The power of visuals. Ten annual NSG calendars. A decade of photographs that inspire pride and are preserved long after the year ends.
The tribute began with a memory much closer to home. On 26 November 2008, my mother was recovering from major surgery when Mumbai came under attack. For three nights, as she struggled to recover, we watched the unfolding horror on television. And then came the sight of NSG commandos slithering down from a helicopter at the Taj and eventually neutralising the terrorists.
Years later, she still remembered the television image of an NSG commando descending over the Taj Hotel. “How brave are they?” she said. That remembered courage helped set this tribute in motion. It gave the work a deeply personal meaning, long before the photograph above the Taj took shape. Watching the attack and the subsequent NSG operation live on television had helped us both keep our minds off her critical neurosurgery. I wanted to recreate that photograph of NSG commandos on top of the hotel as a tribute to the martyrs of the NSG.
I returned over three mornings. Even the hotel staff had started wondering what I was looking for in that shot. Either the sun had already risen, the hotel lights had been switched off, or there was simply not enough elevation for me to capture the depth of the sea and the hotel together. On the third, at around 4.35 a.m., I gained the camera height I needed and waited for dawn while the hotel remained illuminated. The frame needed the commandos and the city together. Their presence had to be powerful enough to hold the eye, and quiet enough to let remembrance enter.
The photograph was published in the first NSG calendar in January. In November 2017, it was used for the 26/11 memorial event and my exhibition at the Bombay Stock Exchange. Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan’s parents signed a photograph and returned it to me. He had laid down his life during the Taj operation, having rescued a wounded teammate, and was posthumously awarded the Ashoka Chakra.
After the heights, the action and the charged energy of the shoots, that signed print brings the story to a different kind of stillness. Behind a nation’s remembrance is a family. Behind the word sacrifice is a life.
Before that dawn above the Taj, the work had begun at Manesar.
As I stood on the training grounds at Manesar, the words etched on the wall stared back at me: “One Shot. One Kill.” They expressed a training philosophy of precision. In a hostage-rescue situation, an adversary might be only partly visible behind another person. The smallest error could cost the life the commando was there to save.
That was the thought I carried towards the camera: behind the weapon, the movement and the force of an image was a person exercising control. How could I make that concentration visible? How could a photograph hold the intensity of the training and the responsibility behind it?
Over the next decade, the camera would follow that intensity across air, water and the urban landscape. The ambition was to give the Black Cats the visual force their abilities deserved: photographs with the scale, glamour and impact of cinema, rooted in the formidable reality before the lens.
The NSG is among the country’s most publicity-shy forces. Earning its trust was an uphill task. By the time I approached it, my work with the Indian Army, a pan-India photographic project with the Border Security Force, and the Mumbai Police calendar that had gone viral had already established a reputation. That body of work helped open the door. The professional relationship needed to make these photographs still had to be earned.
I came with a visual conception: a sense of the image before it existed. To realise it, I needed to ask for a particular training sequence or drill, discuss an arrangement, and explain what the camera needed to see. Those conversations depended on mutual respect. The commandos had to take my understanding of a photograph seriously, just as I took their expertise seriously. We needed to be able to work together as professional equals.
That respect made ambitious photographs possible. The NSG brought its capabilities and discipline; I brought the visual conception and the means to give it form. Over ten years, we kept returning to that collaboration, developing ideas across calendars, books and films. The trust had to hold from the first conversation about an image to the work required to realise it. If I felt an image did not do justice to the NSG, it never left my hard disc.
The National Security Guard is India’s specialist counter-terror force under the Ministry of Home Affairs. Raised in 1984, it brings Army personnel into its Special Action Groups and personnel from the Central Armed Police Forces and State Police into its Special Ranger Groups. These complementary strengths serve a demanding national mission: counter-terrorism, hostage rescue and counter-hijack response.
Its specialisations include precision fire, aircraft and building intervention, specialist K9 teams, bomb detection and disposal, and preparedness for chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive threats. Gruelling selection and training develop endurance, marksmanship, mental robustness and the ability to function as a team. Speed is inseparable from judgment; technical mastery must hold under pressure.
The Close Protection Force, or CPF, also features in this decade’s photographic record. Its VIP-protection role demanded vigilance, coordination and the readiness to protect another life at immediate personal risk. These photographs and books document that responsibility during the years they were made.
I grew up in Agra Cantonment. Soldiers were neighbours; firing exercises supplied a familiar soundtrack. I ran around training grounds and sometimes attempted the obstacle courses. The uniform belonged to my childhood, long before I raised a camera towards the NSG.
The NSG did not turn me into a different person or photographer. It gave that long-standing connection, my imagination and my determination an extraordinary subject. The commandos were already heroes. My work was to create photographs that made their capabilities visible with enough power to hold a young person’s imagination.
The exhausted trainees in this portrait have just come through gruelling training. Look at the faces. The shaved heads, the fixed gazes, the fatigue that no pose could improve. Here is the human cost of becoming capable.
I saw the punishing demands of commando training, the effort required to keep going when exhaustion had stripped away everything ornamental. Endurance had to coexist with alertness. Courage had to survive repetition. The black uniform would carry its own glamour; these faces show the cold determination.
To be a Black Cat Commando is an honour. An honour bestowed upon only the best.
These images were deliberately conceived: understanding what a drill demanded, planning the camera position, shaping the light and waiting for the moment that made the composition work. At the Taj, that meant returning over three mornings for the right height and dawn light. With Jaws, it meant bringing the K9’s speed and ferocity towards the lens. Here, with the exhausted trainees, it meant recognising when the faces already said everything.
Published in 2018 by Headquarters, National Security Guard, The Making of a Black Cat Commando was my first major NSG coffee table book.
We had worked extraordinarily hard on the photographs for The Making of a Black Cat Commando. I was determined to create something exceptional — a book that would take readers inside the gruelling transformation of a soldier into a Black Cat Commando.
But once the photography was complete, the real nightmare began.
We had hundreds of photographs covering battle obstacle courses, physical endurance, psychological conditioning, precision firing, specialised training and the extraordinary capabilities of the force.
The photographs were spectacular. But how were we going to bring them together into a coherent story?
We went back and forth over the structure. Eventually, Brigadier Gautam Ganguly, VSM, then Commander of the NSG's Counter Terror Force at Manesar, travelled from Delhi to Mumbai along with another senior NSG officer to work directly with our design team.
We spent considerable time organising the material into chapters covering the different stages of training, psychological conditioning, specialised capabilities and force multipliers.
And then came the design.
I didn't want a conventional coffee table book where photographs were simply placed alongside paragraphs of text. I wanted every spread to have its own visual identity.
The typography itself became part of the storytelling.
Mud training carried splashes and textures. Sections involving descents and physical challenges incorporated metallic treatments, suggesting the resolve of steel. The visual treatment changed with the nature of the training, allowing the reader to experience something of the intensity, discipline and character of each chapter.
It was intricate, painstaking work. Every photograph, every page and every design element had to contribute to the larger narrative.
The result was The Making of a Black Cat Commando — a book that remains among my most treasured creations.
The publication carried something equally meaningful to me.
Inside was a full-page profile discussing my photography and wider body of work, along with a personal note from me.
The back cover carried the words:
“A Visual Story by Pravin Talan.”
For a book published by the National Security Guard, these acknowledgements represented an extraordinary expression of institutional trust.
The book subsequently travelled beyond India through exhibitions organised by the National Book Trust.
It was showcased at the Frankfurt International Book Fair and at the New Delhi World Book Fair, including the special Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav exhibition celebrating 75 years of India's independence.
I was specially invited to the New Delhi exhibition and still treasure a photograph of myself standing beside the NSG book display at the exhibition stall.
What began as a demanding photographic project had become a publication representing India's Black Cat Commandos before a much wider audience.
Slithering from a helicopter puts human figures against immense space. The height is immediately legible. What takes longer to see is the command of movement: the ability to remain purposeful while suspended between a machine and the ground.
I witnessed rappelling down a high-rise at close quarters. In a building intervention, that vertical approach can bring commandos to a point that would otherwise be difficult to reach. Familiar architecture became a measure of an extraordinary capability. The rush was extraordinary. So was the composure.
The inverted-descent photograph pushes that physical drama further. Body, weapon, building and sky have to make sense in a single, disorienting frame. Smoke initially swallowed the action. Changing its position revealed the commando again, allowing the photograph to hold both the audacity of the descent and the precision within it.
An NSG operator advances through a dim corridor.
The Belgian Malinois brings formidable speed, agility and aggression to the NSG’s K9 capability. Specialist training and the handler’s control turn that power into a disciplined partnership. They train for assault, explosive detection and tracking.
Technical sophistication extends the partnership further: the K9 Vision System combines a camera, radio transmission and two-way audio-video communication.
These dogs have earned recognition for courage as well. For his role in the 2016 Pathankot operation, NSG K9 Rocket received the Chief of Army Staff’s commendation and the DG NSG’s disc and commendation for gallantry. The capability behind those open jaws reaches far beyond the force of the photograph.
For the K9 image, I placed the viewer inside a dark room. The jaws arrive first; behind them, the team remains visible in the shadows. Selective light turns an instant into a confrontation. The photograph draws its power from the dog’s real presence and the decision to meet it from that viewpoint.
Bomb disposal carries a different charge. To defuse a live bomb requires technical mastery and exceptional nerve. Watching that work, I felt how much intensity could exist within a controlled movement.
CBRNe training adds another demanding specialism: preparation for chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive threats. Across these disciplines, the spectacle changes; the depth of preparation remains.
Counter-hijack training brings the scale and complexity of an aircraft into view. A monorail carriage places intervention inside the architecture of an everyday journey. Specialist skills, mobility and teamwork must adapt to each setting.
Rupali Talan began as an associate photographer and soon became a co-creator of this work. Her athletic temperament and practice of Kalaripayattu made action photography a natural fit. She brings that understanding of movement to her photographs and films.
On the later NSG calendars, the joint concept and photography credits recognise the work of Pravin Talan and Rupali Talan. Her contribution is also present in the individual photographs and films that carry her own distinct eye.
Mud across her face. Barbed wire close above her. Near the end of an exhausting crawl, a woman commando lifts her head and looks straight into Rupali Talan’s camera. The gaze cuts through everything else.
Rupali Talan had called to her at that moment. The resulting photograph, Eye of the Tigress, appeared in the 2023 NSG calendar and on Times of India supplements. Its power comes from an encounter held without softening the effort: exhaustion and resolve occupy the same face.
At the fire obstacle, Rupali Talan urged a lower, closer viewpoint, giving the leap greater force within the frame. Her direction of The Making of a Woman Commando, released on International Women’s Day in 2023, takes that attention into film. Across obstacles, weapons training and physical exertion, the woman commando stands fully within this demanding world, with a presence that needs no embellishment.
Eye of the Tigress · Photograph by Rupali Talan
The story in motionEach frame keeps its own proportions. Explore the photographs by format, or enter the full-screen sequence and let one image follow another.
A helicopter over the city. A hovercraft crossing water. Speedboats carrying commandos towards another demanding environment. NSG 360° opens out the geography of readiness, moving from the enclosed intensity of a room to the vastness of an aerial approach.
That readiness continues to evolve, including Counter-Hijack Operations on Inland Water Transport (IWT), extending specialist intervention to river cruises.
The range is exhilarating. Room intervention compresses action into a confined space. A monorail carriage places it inside an everyday journey. Counter-hijack training brings the scale and complexity of an aircraft into view. High-rise descents pull the eye vertically; waterborne movement stretches it across the horizon. The commandos must be at home in environments that keep changing the demands upon them.
This is where technical sophistication becomes visible: the integration of specialist skills, mobility and teamwork. A precision marksman, a K9 team and a bomb-disposal specialist bring different forms of mastery. None can be reduced to physical daring. The elite character of the force lies in the depth of those specialisations and the discipline required to bring them together.
The selected spreads let those changes register at full scale. Aircraft intervention, a descent through smoke, the helicopter and the hovercraft each carry their own visual rhythm. Then the firing range brings the focus back to the essential concentration behind the action.
Across five books, the photographic account extends from capability to protection and remembrance. The Making of a NSG Close Protection Commando and The Bullet Catchers explore another responsibility documented during these years: staying close to the person whose life must be protected. Shaurya, released in 2020 and dedicated to nineteen NSG martyrs, holds the cost of service at the centre of the story.
Over the past decade, I have had the privilege of working with successive Directors General, Inspectors General, Force Commanders and officers of the National Security Guard. Each brought their own experience, vision and commitment to the force.
Through these years, one tradition continued uninterrupted.
Every year, a new NSG calendar.
Year after year, my name remained on the cover. On the later editions, it appeared beneath words that have always meant a great deal to me:
“A tribute to the Bravehearts of NSG.”
“By Pravin Talan.”
To have my name on the cover of the annual calendar of India's elite counter-terrorism force was an extraordinary expression of trust. To see that association continue through ten editions, across successive commands, meant even more.
The calendar became much more than an annual publication.
The photographs found their way into training establishments, officers' messes, Sainik Schools and the homes of people who admired India's uniformed forces.
Over the years, the calendar acquired a cult following, becoming a collector's item and a source of inspiration for young Indians.
I had already seen how our Mumbai Police calendars had influenced the visual presentation of police forces. With the NSG, the scale, creative possibilities and response were even greater.
The challenge, however, never changed.
Every year, we had to imagine and create an entirely new set of photographs — new environments, new capabilities, new perspectives and compositions that could stand apart from everything we had already photographed.
Even the COVID years could not interrupt the sequence.
In January 2026, we completed the tenth edition.
These calendars bring dignity, power and cinematic scale to photographs of our national heroes. You can give one to your son or your father, put it up at home and take pride in what it represents. A commando above the Taj, an aircraft intervention, a K9 surging towards the lens: the images have an immediate visual force, and a place in the life of a family.
For young people who want to join the Army or the special forces, these photographs make an ambition visible. The men and women on the page embody a future they aspire to. That connection gives the calendar a life far beyond its dates.
Most people who get these calendars preserve them. Beyond its release, the calendar continues to be presented to dignitaries throughout the year, almost as a souvenir of the NSG.
At NSG hubs across the country, I have seen calendar pages turned into file folders. Huge enlargements of the photographs appear across hubs and training centres, including NSG headquarters. The images have become part of the everyday surroundings of the very people they portray.
Each edition brings around sixteen distinct photographs. Sustaining that ambition means finding fresh situations and fresh ways of seeing an elite, publicity-shy force. Photography began in 2016; the first calendar followed in January 2017. Every new year added to a collection worth keeping together.
For years, young Indians looking for images of special forces to put on their screens often downloaded photographs of Western units. Those pictures offered a powerful visual language of courage, skill and aspiration. I wanted our young people to have compelling images of the extraordinary men and women among us: Indian commandos whose abilities could hold their imagination with the same immediacy.
The calendars gave that aspiration a form people could keep and share. Here were the Black Cats descending from helicopters, moving through water, working with highly trained K9s and bringing sophisticated weapons and specialist capabilities into view. The photographs made this world vivid. They gave young viewers images of their own heroes to return to, download and carry on their phones.
What followed became a cultural phenomenon. The photographs travelled through WhatsApp and social media, passed from one person to another because people wanted others to see them. A calendar could reach someone who would never hold the printed edition. An individual photograph could become a wallpaper, a point of conversation or a source of inspiration. The force’s visual presence grew through those everyday acts of sharing.
Coming from a force so reserved about publicity, that sustained response carried particular meaning. Each edition renewed the encounter: another set of images through which people could see the courage, preparation and technical sophistication of the NSG.
The photographs also travelled into public life. On 26 November 2017, the FANS memorial at the Bombay Stock Exchange brought together remembrance and an exhibition of twenty-four photographs of the NSG and Mumbai Police, also shown on six LED screens. Among those present were Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju and Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Hansraj Gangaram Ahir.
At the Gateway of India on 26 October 2021, Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari flagged off the Sudarshan Bharat Parikrama, the NSG Black Cat Car Rally. An exhibition of our years of work with the NSG filled the setting, with photographs also displayed on huge LED screens against the Gateway. The Governor honoured Rupali Talan and me with a memento for our work.
Requests for larger prints came from Sainik Schools, corporate houses, schools, colleges and other government institutions. It became impossible to supply physical copies to everyone, so we decided to release high-resolution PDFs, allowing those interested to print their own copies.
An NSG K9 photograph became the cover of the Ministry of Home Affairs’ first National Police K9 Journal. Subsequent editions carried many more photographs. These were different ways for the work to meet people, from a school wall or an exhibition to a professional publication.
For me, the deeper significance lies in that availability. A young person drawn first by the impact of a photograph could begin to look at the discipline and commitment within it. The heroes were among us. The images made it easier to see them.
The NSG draws selected personnel from the Indian Army, the Central Armed Police Forces and State Police Forces. Personnel serve on deputation and later return to their parent organisations. Its human reach therefore extends well beyond the people serving in the force at any one time.
In my experience, returning to a parent force does not mean leaving the identity of an NSG commando behind. That period of service remains a source of pride and belonging. Across the Indian Army, the Central Reserve Police Force, the Border Security Force and other organisations, former NSG personnel carry a connection to the Black Cats into the next chapter of their service.
That continuing connection helps explain the life of the calendars. A photograph can be shared by someone serving in the NSG and by someone who has already returned to another force. It can move through colleagues, friendships and groups formed across years of service. The network keeps extending as personnel come and go, taking their pride in the NSG with them. The calendar speaks to a community much larger than a single year’s serving strength.
Six selected films · One screen · Muted autoplay when in view · Internet required
In film, the descent continues. The K9 closes the distance. A body clears an obstacle, and a training sequence reveals the speed a photograph can only suspend.
Fifteen short films extend this decade’s work through The Art of Visuals. The six gathered here move through K9 training, room intervention, helicopter descents, fire obstacles, unarmed combat and women commandos. They bring another pulse to the same world: exertion, coordination and the relentless work behind an apparently effortless action.
The Making of a Woman Commando, directed by Rupali Talan and released on 8 March 2023, is a distinct part of that record.
Photographs and footage by Pravin Talan and Rupali Talan incorporated into the documentary.
Our decade of photographing and filming the NSG also found its way into National Geographic's documentary Inside NSG, released in November 2023.
At the request of the then Director General, M. A. Ganapathy, we provided photographs and footage from our NSG archive for incorporation into the documentary.
These visuals became part of the finished programme, bringing material from our years of work to a wider television audience.
Although our contribution was not acknowledged in the documentary's credits, the photographs and footage remain part of our visual archive and our work with the NSG.
K9 · Belgian Malinois in ActionStarts muted when in view. If playback is blocked, select Play film.
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An interview on the work behind the 2019 calendar, including requests for high-resolution photographs from social-media audiences and Sainik Schools.
A photographic showcase of the 2019 calendar, presenting the Black Cats’ training and capabilities as a tribute to the martyrs.
A reported feature describing demand for the calendar among security personnel and ministry officials, with an MHA official commenting on its reception.
An interview about the tribute’s origins and photographic approach, reporting online circulation and an audience response from badminton coach Utsav Mishra.
A gallery of the 2021–22 calendar, highlighting its treatment of action and endurance and the photographers’ ambition to inspire young Indians.
An interview exploring five months of work alongside the commandos and the physical demands of photographing their training for the 2021–22 calendar.
A Telugu report comparing the seventh edition’s photographs to action-film imagery, showing the calendar’s reach into regional-language coverage.
A published photo essay featuring the 2023 calendar, including a woman commando in training and the personal story behind the tribute.
Chhaya Gupta interviews Pravin Talan about the seventh calendar, the photographs’ visual impact and his approach to working with commandos in training.
A month-by-month presentation of the 2024 calendar, highlighting specialist equipment and reporting social-media attention and enthusiasm among young audiences.
A published photo essay on the 2024 edition, with photographs of CBRN specialists, counter-drone equipment and training with the CornerShot weapon system.
The newspaper’s “This calendar is locked and loaded” feature explores Pravin Talan and Rupali Talan’s creative partnership and the eighth edition’s high-tech imagery.
A photographic presentation of the ninth edition, covering night combat, counter-hijack capabilities, bomb disposal, K9 teams and underwater operations.
A tenth-edition feature presenting the calendar as a continuing visual record of the NSG’s capabilities across land, air and water.
Pallabi Dey Purkayastha’s profile traces the trust behind ten editions and describes the photographs circulating through PDFs, wallpapers and WhatsApp forwards.
The first commandos I photographed were masked. Later, as the calendars spread, some of them found my number and asked for their photographs. They wanted the particular frames in which they had appeared.
I explained that I could not tell which commando was which beneath the masks. If nobody could recognise them, why did they need that particular picture? They could use the whole calendar.
One commando insisted. “It doesn’t matter if the world can’t see who I am, but I know who I am and what I am.” He knew he was the person in that photograph. That was enough.
The answer stayed with me. Behind that mask were years of effort and the resolve to defend his country and his honour. He did not need his face to be recognised. He wanted the photograph because he knew what it meant to stand there.