23 Grams of Salt

About The Book

This journey, retracing the steps of the Mahatma and those who walked with him ninety years ago to break the draconian Salt Law, scours through what the winds of time has left behind. It attempts to recover, rebuild stories lost in the dusty doorways leading through mud-ways and paved pathways, dried up reservoirs and river-ways, maidans with or without the luxurious canopies of banyan trees where the marchers had tread or rested and where Gandhiji addressed the local populace. It is a forgotten hinterland barely traversed since, but Anuj Ambalal’s penetrating lens uncovers it all, peeling walls of amnesia layer by layer. And indeed each of these has a story to tell. Not only the tales of the indefatigable marchers but also of the people who stood steadfastly by the questing soul who led them. Charged with the spirit of the marchers as though joining them, these images have turned many a site into visions of searing clarity: no matter that they represent the pristine world of nature or the most mundane spectacle of urban existence. Gulammohammed Sheikh August 23, 2020