Six or seven decades ago, an amateur photographer, armed with a Rolleiflex 6x6, marched through the streets of Bombay, looking for light and looking for life. He found both, captured them, and entrusted the negatives to studios that have since been lost to time: Kanti & Co., on Arthur Bunder Road; Central Camera, on D Naoroji Road; and Spectrum & Tricolor, opposite Strand Cinema. While the prints seem to be lost to time as well, the remains survived: more than 4,000 negatives, still in their original sleeves, with the nom de plume JS Mistry written in cursive on the face.

By some sleight of hand, the negatives landed in the hands of a hawker at Chor Bazaar, and caught the eye of Prashant Raghunath, an analogue film photographer, lugging his own Leica M6. Raghunath bought them, and in his makeshift processing lab at home, has started the process of cleaning, scanning and enlarging them. "I compare Mistry to Vivian Maier," he says. "In the US also, there was a photographer like me, who bought Maier's works at an auction for $5-6. He started developing and scanning the photographs, and then started researching on her. She's world-famous now. Similarly, Mistry should also receive that recognition."