Modern India's most loved monk comes in for a headshot!

I think the best way to describe Gaur Gopal Das is that he is modern India’s most loved monk! An electrical engineer from the College of Engineering, Pune who has had brief stint with Hewlett Packard; has moved on to become a devout ISKON follower.

Today, Gaur Gopal Das serves at the Chowpatty Branch of ISKON in Mumbai. He is a much sought after keynote speaker. His ability to instantly connect with everyone gets him to travel world over and interact with people who are ever willing to listen to him. Google, Sales Forse, Infosys, Barclays, E&Y, Ford are a few of the companies that he has delivered his keynote at.

Guruji had a hectic travel schedule and the plan was to head straight off to the airport after the shoot. We had the team in place. Our regular makeup team of Nabo and Sujoy were on stand by with Rohit and Khoks keeping the studio ready to go. All the setup and backdrops had been decided earlier.

Given the monsoons, it had started to rain heavily early in the morning. So our entire sequence of outdoor images had to be skipped. This was in a way some good news because it gave us a lot more time to focus on the in studio images.

Guruji was at absolute ease and he followed all my instructions to the T. Often I worry about how people will react when I mentor them for the camera but Gaur Gopal Das was a different person all together. He said “You are shooting me and I will do exactly what your instructions are. After all you are the master.”

What followed was an easy session for the most part but I could sense the nervousness across the entire team. Guruji was full of his anecdotes and his infectious laughter and little pearls of wisdom kept us going. Asked about his phenominal success with this particular generation, he said “The message I preaches is the same that is in the Bhagwad Gita. Even a sage meditating in the Himalayas will tell you the same but I just use the words that you all want to hear.”

There are shoots and then there are shoots that leave being a wonderful calm around you. It was a shoot that I am probably not going to forget soon!