The Book of Wags: Rohit Chawla’s book on the beach dogs of Goa, is shot through with monsoon colours during the pandemic

In between the wet rocks and a grey sky, there is a bird flying. In between the bird and a boat coming into view, there is a man. And next to the man looking out into the horizon, is a dog with his head turned in his direction. The third pair of eyes looking at the scene is that of photographer Rohit Chawla’s and as he came upon it, he took his shot. This is the cover photo of his new book Raindogs (HarperCollins) set in Goa, just out in the bookstores. A select series of Chawla’s images are interspersed with notes from well-known contemporary writers and poets, including Vikram Seth, Tishani Doshi, William Dalrymple, Shashi Tharoor and Girish Shahane.  

Of Chawla’s photographs, many of which seem shot through with Edward Hopperian moodiness—warm colours of blue and green used muted— and the stillness of isolation, this photo of a man and a dog, not together but not disconnected either, captures the life of the Goan beach dog—mostly part-time companions till the holiday lasts. With the onset of the monsoons, they are back to being nobody’s dog.

“To stray, literally means to move away from a predetermined course of sorts, to find that appendaged to our own native Indies is a travesty of sorts,” says Chawla, who has three of his own. “Dogs have been the centre of our life in Goa. During the pandemic, my decision to live on the beach gave me the unique opportunity to see and observe their inner life bereft of human contact and other worldly distractions. And the monsoon in Goa, a beast of its own, gave me the time to create some quiet poetic imagery of those bleak times, to keep a record of sorts….”

Chawla at the time was also dealing with his private demons. In 2020, when the pandemic struck, he had lost his sister to it. The project thus “became a necessity and a necessary therapy for me…,” he says.

A double whammy

A veteran photographer whose work ranges from fashion editorials to art photography and more, Chawla lives between Gurugram and Goa. His project picked up during the Goa monsoons, a time when Goa slows down and tourists are few. But the 2020 monsoon was different. “Due to the pandemic, the hotels were closed, people disappeared, movements were curtailed, you were boxed up inside, you couldn’t move out….” he says. Just like an empty auditorium or a gas station at night evokes a sense of sudden evacuation, a people-lessness, the beaches of Goa during that monsoon were full of absence. But for the dogs. And they were running from one end of the beach to another looking for food and company.

Chawla’s camera also captures them stationary—quietly getting wet next to the fisherman by the shore; sitting, paws crossed, as a lone expat exercises on the beach; curled up in between the rocks; or just simply looking out at sea, as if from the sea, a familiar face or God may come into sight.   

India’s small things may need a God. The country certainly scores badly in pet abandonment— according to a 2019 survey, urban areas saw a 50 per cent rise in abandoned pets over five years. In this scenario, do beach dogs stand a chance?

Chawla calls this work a political project. “It’s a project that will sensitise,” he says. All the proceeds from the book will go towards registered animal charities in Goa/India. “When you see the images bereft of people, it shows you the dogs’ isolation, their defiance, their survivor instincts. They are lying on the beach without people. They have survived a pandemic without people.”

Portrait of a dogs

During the pandemic, Chawla began walking 20 km a day on the beach. “I continued this for three years. By the end of it, I had 10.000 photos. Every morning at high tide all manner of things would wash up, those became my props, against a grey, grey sky— photographers love a grey background. Nature conspired to give me a studio of choice,” he says.

But for someone who would coax his models to pose, there was no staging possible this time. “I simply needed to be present, be attentive to the dogs’ wishes, to the place, location and the ‘prop’ that they chose to embrace.” Often these props were a broken branch; often a picture was made because of the way the light fell behind them, or the way they sat stretched under a makeshift stand where beach clothes, or a sun hat may have once hung.

Chawla is known for quiet portraits. “Graphic minimalism is my chosen craft of choice, and I have simply extended the same courtesy to my four-legged friends when I have photographed them,” he says.

Nowhere is this most evident as in the photo of the fisherman in black raising his rod in pouring rain. “It’s as if he is conducting a Monsoon Symphony and his attentive lead violinist is the black dog…. It’s one magic moment that happens to photographers rarely in their lives,” he says. The book has one on every page.