What cause is larger than life?

What makes a young man set himself on fire? What cause is worth such a sacrifice when a 27-year-old runs through the streets, slowly burning to death? In the nine years as a photo-journalist these are questions I have never grappled with.

Until today as the images of the young man came through my shutter and burned itself into my consciousness. For years looking through the lens has helped me understand the world a little better. But how do I deal with an image of self-perpetrated violence that leaps out of streets?

Today when we were hunting for images, we were told about Tibetan exiles getting together at Jantar Mantar. The Tibetans were gathering to protest the visit of Chinese premier Hu Jintao who will be in New Delhi later this week for the BRICS summit.
Stock pictures taken, I was busy reviewing my images when suddenly a pall of black smoke emerged from the crowd at a distance. Suddenly, I saw smoke and fire erupt as a young man set himself on fire. People setting themselves on fire have been images that have been caught through time immemorial. I had seen images of a young girl burnt on the streets of Cambodia or a monk immolating himself on the streets of Vietnam years ago. Somewhere on my consciousness are the images of a Rajeev Goswami burning himself in outrage against the Mandal Commission.

But I was about to click my first shot of a self-immolating person. The next moment I saw a burning figure in my Nikon frame - a running youth all covered in flames - from head to toe as if he is made of charcoal. As he came close, I kept clicking him frame after frame. Like a ruthless professional my mind and my body worked in tandem recording the images. At the back of my mind, I was aware that this was my moment to get a Page One picture.

At that moment, the image captured was far more important than the young man slowly burning away for a lost homeland. I could not even feel the heat of flames when he ran past, barely a distance of five or six feet away.

I followed and kept clicking till he collapsed.  As the crowd gathered and doused his fire my adrenalin levels came down and

I withdrew. I was shooting like a maniac, running after the burning man. The Tibetans made a path leading to where there man was lying, perhaps now dead.

It was at this moment that I finally saw what I had missed earlier. That here was a man, more than an image captured in my digital camera. A living, breathing fellow-human being, now smouldering and still on the ground.

Jamphel Yeshi, why did you have to do this? What will this single act of sacrifice fetch for you or your cause?