Life Back Then

My Discovery of India -1

Author: 
T.S. Nagarajan

Category:

T.S. Nagarajan (b.1932) is a noted photojournalist whose works have been exhibited and published widely in India and abroad. After a stint with the Government of India as Director of the Photo Division in the Ministry of Information, for well over a decade Nagarajan devoted his life to photographing interiors of century-old homes in India, a self-funded project. This foray into what constitutes the Indianness of homes is, perhaps, his major work as a photojournalist.

 

Editor's note: This story is reproduced, with permission, from Mr. Nagarajan's second not-for-sale book of his memories, Self-Portrait: The Story of My life, 2012. This website has several excerpts from his first not-for-sale book A Pearl of Water on a Lotus Leaf &amp\; Other Memories, 2010.This story is the first of three sequential stories about his life after he left Mysore in 1956.

My Discovery of India -2

Author: 
T.S. Nagarajan

Category:

T.S. Nagarajan (b.1932) is a noted photojournalist whose works have been exhibited and published widely in India and abroad. After a stint with the Government of India as Director of the Photo Division in the Ministry of Information, for well over a decade Nagarajan devoted his life to photographing interiors of century-old homes in India, a self-funded project. This foray into what constitutes the Indianness of homes is, perhaps, his major work as a photojournalist.

 

Editor's note: This story is reproduced, with permission, from Mr. Nagarajan's second not-for-sale book of his memories, Self-Portrait: The Story of My life, 2012. This website has several excerpts from his first not-for-sale book A Pearl of Water on a Lotus Leaf &amp\; Other Memories, 2010.This is the second of three sequential stories about his life after he left Mysore. The first story is available here.

Sleight of Hand

My Discovery of India -3

Author: 
T.S. Nagarajan

Category:

T.S. Nagarajan (b.1932) is a noted photojournalist whose works have been exhibited and published widely in India and abroad. After a stint with the Government of India as Director of the Photo Division in the Ministry of Information, for well over a decade Nagarajan devoted his life to photographing interiors of century-old homes in India, a self-funded project. This foray into what constitutes the Indianness of homes is, perhaps, his major work as a photojournalist.

 

 

Editor's note: This story is reproduced, with permission, from Mr. Nagarajan's second not-for-sale book of his memories, Self-Portrait: The Story of My life, 2012. This website has several excerpts from his first not-for-sale book, A Pearl of Water on a Lotus Leaf &amp\; Other Memories, 2010.

This is the third of three sequential stories about his life after he left Mysore. Go to the first story in this sequence. Go to the second story in this sequence.

A Daughter

My memories of the air hostesses of the 1950s

Author: 
Radha Nair

Category:

Radha schooled in the Convent of Jesus and Mary (Delhi) and St. Joseph's Convent (Bombay), and graduated from Lady Shri Ram College (Delhi). She taught English at Women's Polytechnic (Madras and Coimbatore) for six years. Since 2007, she has been a freelance writer for the Hindustan Times (Mumbai), the Deccan Herald (Bangalore), and for the online editions of Outlook Traveller, India Traveller Travelogue, and Mathrabhumi (Calicut). She won the first prize in a short story competition conducted by the Deccan Herald in 2007. She has written many short stories based on her memories of family holidays in Calicut\; one of these was published in Penguin First Proof, 2010.

 

In the mid-1950s, when I was in my senior school, we were staying at Dhanraj Mahal in Bombay (now Mumbai). At night, after lights out, our rooms would be flooded with the neon blink of Air France, Alitalia, TWA, Qantas, BOAC, and JAL billboards, which were mounted against the walls of our building, all brilliantly lit up. All these international carriers had their offices inside the premises of Dhanraj Mahal.

As I drifted off to sleep, these billboards created their own magical illusions of distant lands. In the mid-50s, air travel was possible only for the affluent few. But for the less fortunate, the sense of wonder which flying created was reinforced by each of these billboards.

Memories in Black and White

Author: 
Radha Nair

Category:

Radha schooled in the Convent of Jesus and Mary (Delhi) and St. Joseph's Convent (Bombay), and graduated from Lady Shri Ram College (Delhi). She taught English at Women's Polytechnic (Madras and Coimbatore) for six years. Since 2007, she has been a freelance writer for the Hindustan Times (Mumbai), the Deccan Herald (Bangalore), and for the online editions of Outlook Traveller, India Traveller Travelogue, and Mathrabhumi (Calicut). She won the first prize in a short story competition conducted by the Deccan Herald in 2007. She has written many short stories based on her memories of family holidays in Calicut\; one of these was published in Penguin First Proof, 2010.

In the 1950s, when I was a Standard 10 student, in my all-girls class there was only one girl who owned a Box Camera. So when she brought it along for school picnics, she was the centre of great adulation. Everyone wanted to get as close to her as possible, just to see how this magic box worked.

We hung round while Tina Vakil gently eased out her Kodak Box Camera from its leather case. We watched her in focused silence, as she slowly made precise adjustments with the camera. Then she chose a scenic spot and got us all to stand together, as tightly as possible, while she framed us on the viewfinder before she took snaps of us at Borivili National Park.

My Father's Fountain Pens

Author: 
Radha Nair

Category:

Radha schooled in the Convent of Jesus and Mary (Delhi) and St. Joseph's Convent (Bombay), and graduated from Lady Shri Ram College (Delhi). She taught English at Women's Polytechnic (Madras and Coimbatore) for six years. Since 2007, she has been a freelance writer for the Hindustan Times (Mumbai), the Deccan Herald (Bangalore), and for the online editions of Outlook Traveller, India Traveller Travelogue, and Mathrabhumi (Calicut). She won the first prize in a short story competition conducted by the Deccan Herald in 2007. She has written many short stories based on her memories of family holidays in Calicut\; one of these was published in Penguin First Proof, 2010.

His writing table was a study in perfection. Not a speck of dust on the polished rosewood table, with its enchanting whorls and wavy grains, which sacredly held, a fat Webster's dictionary, a Pitman's shorthand primer, a brass coffee percolator holding carefully sharpened pencils, two brass paper weights of ingenious design made in the I.N.S. Sivaji foundry soon after WWII, an eraser, a gum bottle, a bottle of Quink ink and blotting paper. There was also a handsome ledger, into which he meticulously entered the household expenses, payments made to the carpenter, farm hands, coconut pluckers and masons.

बचपन के दिन भुला ना देना

Author: 
Radha Nair

Category:

Radha schooled in the Convent of Jesus and Mary (Delhi) and St. Joseph's Convent (Bombay), and graduated from Lady Shri Ram College (Delhi). She taught English at Women's Polytechnic (Madras and Coimbatore) for six years. Since 2007, she has been a freelance writer for the Hindustan Times (Mumbai), the Deccan Herald (Bangalore), and for the online editions of Outlook Traveller, India Traveller Travelogue, and Mathrabhumi (Calicut). She won the first prize in a short story competition conducted by the Deccan Herald in 2007. She has written many short stories based on her memories of family holidays in Calicut\; one of these was published in Penguin First Proof, 2010.

 

Editor's note: The title "बचपन के दिन भुला ना देना" means "Don't forget your childhood days".

1950

Dadar station ... from which exodus-ed travel weary wayfarers, at all hours of the day and night, to seek their fortunes in Bombay - the city of their dreams.

Growing up in Princely Mysore -2

Author: 
Bapu Satyanarayana

Category:

Tags:

Bapu Satyanarayana, born 1932 in Bangalore, retired as Chief Engineer, Ministry of Surface Transport. At present, he is the presiding arbitrator of the Dispute Adjudication Board appointed by the National Highway Authority of India. He lives in Mysore, and enjoys writing for various newspapers and magazines on a variety of subjects, including political and civic issues.

 

Editor's note: This is the second story about the author's life. The first story is available here.

Forbidden drink

Coffee was a taboo in our house for youngsters. I do not know what exactly the reason was for it.

Probably it was considered as a bad habit. When something is prohibited, it often raises curiosity. It was no different in this case. Therefore, we wanted to taste it. But father was dead against this, and instructed ladies of the house not to indulge us in this.

When an instruction came from my father, it was considered as an order that had to be obeyed. But we would plead with our mother and aunt, and I remember one incident in our house in Mysore. (This house was located on Weavers lane in Krishnamurthy Puram. The house, which our family sold later, still exists adjacent to the house of D V Krishna Murthy, a famous publisher.)

Lithographic Views of 19th century Bombay

Author: 
oldphotosbombay.blogspot.in

Category:

Large number of photographs and paintings of 19th-century Bombay at oldphotosbombay.blogspot.in. Brings our clearly the contrast with modern Mumbai.

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