Moving Parts: Shahid

Last year, Ruchir Joshi travelled around rural India for our ‘Work’ issue, documenting parts of the country’s informal economy, and meeting people with working lives that are unseen, or unique, or damaging. The resulting series, ‘Moving Parts’, includes visits to both the manager of a silica quartz factory and the victims of its lung-clogging dust (in ‘Prajapati’ and ‘Hajiriya and Gajiriya’); a conversation with a man who lives by ‘country-made pistols’ fashioned from steering rods; and a ride through the country with a pair of entrepreneurial road-contractor brothers (‘Guddu and Pintu’).

The series closes with this video, which shows Shahid, a manual tyre-cutter, at work. It is a craft that takes years to learn, and which allows him to imitate perfect, machine-cut treads.

You can read some of the essays mentioned above by visiting our issue page for Granta 109, or by buying the issue and benefiting from our online discount.