certain things stay, even if the tides of time have played their torrid games over the years, and Rai elaborating on what influenced his craft was one of them. “It is the endless flow of life which never stops. It is the endless change in nature that remains the same. They keep crossing with my life experiences and keep me on the move," he had chuckled (I believe) over the phone.

Raghu Rai found his calling after clicking the photo of a baby donkey

It is strange, in hindsight, how lightly he spoke of beginnings that would later become legend. The man who had started his career as a civil engineer would however, found his calling after clicking the photo of a baby donkey - one of his earliest masterpieces. Printed in the Times Newspaper, London, Rai had revealed that at the time, in the 60s and 70s, the newspaper had a dedicated section to something funny, humorous or ironic for the weekends and Times had "printed it vertically on almost half page" with the late photographer's name. That one photo had induced an itch, which became a career for the legend. "Out of curiosity I started carrying the camera. And then it so happened that it became very addictive,” Rai had let on.

But perhaps it was his portraiture of Mother Teresa that remained with Rai the longest. A Calcutta native, I was keen to understand his thoughts behind capturing one of the most iconic names from the city (she was yet to be canonised at that time), and Rai had recalled she was somebody so spiritual and so powerful that each time he went to meet her, he felt he had to not only look clean but feel spiritually clean as well. “Mother was somebody very rare who did not look at you, but who looked into you. Through your eyes she would go inside you and see who you really are.” But more than that for Rai, what remained was "the halo, the glory that was around her," that was so striking "that it struck my eyes. That was one experience I will never forget in my entire life.”

"Simplicity and purity is what creates the ultimate magic,” I recall the photographer having said during our hour-long conversation, deferring all other changing trends in photography as being mere “gimmicks which will disappear with time.”

Raghu Rai, one of India's best-known photographers whose lens captured India in its many shades, died at the age of 83, at a private hospital, on Sunday, April 26, 2026. (PTI Photo)

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