Rather than a book of photographs, the annual ritual of publishing desk calendars is something the managing director of Creatigies Communications Private Limited, Navroze Dhondy, looks forward to. The year 2022 marks the sixth consecutive year of publication of the company’s calendar. Mountain scenery, some interesting shadow play, clouds, footprints in the snow, even his own backyard in Gurgaon, feature in this year’s publication that arrived at the Parsiana office a few weeks ago. The Delhi based advertising professional says there is something very old-school about a desk calendar… The fact that it also has a planner at the back of each month makes it a handy tool for those who enjoy jotting down their appointments and birthdays.”
"I enjoy discovering the little joys around me,” writes Dhondy in the introduction to the calendar. It is "my essay on the year gone by, the selection of photos, and the thoughts that crisscrossed the 12 months.” The documenter of memories in him pays tribute to legendary American photographer Diane Arbus (1923-1971) with a quote attributed to her: "A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.”
Above: views from the 2022 calendar by Navroze Dhondy (top)
The idea for a calendar germinated from a chat Dhondy had with an inflight co-passenger in 2016. "He was quite intrigued to see the photographs that I had clicked with my mobile and insisted that I publish a book of photographs… I thought that was a bit too pompous and laughed it away.” But the chat stuck in his head. "A book with 70-80 photographs, published, and given to family, friends and associates would lie on some library shelf or in some drawer somewhere… That didn’t make me feel good.” Opting instead to choose 12 photographs from the year gone by for a calendar, Dhondy noted that "the desk calendar had become part of a vanishing tribe. And that egged me on.” Numbers have increased steadily, from 250 in 2017 to "this year nearly 1,000 calendars,” he says. F. J.