A photo says 99 words

A photograph showcases an empty bench overlooking a river in Alleppey under an evening sky. Posted below the photograph are 18 stories, each of 99 words or less. Surprisingly, no two stories sound similar. While one talks about the bench as a lover's meeting haven, another is tinted with nostalgia and yet another, deems it as a suicide point.

In a story titled Rat Race, Rohan Mukherjee writes: "Look at them. They all think that they're unique. Yet, just rats in the race." "What race? Five of them are off to Pune for a colleague's wedding. The aged guy is thinking of the closest Iyengar bakery to carry home some dilpasand for his granddaughter, three of them are street musicians on their way to a recording studio, and the guy in the centre, hand covering his face? He still can't believe that he won the two movie tickets from that radio contest!" The race is in your mind. And rats, nowhere. Pic courtesy/Jan Joseph

Another frame, a common sight of men packed like sardines in a Mumbai local, again features diverse narratives, from a man saving a pickpocketer from falling off the footboard, to a midget wondering what life looks like from six-feet above. These, among 91 others, are part of One Frame Stories (OFS), an ongoing online initiative, inviting people from across the globe to share their perspective on a photograph, posted on its portal, every Friday. Next month, the project will seek crowdfunding to compile 100 frames, with 10 stories each, into a coffee-table book.

What's the back story?
OFS began as a social experiment in 2014, when Pune-based Jayakrishnan Pillai, a founder-director of Heyyo Media (a Kochi-based creative agency started in 2015 with offices in Pune and Delhi too), met with his friends, Anup Joy and photographer Jan Joseph, and rued over people's lack of acceptance of a different perspective. "We wanted to know if people see the same thing differently. So, we began OFS as a blog, asking our friends to write a story for a frame. Since we wouldn't like to read a long story ourselves, the limit was 99 words. All the submissions had different viewpoints," says the 29-year-old Pillai, who turned OFS into a portal, absorbed by Heyyo Media. Till date, it has published 3,460 stories from 862 storytellers.

This frame featured a submission from six-year-old Keya Waghmare. The story, titled My First Steal, goes, "I was already late for my office and did not have enough time to wait for my bus. So I went towards the auto stand and saw a single auto with the driver fast asleep. I waved at another auto passing by. By then, the one who was asleep woke up. Now, both drivers started fighting and neither of them was ready to quit. I wasn't bothered until I saw a crowd gathering. I don't know what stroked me, I took hold of the nearby empty auto and flew away with it. That was my life's first steal." Pic courtesy/Mahesh Gokara

Sourced from Pillai's photographer friends like Joseph, Hyderabad-based Mahesh Gokara and Kochi-based Viswom Charly, the intriguing frames capture objects, portraits and moments from across India. While one shows a woman knitting a sweater in the Himalayas, another depicts a boat in the backwaters of Kerala. Some also capture Mumbai, whether it's the Tricolour juxtaposed against Gateway Of India or images from a Ganpati Visarjan. "A 10-member team at Heyyo Media sifts through the photos to decide the ones we should post. Sometimes, we also brainstorm internally to understand the story possibilities," informs Pillai.

It's only words...
The panel also filters weekly submissions, received via the website. "We don't have the concept of a winning story. Once, we published 130 stories on a single frame. We filter the ones that contain profanity, pull down a personality, are disconnected to the frame, copy-paste jobs or sent in a language we can't decipher. Ideally, the story should be in English, though we have published a Hindi story too, since it was good," says Pillai.

Monica Serban from Romania wrote a story titled, Life Begins Where Fear Ends, for this frame. Pic courtesy/Mahesh Gokara

While 95 per cent of the submissions are from Indians - the youngest was a six-year-old Keya Waghmare - the portal also witnesses submissions from Romania, Botswana, Afghanistan and Canada. "The users often send their stories anonymously but we can learn about their background through their social media login. This helps us gauge their interests for sending gifts when we run contests," he adds. A writer can submit stories on different frames; however, they can't send multiple on a single one.

Members from the curatorial panel at Heyyo Media

Framing the book
"We've realised that most people who write wish to be published. So, the book will be our pay back to them. The crowdfunding campaign will enable us with funds for printing," says Pillai. He also plans to host sessions at schools in Pune and Kochi to educate students on the importance of perspectives.