Travelling to various places of worship like Haridwar, Vrindavan and Badrinath with his Sony Alpha in hand, Anand has captured this explosion of cheap Barbie-like dolls wrapped in plastic, placed on the same shelf as statuettes of deities like Ganapati, Krishna and Durga – also imported from China – framed and mounted in his signature gaudy pop style. Anand’s collection is on display at the Chatterjee & Lal, near Radio Club, courtesy photography aficionado Matthieu Foss who has been encouraging an out of the box approach to photography. Anand is his latest find.

“When I saw these images, all imported from China and being sold on the street, many feelings came up. I was struck by the irony of the whole process, and to me it appeared like a microcosm of globalisation, we are now outsourcing our Gods to Chinese manufactures,” says the 46-year-old, who has had several group and solo shows in the capital and abroad.

The images of the dolls and Gods placed cheek-by-jowl on the same shelf at the roadside shops were a disturbing sight for Anand, to say the least. “Where then is the sanctity of the images? Apart from this, do we really need to import cheap plastic toys that might be highly toxic?” he adds. A recent Google search revealed that Mattel has been policing the toxins in toys, “By Mattel’s standards, these cheap China imports are a health hazard for any child who decides to play with them,” says Anand, who is in favour of going back to the good-old clay idols of yore.