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My father, Ranjan Sarkar, Västerås, Sweden, 1970

Image and text contributed by Jaydeep Sarkar, Mumbai

This picture was taken a year before my parent’s marriage. My father, Ranjan Sarkar, had moved to Sweden from Calcutta, in 1968, with his first job as an Engineer with ASEA. The first child from his generation to work outside of India, my grandmother was particularly concerned about his single life and urged her elder children to find a match for my father. At that time, he was thirty, and only a thirty year old bachelor in the family could be a cause for such ‘epic concern’. Pictures of prospective brides would be sent to my father by mail, for his consideration. Unsure about committing to marriage, he would resist taking a decision on any of the pictures.

Finally my eldest aunt (my father’s eldest brother’s wife) sent him a letter loaded with melodramatic words of emotional blackmail, urging him to get married, for his “own sake and that of the family”. With the letter, came another set of five pictures.

My father’s friend photographed him here on a Sunday with his Minolta camera, as he went through the letter and the five photographs that came with it. One of the pictures was that of my mother’s, Jayshri Sengupta. Probably the one he is looking at in this image, or not. But it was on this day, that my father decided he was ready to commit to marriage.

A year later, my parents got married. They met each other for the first time, on the day of their wedding, at the ‘mandap‘.

The day was also momentous for another reason. It was the day of the final confrontation between Indian and Pakistani troops, before Bangladesh was liberated on the 16th of December 1971, a day after their wedding. The people of Calcutta were urged to switch all their houselights off, for fear of aerial bombings. My parents got married in darkness, with light only from the fire of the ceremonial ‘havan‘.

Next day, when my mother stepped into my father’s house for the first time, the blackout was called off as India won the war. All the lights came on at that moment as if by divine design, in the house and the city. An occurence that seems right out of an Indian soap, but true! Everyone from my father’s family started cheering loudly much to my mother’s shock and horror!

Last year, on the 15th of December, my parents celebrated their 40th anniversary together.

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My mother, Kamini Agaskar, grandmother Kamala Vijaykar, me, Mrudula Joshi and in my lap my daughter, Anupamaa Joshi, Bombay, Circa 1970

Image and Text contributed by Mrudula Prabhuram Joshi, Mumbai

Kamala Vijayakar, my grandmother (sitting, center) was born in 1890 in a well-to-do Pathare Prabhu family in Bombay. Pathare Prabhus are the original residents of the Bombay Islands along with the Agaris, the Bhandaris and the Kolis since 700 years. They are known to be a small, close-knit, and a 100 % literate community. Kamala was a bright student of the Alexandra Girls’ School. She passed her Matriculation exam in 1910 and joined St. Xavier’s College for higher education the same year. She was ”the first Hindu girl student” of this esteemed college. She excelled in higher studies and was preparing for the First Year Arts examination when she got engaged to Mr. Narayan Vijaykar, who was an artist but non-matriculate. According to the prevalent norms, the wife could never be more educated than the husband, so she had to give up college education, start family life, raising children and fulfilling the duties of a good housewife.

Settled in Malad, a distant suburb in Bombay, she began taking a keen interest in the Local District Board activities and the emancipation of women around her. She was a fluent and forceful speaker in English, and was appointed as the Honorary Magistrate at Malad. A lady Magistrate was a major novelty in those days and people would throng the courts when she delivered her judgments. When she left her home to go to the courts, people would stand on both sides of the road just ”to see ” how a lady magistrate looked. She had long innings at the Malad District Court. Kamalabai Vijaykar was appointed ”Justice of Peace ” (Honorary Magistrate) by the government, and she later became popular as ”J. P. Kamalabai ” all over Bombay. She was also a staunch Congress-woman.

All her life, she held Education dear to her heart. Her own children, 7 in all, fulfilled her own dream of becoming Graduates and Double-graduates. She lived long enough to see even her grandchildren become double graduates. She breathed her last on 8th August, 1972, at the ripe old age of 82, content in the knowledge that she had done her bit to empower at least some women around her by providing for their education.

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My parents and my brothers at my Christening. Sacred Heart Church, Santa Cruz, Bombay. 1971

Image and text contributed by Wanda Naomi Rau, Mumbai

This was an image taken at my christening at the Sacred Heart Church in Santa Cruz, Bombay. My father had invited 100 people to celebrate that I, a girl was born 9 years after 2 boys. My brothers even got the day off school.

It was tradition in Goa to have at least one son carry the family name and another follow priesthood. My father Jose Luis Alvaro Remedios, from Saligao, Goa was to become a priest, since his older brother Hubert had moved to Bombay to pursue his Masters at St Xavier’s College. Hubert, unfortunately died of Typhoid around the 1940′s and my father had to leave the Seminary. However, The Seminary takes you through a tough academic route which covers both main stream subjects and theological studies. Perhaps his significant learning was that of Latin, which I regret I did not learn from my Father. However I think my love for history, academia and music is inextricably linked to my Father’s genes.

My father moved to Bombay to look for a job. He began working with Reserve Bank of India, and held the job for 38 odd years until he retired as the Asst. Financial Controller. He met my mum, Maria Aida Bertila Silveira from St. Mathias, Goa, through a formal proposal. My Mum was 30 years old and he was 35 when they got married. They lived in Byculla for the early years and then moved to the Reserve Bank Quarters in Santa Cruz. My Mum was a home maker and raised 2 boys and a girl, me.

My father’s best kept secret was that he was keenly interested in our own family’s past and actively pursued to construct a family tree for almost 25 years. His research was so thorough that it would have certainly gained him an M.Phil in Historical & Contextual Studies, even though everything is documented in a narrative fashion. He traced the history of our family to 1500s and found that we belonged to a community called the Goud Saraswat Brahmins; and had the family name ‘Bhatt’. It is between the 1500s-1700s that from ‘Bhatt’ we changed our last name to ‘Tavara’ and from ‘Tavara’ we converted to Catholicism with the Portugese last name Remedios during Portuguese India reign. My parents too were born during the Portuguese rule. Their generation and the generation that follows; of my relatives, all live in Goa, apart from the few who moved to Lisbon, Portugal. They speak impeccable Portuguese, and can be more Portuguese than Goan at times, which is amusing.

During a short posting to Delhi, my father decided to change our surname from Remedios to Rau because he was exasperated that everyone there called us either Ramdas, Ramdeo or Ramlal. He also felt that having an Indian last name would stand us in good stead in a Hindutva nation. So while I was born Wanda Noemia Remedios, he changed it to Wanda Naomi Rau. Naomi is the English name for Noemia; which is Portuguese.

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My husband Imam Hadi Naqvi and I, a few days after our marriage. Patna, Bihar. 1958

 

Image and text contributed by Nazni Naqvi, Mumbai

My name is Nazni Naqvi. This picture of me and my husband Syed Imam Hadi Naqvi was taken on 11^thOctober, 1958, five days after our wedding day. It was taken on the terrace of my parents’ home, Sultan Palace in Patna (now the pink painted State Transport Bhawan) by my brother, Syed Quamarul Hasan. An avid photographer, he took this photo as part of a series with his Roliflex Camera.

I came from a family with part royal lineage of Nawabs – My paternal grandfather had established the Patna University and was knighted by the British for his contribution to education. He was thereafter known as Sir Sultan Ahmed, and my grandmother as Lady Sultan Ahmed, customarily called ‘Lady Saheb’.

Hadi was raised in Amroha, Uttar Pradesh. He was a graduate of Aligarh University and then went to study Economics at LSE, London.

In 1954, a Maulana recommended Hadi to my father as a prospective son-in-law. I was 16 years old then and the only daughter in seven sons. I had other considerations for a husband- some cousins (sanctioned under Islamic law) and some other men with royal lineage. Marrying cousins was out of the question, and marrying into a royal family was not a very appealing idea even though my mother belonged to one. Photographs were exchanged and once I saw Hadi’s picture, I was in love. My father however wasn’t sure because the only thing that concerned him was Hadi had to be taller than me.

My father then travelled to London for health reasons and also met Hadi. They began to meet often and became well acquainted. To his relief Hadi turned out to be an inch taller than me, I was 5ft 3, he was 5ft 4. Everyone was happy, the families met and we were declared Engaged. Through the process of the engagement until our marriage, a 4-year gap, we never met or communicated with each other. Although I did sneak a peek from behind the curtains when he was visiting.

At the time of my engagement, at age 16, I was studying in class 9^th I think. This might seem strange now but as a generation many of us didn’t have school for almost 2 years, because most educational institutions were closed due to partition issues. But in those days, loss of time in the arena of education wasn’t a big deal, especially for women. Nonetheless, I did complete my matriculation from a private school.

Three years since the Engagement and the Nikah, Hadi returned from London in 1957. Our marriage was fixed for October 1, 1958. That the dates changed is because of an interesting incident. The train that was supposed to bring the groom and his family to Patna never arrived on the date. It was pouring rain so hard in Amroha that the connection bridge from Amroha to Moradabad broke and they had to stop at Moradabad. At the time there were no mobiles, the few telephones that were around too were dead. So we had no clue where anyone was and it seemed the entire groom’s family had vanished!

Zakir Hussain, who was then Governor of Bihar and a family friend came to Hadi’s aid and with the help of the Telephone Exchange enabled a phone call to Patna two days later, informing us of what had happened. Hadi and his family finally did arrive, though four days later.

After my marriage, we left for Amroha and a few months later I moved from a 100-room palace in Patna, to Delhi with Hadi into a two bedroom government allotted flat. Hadi had begun working at the Ministry of Agriculture as an Agricultural Economist and later joined the Ministry of Finance. I on the other hand could not have asked for a better man in my life.  He was a good man, joyful, liberal & interested in life and all that it had to offer. We were in love and had three beautiful daughters. He was the best thing that happened to me. Hadi passed away in 1991. And I now live with my daughters in Mumbai

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My maternal grandparents, Rukaya and Sultan Dossal at the Taj Mahal. Agra, Uttar Pradesh. 1971

 

Image and text contributed by Alisha Sadikot, Mumbai
(http://theinheritageproject.wordpress.com/)

This picture of my grandparents was taken on a trip to Delhi, Jaipur and Agra. A route known to tourists as the The Golden Triangle. My grandparents, Rukaya and Sultan Dossal were married in 1949 in the city of Bombay. They had met a few years earlier, when my grandmother Rukaya compelled him to buy a theatre ticket she had volunteered to sell, unaware that this expense of Rs. 10 was one he could then ill afford. The story of their early courtship is one of my favourites. Here it is, recorded in her own words in a memoir she wrote for her grandchildren, 60 odd years later:

‘Needless to say that I was quite struck by Sultan and I remember coming home and telling Saleha (sister) that I had met a very handsome man, but most probably he must be married. I was greatly relieved sometime later when I learnt that he wasn’t. I suppose, Sultan must have been duly impressed as well because he made every attempt to see me. As he told me later, he would leave his office at Flora Fountain at a particular time to catch me walking down from Elphinstone College towards Churchgate Station and to me it seemed that it was just a happy chance. We would then have coffee at Coffee House.

I avoided going to movies with him but one day when we met by chance in a bus and he was getting down at the next stop, I told him I’d like to go to the movies with him and we decided on meeting at Metro the next day to see “Arsenic and Old Lace”. On coming home I was stunned to be told be told by Baba (father) that we would be going to Kihim the next day. I tried to make all excuses to be left behind but Baba would not hear of it, so I could not keep my appointment with Sultan and there was no way of my letting him know. Naturally, he must have thought the worst of me, and naturally I was miserable on this first trip to Kihim. Fortunately, my connection with Sultan as also with Kihim did not end there. In fact, it is in Kihim just now that I am writing this….’

At the very end of her story, when asked to note the most exciting part of her life, she wrote ‘the most exciting thing that happened to me was coming across Sultan’.

 

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My mother's classmate, Sharda Pandit (later Mukherjee), 1935, Bombay

Image and text contributed by  Mrudula Prabhuram Joshi, Bombay

The beautiful woman seen here is Sharda Pandit, a scion of a Maharashtrian aristocratic family in the earlier half of the 20th century. She was born in Rajkot, Gujarat. She was hailed as the ‘Beauty Queen’ of Elphinstone College of Bombay, in fact of all collegians of the city; because Bombay (now Mumbai) had only three colleges at that time – Elphinstone, Wilson and Xavier’s.  She possessed a kind of serene beauty, singular charm and grace. Her contemporaries from other colleges would drop by just to have a glimpse of this icon of beauty. Not only was she beautiful to look at, she possessed a beautiful heart, too.
At that time, there were only a handful of women students in the colleges, most of whom were from middle class families. Sharda would get along amicably with everyone despite her wealthy family background. She acted as the heroine of several plays during the college years, for the Annual College Day functions.

Sharda and my mother, Kamini Vijaykar were classmates and that’s how I came to know her.

Later on, Sharda married Subroto Mukherjee, the first Air Chief Marshal of the Indian Air Force in 1939. After his untimely death in 1960, she devoted herself to social service and political activism. For some time, she was also the Governor of Andhra Pradesh from 1977-1978 and then the Governor of Gujarat from 1978 to 1983. She kept herself busy with several constructive activities. She was beyond 90 years of age when she passed away, but preserved her inner and outer beauty till the very last.

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My Parents Ronald Osbourne and Beryl Osbourne, at Kohat Pass (NW Frontier Province), Pakistan. April 1946

Image and Text contributed by John Reese-Osbourne

I first learned of the Indian Memory Project from an article in ‘The Australian’ of May 2011 (a News Ltd daily newspaper). After visiting the website, it occurred to me that others searching the pages might be interested in a brief glimpse of Indian Army life from the viewpoint of a British officer and his family in 1945-46. It may shed a personal light on that brief moment in time just before the watershed of Independence and the bloody shambles the politicians made of partition.

This images is of my parents taken on 23^rd April 1946, and it show them at the top of the Kohat Pass, near Tribal Territory. My mother is wearing a revolver!. On the back of some of these photographs, she has captioned them as ‘the gateway to 30 miles of tribal territory’.

My father Ronald Osborne was born in Wales in 1910 and worked as sales manager in London for Geo. Wimpey & Co., then a large builder of houses. He volunteered for the British Army in 1939 just before universal conscription was introduced. He served initially with the Royal Engineers and fought in the abortive Norway campaign before undergoing commando training and going on the far more successful Lofoten Islands raid to destroy an oil refinery held by the German forces. Selected for officer training, he found that the pay in the Indian Army was higher than in the British forces and chose to be commissioned into the Royal Indian Army Service Corps, serving in the North African and Italian campaigns, where he rose to the rank of major, until the Indian Army was repatriated.

My mother Beryl (née Beardsley) was also born in 1910 and grew up in Derbyshire. She moved to London as a young woman where she met and married my father. I was born in 1934. When my father joined the army, we went to live with her parents in Kingston-upon-Thames, where they owned two shops. At some point in 1940 a stray German bomb destroyed the shops and my mother, grandmother and I moved to stay with relations in Derbyshire before settling in a small village called Kirk Hallam. My grandfather stayed in Kingston, continuing to run his shops from two garages.

Understandably impatient after five years of wartime separation, my mother joined the Women’s Indian Voluntary Service (WIVS) as a means of getting out to India. By coincidence, she and my father were on separate ships passing through the Suez Canal at the same time (I think in September 1945). They met briefly when their ships docked in Bombay, before travelling to their respective postings. Initially she worked in the WIVS headquarters in New Delhi, organising the postings of other British volunteers as they arrived. Seeing little point in staying in New Delhi while my father was stationed in Jalandhar, she surreptitiously posted herself there! At some time in 1946, my father’s unit was transferred to Kohat.

In 1945, I was 11 years old, attending a boarding school in Leicester in the UK Midlands and spending school holidays with my maternal grandparents in Kingston-upon-Thames or with my father’s brother’s family in Porthcawl, South Wales. Sadly I no longer have any of the letters from my parents, so the story of their time in Jalandhar and Kohat is based solely on my memory and the scribbled captions on the backs of old, fading black-and-white photographs in the album I began to compile that year.

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My father T. P Pathak with my Grandmother Hira Pathak. Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh. 1956

Image and Text contributed by Paritosh Pathak.

In this image my father was 6 years old and my grandmother was 34.

My grandmother was a educated woman who had attended high school and could read and write. A rarity in rural Uttar Pradesh’s heartland. She was assertive, fashionable and a strong woman. Notice the large nose ring (Nath) in fashion at the time. She home schooled my father for a while. My father excelled at academics and joined the UP, State Civil Services. He retired recently after his last posting as Commissioner of Jhansi division in UP. He always credited his success to the education he received at home from my grandmother.

My grandfather & his brother were orphans and raised themselves. He was married late in life to my grandmother and his brother never got married.

My grandparents had two children, the older one pictured above is my father. My grandmother is now 95 and suffers from many age related ailments. She cannot recall the picture occasion, most likely it was a village fair where the picture was developed on old plate based cameras in Mirzapur, UP.

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My Bua, Veena Sajnani, winner of the Miss India Crown. (R) With Miss India runners-up, Zeenat Aman and Vani Ganpathi. Bombay. 1970

Image and Text contributed by Smita Sajnani/Veena Sajnani, Bengaluru

The following text is the story my Bua, (father’s siser) Veena Sajnani narrated to me while flipping through her photo albums.
“I was a fashion model in the year 1970 and toured with the Femina group all over India doing fashion shows for textile firms and others. Our salary was Rs. 150/- per show and after 20 shows we would go home with a princely sum of Rs. 3000/-. We were only 10 models and we knew each other well, we travelled together and had a lot of fun.

One such day that year, when rehearsals for fashion shows had begun, I was told I was no longer required for the show. Very upset and being a newbie with all the hotshot models of Bombay, I presumed it was because I had made a mistake and therefore had been kicked out.

But no. Apparently the call for Miss India 1970 had been announced and I was selected to participate in the Beauty Pageant. Funny part was, I hadn’t even applied for it! I then found out that Meher Mistry and Persis Khambatta (the original Super Models of India) who were close friends, had filled in the Miss India application form for me because they felt I had a chance to win.

Once I accepted the fact that I was in the pageant, I ran home and told my sister to come shopping with me. On a limited budget, we bought a sari, an Emerald green chiffon with gold work and it looked lovely under the stage lights. Bombay, being the cinema city, had tailors stitching sari blouses within hours so while my sister and I shopped around, my blouse was ready.

Before the day of the pageant, we were asked to come to the Times of India office terrace (parent company of Femina) with a swim-suit and be photographed in it, because in those days, judges looked at pictures instead of the actual girls in swim-suits; and we were saved the embarrassment of coming out on stage in swim-suits. Instead, during the interval, the judges came backstage to check us out and since it was dark they had flashlights and our photos in their hands! Yes, it was very funny indeed. We all giggled through the ordeal but in retrospect it was better than walking out half naked under full lights- a very scary prospect to say the least.

Persis and Meher on the other hand, were walking for the fashion show on the contest day and were most enthusiastic about my winning. So much so that Persis decided to do some sleuthing to find out how I was faring with the judges. She was perceptive and sharp, so each time she went out on the ramp she would peek into the judges’ notes! She must have had X-Ray vision because she said she could see the ratings and it was number 6, my number! We all pooh-poohed but sure enough when the winner was announced it was indeed number 6! Me. Veena Sajnani.

Needless to say my two partners in crime were thrilled to bits. After all I had beaten Zeenat Aman (who later became a very famous movie star), whom I think they did not like very much. Whatever the case maybe, I was happy for them and for myself for joining the elite band of Miss Indias. And I will always remember them fondly for this adventure.”

After her stay at Miami for the Miss Universe pageant, my Bua continued with her modelling, then worked at Madura Coats, post which she found her true love – Theatre.

79

My father Prof. RR Kripalani (far right) in Tagore's play "Dak Ghar" (Post Office) staged by the teaching staff of DJ Sind College, Karachi. 1937

 

Image and text contributed by Mrs. Shamlu Kripalani Dudeja, Kolkata (www.calcuttafoundation.com)

I am a Sindhi and I was born in Karachi in 1938.

This is an image of my father on 20 Jan, 1937, in DJ Sind College, Karachi. The photograph is courtesy the College (which now stands in Pakistan) where my father was a Professor of Mathematics till 1945. It shows a scene from Rabindra Nath Tagore‘s play “Dak Ghar” (Post Office) which was staged by the teaching staff of the College in Karachi in 1937 during their 20 year celebrations. Here my father  is in the role of Gaffar. I presume the play was translated in English, because the cast was all non-Bengali, in fact, most of them are Sindhis. In 1930s, Tagore had himself acted in ‘Dak Ghar‘ as Gaffar, the same role that my father played.

My father and his wife, Sushila moved from Karachi to Delhi via Bombay, in September 1947 during partition, with me, my younger sister Indu and youngest brother Gul. We lived there for 10 years. My father got a job in the Ministry of Commerce & Industry due to his mastery in Statistics as in those days Statistics was not a very commonly studied subject. I studied Math, got married, taught Math, and by a string of happenstances got involved in the Kantha revival, 25 years ago. In 2009/2010 I began depicting scenes from Tagore’s pictures through the medium of Kantha, where I sat with my women aritsans and artists from the villages of Bengal. I am now 73 and  have lived in Kolkata since 1962.