Faded Combats

FOG OF WAR.
WE STRIKE SILENTLY
WE STRIKE HARD

THE WARRIORS- INDIAN ARMY

Origin Story of Faded Combats

For 25 years, I lived inside the uniform.
Not around it — inside it.
Every crease, every stain, every faded patch carried a story that rarely reached the world outside the wire.

One moment changed everything.

During a high‑altitude deployment, I was photographing my team.
A young soldier looked at me and asked:

“Sir… yeh photo kabhi ghar jaayegi kya?”
(Will this photo ever reach home?)

That question stayed with me.
Because behind it was a truth we rarely acknowledge:

If we don’t tell our story, someone else will — and we will never be the hero in that story.

When I hung up my uniform after 25 years, I opened my old trunk.
Inside were my faded combats — torn, dusty, carrying the smell of diesel, sweat, and survival.
Holding them, I realised something:

The combats may fade.
The stories must not.

That night, Faded Combats was born.

Not as a business.
Not as a project.
But as a continuation of service.

A veteran‑led combat photography and documentation unit dedicated to capturing the Indian soldier as he truly is —
Raw.
Real.
Unfiltered.
Unstaged.

Today, my camera is my new weapon.
A weapon of memory.
A weapon against forgetting.
A weapon that ensures the Indian soldier is not just seen — but remembered.

Through Faded Combats, we document the soul of soldiering:
the 3 AM guard shifts,
the blistered marches,
the silent courage,
the laughter after survival,
the moments that never make it to headlines but define a soldier’s life.

This is my mission now.
My second innings in uniform.

To honour the unseen.
To immortalise the forgotten.
To ensure that when history is written,
our soldiers are not footnotes — they are the heroes.

The fun side of K9 training captured by us.
For our trusty four legged companions