Writing by Ankush Arora; Pictures by Kavyanjali Kaushik

Indian journalist Kavyanjali Kaushik’s Instagram feed is a riotous mosaic of pictures that document the banality of life, except that the final frame is anything but ordinary.

From capturing sunsets, monsoon clouds, India’s formidable hills and jungles to the stack of newspapers insider her residence, her photo gallery – more often than not – blurs the line between the real and the imaginary, thanks in part to a variety of photography apps available in the market.

For instance, the picture of a solitary crow perched atop a branch or that of an overcast sunset sky dissolves the distinction between photography and paintings/postcards.

In Kavyanjali’s sublime frames, life stagnates – beautifully. There is an air of stillness about her compositions and that’s the result of a skillful play of natural light with just the right amount of editing. And of course, an eye for narrating a visual story.

Kavyanjali, who has studied art appreciation at Delhi’s National Museum, says she took to photos because she could “no longer express that much with words”.

The difficulty of expressing through the written word then finds a outlet in visuals, some of which have the ability to stand the test of time, according to me, at least.

For, nothing matches the intensity of a photograph showing a heavy crimson sky that appears to be on fire or an array of evening lights dotted against a hue of orange and blue. Such landscapes – and detail – create an eerie effect of a capital city that is far from normal in many ways.

But, my favourite are two shots of trees hunched together that make for a melancholy sight, edited to resemble an oil painting; a fade out into the fantastic.

The tunnel picture is a perfect postcard and the image of sunlight filtering through the window onto a pile of newspapers is particularly striking.

Here’s a slideshow of her pictures with their original captions –

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

(Kavya works for India Today magazine and lives in Noida. On Twitter, she’s @KavyanjaliK)