BBC Tamil
The older woman looks dizzyingly in the distance, her hands twisting over the tobacco basket, surrounded by hundreds of cigarettes she spent on the hours rolling at hand.
The photo was one of several pumping students of Rashmith T in her village in Tamil Nadu, in which her neighbors who made traditional Indian cigarettes called Beedis participated.
“No one knows about their work. Their untold stories should be told,” Rashmith said to BBC.
Her paintings were presented at a recent exhibition about Indian workers called an unprecedented perspective at the Egmore Museum in Chennai.
All photographs were taken by 40 students from the Government schools Tamil Nada, who documented the lives of their own parents or other adults.
From the workers of the quarry to the weavers, the welder to the tailor, the paintings highlight a variety of, return works that have taken an estimated 400 million workers in India.
For example, many Beedi rollers are vulnerable to lung damage and tuberculosis due to their dangerous work, Rashmith said.
“Their homes have echoed tobacco, you can’t stay there for long,” she said, adding that her neighbors sit out of their homes for hours rolling Beedis.
Only 250 rupees ($ 2,90; £ 2,20) earn every 1,000 rolling cigarettes that rolled up, she told the BBC.
In the Eroda State District, Jayaraj took a photo of his mother Pazhaniammal at work as a brick manufacturer. She was seen pouring clay and sand into molds and manually shaping bricks.
Jayaraj had to wake up at 2am to take a picture because his mother starts working in the middle of the night.
“He has to start early to avoid the afternoon sun,” he said.
It was only when he started his photographic project that did he truly understand the difficulties he must withstand, he added.
“My mother often complains of headache, leg pain, hips pain and sometimes fainting,” he said.
In Madurai district, Gopika Lakshmi M caught her father Muthkrishn who was selling goods from an old van.
Her father has to get a dialysis twice a week after losing her kidney two years ago.
“He drives himself to nearby villages to sell goods despite dialysis,” Lakschmi says.
“We have no luxury to rest at home.”
But in spite of his serious condition, her father “looked like a hero” as he continued with a hard -working daily routine, Gopika said.
Photo with a professional camera was not easy at first, but it was easier after months of training with experts, students said.
“I learned how to shoot at night, adjust the speed and opening of a shutter,” said Keerthi, who lives in the tanki district.
For her project, Keerthi has decided to document her mother’s daily life Muthulakss, who owns a small store in front of their home.
“Dad’s not good, so Mom watches the store and for the house,” she said. “She wakes up at 4am and works until 11pm.”
Her photos show her mother’s struggle while traveling long distances to public buses to bring the goods to her store.
“I wanted to show photos of what a woman does to improve her children’s life,” she said.
Mukesh K spent four days with his father, documenting his work in a quarry.
“My father stays here and returns home only once a week,” he said.
Mukesh’s father operates from 3am to noon, and after a short break it works from 3:00 pm to 7:00 pm. Earns a small sum of About 500 rupees a day.
“There are no beds or mattresses in their room. My father sleeps on an empty cardboard boxes in the quarry,” he said. “Last year, he suffered sunny blows because he worked under the hot sun.”
Students, aged 13 to 17, learn different artistic forms, including photography, as part of the initiative by the Department of School Education in Tamil Nada.
“The idea is to make students socially responsible,” said Muthamizh Kalaivizhi, the state leadership of the Holistic Development in Government schools Tamil Nada and the founder of NGO NGO Neelam Foundation.
“They documented working people around them. Understanding their lives is the beginning of social change,” he added.
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