Samar (left) and Vijay

If Vijay Jodha, 34, has a wide-angle view on the aged, his 36-year-old brother, Samar shoots them up and close. Between them, they can make a picture say more than a thousand words. Even if their subjects are at an age when they would prefer to talk less and rest more. And now, they have book-ended the lives of 130 senior citizens, ripe and wise, in Ageless Mind and Spirit (Neovision), a coffee-table book that has no age barriers in its appeal. It is part of an eight-year project involving 400 people in the autumn of their lives.

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In black and white spaces, the elderly-or elder, as Ameen Sayani, the voice of radio, prefers to call his generation-talk of their sepia-toned pasts and pose in technicolour present. "It's as direct as it can get," says Vijay, a shipshape foil to his modishly languid photographer brother. Some of their subjects have enjoyed illustrious careers; others have been content with backstage significance, yet others are nonentities. So Khushwant Singh and Alyque Padamsee share space and turn back the clock with Shashimoni Mahari, the last surviving devdasi, and Bodhan Kori, a gravedigger.

The elders in a snapshot are perhaps a visual indulgence, but it wasn't an effortless composition. "It has to be art with commerce. But with money not rolling in, we sold things," says Samar, his eyes momentarily hinting at a closed door ("Not the house, of course"). Yet, they are already finishing another pictorial project on television-that ubiquitous box that has made grandma's recipes and story-telling almost redundant.

They've gone broke before. Three years ago, their travelling exhibition, "Ageing in India", was to reach 24 cities. It made it to only three. "It wasn't cheap going places with 800 kilos of prints and stories in 15 boxes," says Samar, who along with Vijay has had a voguishly transcontinental upbringing. They were born in Jodhpur and schooled in East Africa-their father, at 69 and "productively ageing", was working with the UN-and the US. They have lived only half-a-life compared to their subjects but Samar is already the voice of experience: "Believe me, when you get there it's not so bad." The brothers want you to say "Cheese".

-Mridula Chettri Singh