Sir Mohinder Dhillon, pictured on the deck of British Navy ship. Kenya. 1967

Image and Text contributed by Sir Mohinder Dhillon, Kenya

The following text is a summarised and edited version of excerpts from an unpublished Autobiography of the contributor.

Looking back over the 80 years, I wonder how, as a simple village boy from Punjab who never even finished school, did I end up in Africa, dodging bullets to make a living from shooting hundreds of kilometres of film in some of the world’s most dangerous regions.

I come from the proud martial family of the Sikhs. I do not know the exact date of my birth, although my passport says 25 October 1931, Baburpur, Punjab. At the time, births were not registered, and parents habitually exaggerated the ages of their children in order to get them into school early and so have their own hands free during the day. Baburpur, formerly called Retla (the place of sand), was renamed after Mughal Emperor Babur who had reportedly camped near our village for a few weeks.

My father, Tek Singh-

My father, Tek Singh, was the first person in our village to get an education. He was an adventurous man, and in 1918 at the age of 17, he responded with enthusiasm to the recruiting posters for workers on the Uganda Railway in British East Africa. Believing that there was safety in numbers, he was joined by friends and former classmates from nearby villages and the determined young men collectively took up the challenge of seeking a better life abroad.

This grandiose project of Uganda Railways would change the lives of the tens of thousands of Indians who left home for a new life in an unknown land, most of them never to return. The so-called Lunatic Line laid between 1896 and 1901 from Mombasa into the interior of then-British East Africa to Lake Victoria and subsequently extended into what is now Uganda, opened up the East African hinterland to the outside world. The founding of towns, and their later development into cities, would go on to transform the economies of the region.

When Tek Singh announced his decision to go to East Africa, it upset my grandparents immensely. Their only son was going to ‘darkest Africa’, the prevalent view of Africa at the time (still the perception of many people today). The money for my father’s first train ticket to Bombay, and for the dhow that would carry him from there to Mombasa, was borrowed from a moneylender in the village at a steep interest rate.

For the young Tek Singh leaving the village was more than just an adventure. A great deal rested on how he would fare in distant East Africa. Back at home in India, his family would be depending on him for remittances. He also had young wife to think of. His marriage had taken place six years earlier, when Tek was just 11, and his betrothed, Kartar Kaur, was nine years old.

The railway journey from Babarpur to Bombay took two days and one night. And then it took another two days to find the Uganda Railway’s recruiting agent. His shopping list for the journey – then the cheapest way of crossing the Indian Ocean – included a charcoal stove, two bags of charcoal, all the rations needed for the journey, a sleeping mat, blankets, washing powder, bath soap, tea leaves, and fresh water.

Tek Singh – or Bau Ji, as he was fondly called at home – arrived in Mombasa with almost no money in his pockets. He found refuge at a nearby Sikh temple (Gurudwara), where he slept on the veranda braving the ravenous mosquitoes, exactly like how the thousands freshly arrived on the coast spent their first few nights. After a week, Bau Ji was provided a bachelor accommodation by the Uganda Railways. Later, he and two other young Sikhs shared a small railway house that had the luxury of a tiny garden. The trio of bachelors remained life-long friends.

Bau Ji had promptly written home, informing his parents of his safe arrival. The mail though travelled first by sea, and then by rail and horse-drawn carriage and by foot, and took as long as 12 weeks to arrive. By then, his parents had feared the worst. His wife, Kartar Kaur, for her part, was obliged to don widow’s attire (the customary white dress), and was forbidden to use cosmetics. She complied for form’s sake but Kartar refused to believe that her husband was not alive. Amid the uncertainty of my father’s absence, my grandfather Natha Singh lived long enough to hear that his son had indeed reached East Africa safely, but the suspense evidently proved too much for his health. When Bau Ji’s letter finally arrived, the family was overjoyed and distributed sweets to everybody, but my grandfather died shortly after that.

Bau Ji found himself working for a soon-to-be expanded colonial rail (and shipping) network, one that would come to be known, first as Kenya & Uganda Railways and Harbours, and then eventually (in 1948) as the East African Railways and Harbours Corporation. Almost 30 years would elapse before he felt he was ready to bring the rest of his family over to Kenya. Through the 30 years, Bau Ji had to be content with getting to see his family during periods of extended overseas leave. He was entitled, once in every five years, a ‘six month home leave’ in India. All but one of the rest of us seven siblings were conceived during successive home-leave visits from our father. My youngest brother Balbir was born in Kenya. Bau Ji was able to save money for the education of all six of his sons, including me. Later, Bau Ji sent money to build a primary school in our home village.

Although the India Bau Ji had left behind was riven by class divisions, the world to which he now belonged bore even sharper lines of demarcation. The less educated Sikhs, those who were good with their hands, became mechanics, masons and carpenters. Only well-educated Sikhs could expect to land responsible office jobs. Most of the Railway accountants and clerks were Goans, who also ran the catering department. The people from Goa, who had lived under Portuguese rule for more than 500 years, did not mix much with other Indians. They classified themselves as Portuguese. And they already had their own sports club, known as the Railway Goan Institute. There were very few Gujarati-speaking Indians working on the Railway. Some Sikhs left the Railways to venture into business, but it was rare.

Bau Ji, for his part, had very little time for any kind of life beyond the Railway. He would walk the 10 kms to work from his Railway quarters. He and his two friends Kishen Mangat and Basant Bindra were encouraged by the British Administration to form a Sikh hockey team so a hockey field and a modest clubhouse were duly built. It went on to become the Railway Asian Institute Sports Club. After work, he would walk back home, have his tea, then change into his running-shorts and pick up his Indian-made hockey stick to hone his hockey playing skills.

Our lives in Baburpur -

I spent my early childhood in much the same way as my father. We never travelled outside our district in Punjab. There were no road or rail connections nearby. The Television was yet to be invented and I did not even know that radios existed. I first saw a camera when we all travelled to Ludhiana in 1947 to have our passport pictures taken. The camera was one of those contraptions with a black shroud underneath which the photographer’s head would momentarily disappear. There were no newspapers or magazines from which to learn about the world outside Babarpur. While in India, I had never heard of Mahatma Gandhi. Not until 1948, when I was in Kenya, would I hear about Gandhi for the first time – and that was only because he had just been assassinated.

Some of my friends are shocked when I tell them that my main hobby in the village was cock-fighting. I was the proud owner of a champion white cockerel named Raja, or ‘king’. Raja was fed on almonds and garlic, which made him a formidable fighter. We couldn’t afford the luxury of eating almonds. But for Raja, I would settle for nothing less. Before Raja went into battle, I would fit needle-sharp steel caps over his fighting-spurs – the talons on the inner side of a cock’s leg. In their natural state, a cock’s spurs are sharp enough. But kitted out in steel spikes, Raja could strike deep into an opponent’s belly, killing that poor bird almost instantly. Talking about this makes me wonder how I could have been so cruel. Back then, however, as a 12-year-old, I got a great kick out of all this. Raja slept next to my bed, I was so proud of him. My other passion was kite-flying. Together, brother Joginder and I won the championship for both of our last two years in the village.

Leaving India -

Things began to change for us in April 1947 the announcement of our impending departure had come in a letter from Bau Ji, received in September 1946. Leaving for Africa just weeks before India got its independence did at least spare us the carnage of Partition. When we left, India was still a peaceful place. Yet, within just a few months of our departure, some two million Indians were to lose their lives.

The first time I stepped on to a train was in 1947, at the age of 16, when we were leaving India. It was in the same year that I first travelled by bus. This was a time when, for the first time ever, Indian national election campaigns were canvassing the villages. The year 1947 was thus a significant one in my life. Until then, I had passed my entire childhood without ever having seen either a car or a motorcycle. I saw a flush toilet for the first time only after we travelled to a nearby town to be immunised against smallpox and to receive our yellow-fever vaccinations.

First, we travelled by ox-cart to Malaudh, the small town nearest to Babarpur where I had been going to school. With Partition looming, electioneering was under way in earnest, new buses were being used to mobilise political support among rural populations. From Malaudh, we took a bus to Ludhiana. This was only the second bus I had ever travelled in..From there, we boarded the train for Bombay.

In Bombay, we found a cheap hotel, where – in order to cut costs – the whole family shared one large room, with the males in one corner and the women in another. In the floor of the room there were holes through which, peeping down, we could see parts of the room beneath. Like all Indian travellers in those days, we carried all our own bedding in a sturdy canvas roll, complete with thick leather straps, a leather handle and a special pillow compartment. The bustle of Bombay – the first big city I had ever seen – was overwhelming. On reaching a street, I’d just stand there, transfixed, sometimes for at least three minutes, not daring to cross if there were a car approaching, even from afar. Bombay was simply awe-inspiring.

In India, there were – even then – bribe agents or ‘facilitators’ everywhere to smooth your passage through the formalities of customs and immigration and to find suitable accommodation for you. At the Bombay seaport, a bribe had to be paid for every service that was rendered. We even had to bribe someone in order to establish who else needed to be bribed. Our bribe agent then made sure that we bribed all the right officials.

The ship, named the Khandala, was dirty and worn. Originally a coal carrier, it had been converted to service as a passenger liner. The journey took 14 days. We docked briefly at two ports along the way, Porbunder in Gujarat and Mahe in the Seychelles. Then one day we saw the lighthouse of Mombasa. A tugboat came out to meet us and escorted our ship through a narrow bay into the port. The Africa I arrived in was green and lush. Palm trees swayed in the breeze against a clear blue sky. What a marked contrast this was to the flat and dusty Punjab we had left behind.

As we approached the shore, I knew I had come to a wondrous land. There were large engineering cranes at work in the harbour. The first human beings who caught my eye on the shore – two white men wearing shorts and a white woman in a loose skirt – were doing something curious. They were swinging sticks up and down. Later I found out it was golf. There were Africans, Arabs, Swahilis and even a few Indians and Europeans. We were astonished by how cheerful and laid-back everybody seemed to be. Most of the people we had seen on the streets of Bombay, by contrast, had looked tense and miserable, as they rushed about from place to place.

After Babarpur, our modest Railway house in Nairobi had the look of a palace. Gurdev, my elder brother soon found a job as a Railway fireman. For two years, he fed coal into the burners of the steam-engines and he would come home with soot all over his face and on his overalls. After a two-year apprenticeship, he became a locomotive driver.

In India, we had been punished for everything in school – for poor grades, for failing to complete our homework, for showing up a few minutes late, even for laughing aloud in class. For a village boy used to squatting on a coarse jute mat on a hard, uneven cement floor, this was a luxurious learning environment. Most of the teachers in Nairobi were surprisingly lenient, moreover, they did not punish for failure, or for lagging behind, but only for behaving badly in class.

Outside of school, life was filled with excitement. We drank sticky soda pop and we begged for turns to ride the bicycles of our friends. I played billiards, snooker and skittles at the Railway Club. At school, we played hockey and table-tennis. Indeed, we became such dab hands at table-tennis that my brother Manjeet and I went on, in 1954 and again in 1955, to contest the final of the Kenya National Table Tennis Championship. I won the first encounter, but Manjeet took the second.

Bau Ji was himself an avid sportsman. His love of hockey in particular was to infect my younger brother, Joginder (Jindi), who went on to be selected as part of the national hockey team that represented Kenya at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia.

Joginder was sent to the prestigious St Thomas’s Teaching Hospital in London, where he eventually qualified as a doctor. Having then just represented Kenya at the Olympics, Joginder had easily found a place at the teaching hospital. Inderjeet went back to India, to a boarding college in Ludhiana, as Bau Ji could not afford to send him to a school in England. Later, upon returning to Kenya, Inderjeet became a popular radio and TV personality with the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, and was for a while a heartthrob among the teenage set in Nairobi. Manjeet initially took up a job in Nairobi as a clerk in the Kenya Ministry of Works, before going into business. While at school, he received a shield from Queen Elizabeth’s sister, Princess Margaret. He was also awarded the Lord Mountbatten Boy Scouts’ Belt. All five of my brothers passed their ‘O’ level examinations. I was the sole exception, failing the exam.

A career in images -

One day Bau Ji gave me a basic, second-hand Box Brownie camera. Bought at a stock-clearance sale, it had cost him 25 shillings – the equivalent, then, of about US$ 3.50. This was the ‘poor man’s Rolleiflex’, with a fixed speed and fixed aperture. Neither he nor I knew it at the time, but this simple gift marked the beginning of a 60-year-long career in photography.
In the 1950s, in a prestigious international photographic magazine, I came across a photo essay by the Indian photographer, I.S Johar. His were pictures taken with a Box Brownie of landscapes featuring dramatic skies. Of course, all Johar’s images were in black-and-white, as colour film had yet to appear. His images, though, were a revelation to me. Taking my cue from Johar, I started using a yellow filter for all my outdoor pictures, and an orange one at times, for special effects.

My first photographs were of the Indian hockey team’s first to visit Kenya, early in 1948. In the team was the maestro Dhyan Chand, winner of three Olympic gold medals. Other great players I remember from that team were K S Babu, Manna Singh, the barefooted Peerumal and the South Indian Raju, as well as the two Anglo-Indians, R S Gentle and Claudius. For players with such an awesome reputation, all were astonishingly unassuming and gracious. None so much as batted an eyelid on being ambushed by me before a match with requests for their portraits. “Dhyan Chand,” I’d say, “Just stand there a minute, would you?” And the great man would duly oblige.

I could not afford to take my film off to a photographic studio for processing, so I learned to process film myself, in a small, makeshift dark room that I improvised in the windowless storeroom at our Railways house. I purchased developer powder and other chemicals from a studio in town. From that studio, I also borrowed a thin handbook, published I think by Britain’s Royal Photographic Society, entitled Photography Made Easy for Learners, which had detailed instructions on how to set up a home-processing lab.

I did not have an enlarger, so the photographs I produced were tiny, measuring just 2.25 by 3.25 inches. With no electric drum-dryer either, I would dry the wet pictures by slapping them on to the window panes in the kitchen, after washing down the glass with Lifebuoy soap. “Mohindri, that’s expensive soap,’ my mother or my sister would chide me. There was some friction, in that kitchen, between the cooks in the family and me, over my encroaching photographic activities. “A kitchen,” I was roundly informed, “is for cooking in – not for making pictures.”

My new-found joy at having discovered the wonders of photography did little to calm the guilt feelings that by now were haunting me. Here I was, a grown man of 20 without a job, still sponging off his parents at home. Having flunked my ‘O’ Level exams, I was beginning to feel anxious I might never find a meaningful job.

So one morning I plucked up enough courage to respond to one of the newspaper advertisements. The vacancy in question was for ‘a junior accounts clerk in an established pharmacy practice’. To my surprise, I received a notification that I was to come in for an interview. At the appointed time, I was shown into the office of the proprietor, an elderly Jewish woman called Edith Haller. I had heard of Ms. Haller, as she also owned one of the photographic studios in the town. Indeed, in those days most retail chemists operated a photographic service as well –where customers could hand in their exposed film and later collect the developed prints.

My formal interview with Ms Haller was mercifully brief. In short, my candidacy for the post of accounts clerk at the pharmacy was rejected almost at once. “What we need is a qualified bookkeeper,” Ms Haller explained. I was not unduly surprised but this time my frustration got the better of me and I nearly broke down in tears. In the doorway, as I was leaving Ms Haller’s office, I spun around suddenly. “Halle Studio,” I blurted out. “What about Halle Studio? Isn’t there something I can do there?” I told her about the little dark room I had established at home. I offered to bring in and to show her some of my photographs. I pleaded with Ms. Haller to be given a chance. She must have been utterly taken aback by my torrent of broken English, by my gangly appearance, by my ill-fitting, lop-sided turban. This was the first time I had ever addressed a white person at any length.

Ms Haller’s eyes lit up while I was talking. There and then, once I had said my piece, she told me she would put me on one month’s probation, starting immediately. From the moment I reported for duty, I was determined to show I was both capable and eager to learn. That job meant everything to me. My trainer Peter Howlett, although he did not say so, left me in no doubt that my brown skin might present a bit of a problem. Ms. Haller nevertheless confirmed me in my post at the end of the month-long probation period, for which I was paid 150 shillings (the equivalent, then, of about US$ 21). She also raised my monthly salary to 250 shillings (roughly US$ 35). I was mightily relieved and grateful; for now, at last, I had a proper job.

At the time, Kenya’s only daily newspaper, the East African Standard, did not have any staff photographers of its own. Instead, the paper relied on photographers hired from Halle Studio for its pictures of all events. Peter Howlett, the man who had been given the responsibility of training me – was Halle’s principal photographer and handled most of the commissions.
One line of work that kept Halle Studio very busy was photographing babies at their parents’ homes. Peter specialised in taking informal portraits of the babies using a single flash and it was my job to hold the flash unit. The unit was a very large, heavy box, separate from but wired up to the camera. I had to lug this box around, directing the flash at different angles so as to avoid casting an ugly shadow while Peter clicked away. Peter and I made a very successful team. We got many requests from proud young parents, while also going from door to door around some of the more affluent Nairobi suburbs, promoting our ‘Home Photography’. The response we received was generally enthusiastic, and before long we had an extensive customer base – and an impressive album of sample baby pictures.

We were also hired to take pictures of horse races, dog shows and other social events. As a colonial newspaper, the East African Standard – which commissioned most of these photographs – catered exclusively to the tastes of Kenya’s ruling British elite. One day, while Peter was away on holiday, the newspaper’s social editor, Lesley Clay, rang the Studio, requesting the services of a photographer. I took the call and offered to stand in for Peter. Ms Clay readily agreed to take a chance on me. “In a worst-case scenario,” she added, encouragingly, “we can probably do without a picture.” It turned out that Lesley wanted me to cover a horse show.

Ms. Clay was delighted with my photographs. Even I, when I processed and developed the pictures, was pleasantly surprised by how well they came out. This time the picture taken by Rolleiflex camera, and a 8×10 inch size was a magical thrill. This was the beginning of a long relationship with the Standard newspaper. Two dynamic white women – Ms. Haller and Ms. Clay – were thus responsible for both of the early breakthroughs in my career as a professional photographer.
With Lesley  I attended countless society functions at which she would introduce her paper’s turbaned Sikh photographer to individual party guests. All were white, of course, and many would simply turn away on being introduced to me, shunning my presence.

The newspaper work kept me busy for years, until eventually the Standard employed a staff photographer, John Parry from England. In those days, the paper paid us peanuts for our photographs. The going rate was just five ten shillings (the equivalent at the time of about $ 1.20 60 US cents) per column-inch.

When the British declared a State of Emergency in Kenya in 1952, the Mau Mau struggle became the big news story. We took photographs of the brutal ‘screening’ of Africans in the streets; of detainees in the Manyani Camp; of British troops and supplies arriving at the Eastleigh Airport. I was not mature enough then to take in fully what was going on around me, even though this period was one of the most politically charged in the country’s history. The awakening of my political consciousness would come later, when I took photographs of the Hola Camp Massacre in 1959. It was when the real horrors of this conflict start to hit me.

Halle Studio -

In 1954, Ms. Halle fell ill, and her brother Arthur Haller, who was then the Government Maize Controller, persuaded me to buy the business from her. He even went so far as to find me a partner, in the person of Oded Katzler, a wholesaler of cardboard packaging. Katzler raised all the capital – amounting to the then formidable sum of 20,000 shillings. At first, Oded remained a sleeping partner in the business, but after 10 months I was able to buy him out. Upon acquiring Halle Studio, I immediately relocated the company to a rented first-floor office suite in central Nairobi. This was in Nairobi House, the historic building then located on the corner of Delamere Avenue and Government Road (now Kenyatta Avenue and Moi Avenue). The work was exciting, and although it did not pay well I was happy enough at the time, as I had developed a taste for photo journalism and news reporting. As time went by, my professional photographic assignments started taking me further afield. Increasingly, I was called upon to cover safaris and expeditions in remote parts of the country.

Ambi - 

One evening in May 1958, my father – after coming home from work as usual – told me that he had some “wonderful news” for me. “Mohinder,” he said, “you are getting married.” Just like that.

Amarjeet Kaur Sandhu, known throughout her life as Ambi , was born in Kisumu, on the Kenyan shores of Lake Victoria, on September 20, 1940. She was educated at Kisumu Girls School, although, like me, she did not progress beyond ‘O’ Level. Bau Ji, for his part, was pleased to learn that Ambi had played tennis at school – at a time when Sikh girls were, for the first time, being allowed to play sports – was a strong point in her favour.

After our marriage, Ambi was not only conversant with all the studio’s day-to-day functions; she was also taking most of the passport, driver’s licence and ID photographs herself. This left me free to take on newspaper assignments at a moment’s notice. The result was that business at the studio picked up dramatically.

In those pre-Independence days, our bread-and-butter income came from a deal we had with the British Army to take ID photographs of its soldiers serving in Kenya, many of them then trying to suppress the Mau Mau uprising.  On at least six days every month, whole lorry-loads of British soldiers would be dropped off to have their pictures taken. Sometimes, the queue would extend down the stairs on to the ground floor of Nairobi House and out into the street. Ambi would sometimes take pictures of more than 300 British soldiers in a single day.

Ambi loved working at the studio. She loved the busy days especially, when streams of people would walk in to have their pictures taken or to collect their prints. She made friends with other tenants in the building, whom she spoilt with her home-made samosas, earning her the nickname ‘Samosa Lady’. The work set Ambi apart from former school friends of hers, some of whom were now also newly married and living in Nairobi, but who – as housewives, most of them – had only limited interaction with the wider Nairobi public. Ambi never criticised her married former school friends openly, but she did, in private, after meeting up with them at weekends, “I am far too busy,” she used to say, “for all this idle chatter” finding the closed world of their incessant society gossip exasperating.

With Ambi at the studio, I could devote myself almost exclusively to news photography, initially for the East African Standard, and then – increasingly – for UPI and other international press agencies as well. Come 1959, I was spending less and less of my time in the studio, as assignments would call on me to leave Nairobi to cover events elsewhere in Kenya and throughout East Africa. When, in 1960, I began covering events across the whole of Africa, I would be away for lengthy periods, leaving Ambi to ‘hold the fort’ at Halle Studio. Having acquired a passion for photo-journalism, I had become ambitious. So, in 1959, I wrote to Planet News Photos (subsequently taken over by United Press International, UPI) asking if this international agency might consider taking my pictures. The reply I received was surprisingly short and to the point: ‘Yes, Please’ – just the two words; no further explanation required; no demands; no doubts even over whether I could deliver photographs of the desired standard. This stunning breakthrough would prove the making of my company Africapix Media Limited.

Mohinder Dhillon (Founder and CEO of Africapix Media Ltd.) was the first photo and TV journalist to capture the plight of Iranian Kurds behind Khomeini’s lines. His first pictures shocked the world generating a lot for sympathy of Kurdish sufferance. He was knighted by the Order of Saint Mary of Zion during a ceremony at the Royal Artillery Headquarters in Woolwich, U.K. on November 12th 2005. “The honors were conferred upon those who had made significant contribution to the society. 

His films of Ethiopian famine finally moved the world into action resulting in one of the biggest famine relief operations in history. Relief planes from dozens of countries descended on little dirt air strips of Ethiopian countryside round the clock as if they were Heathrow or JFK airports. The very first pictures of the terrible Ethiopian famine was the combined effort of Mohinder Dhillon and Michael Buerk of BBC TV to gain entry into tightly controlled military ruled Ethiopia in 1984 opening the door for rest of the media and rest of the world.  

Class of B.Sc (Bachelor of Science), Poornaprajna College (PPC), Udupi district. Karnataka. Circa 1969.

Image & Text contributed by Nishant Rathnakar, Bangalore

In 2010, while cleaning my wardrobe I stumbled upon my mother Ranjini Rathnakar’s old autograph book dating back to the year 1970. This 40 year old book was filled with autographs and inscriptions of her classmates from her College, Poornaprajna college (PPC), Udupi.  The ink and pencil writings in the book still dark and legible, as if it were written yesterday.

It wasn’t the first time I came across the autograph book. In the past 29 years, I had found it time and again; and each time I was fascinated reading it. Some amusing inscriptions like  “First comes knowledge, next comes college, third comes marriage and finally comes baby in a carriage” always made me laugh.

I would asked my mother if she was in touch with any one of her classmates and her answer was always a ‘No’, leaving me a little disenchanted. However, she would say that her best friend in College was a girl named Rose Christabel, but she never saw Rose after college. She had last heard that Rose had moved to Vellore in Tamil Nadu. That was 40 years ago. I made several mental notes that someday I’ll find mom’s old friends, maybe even Rose and make them meet again. I think that inspiration stemmed from my own experience because I was blessed with such good and decades old friendships that I recognised the value of having them around albeit we had the help of the internet & social media. A technological perk that wasn’t available to my mother’s generation.

For instance, one of my closest friends is Santhu a.k.a Santhosh. We have been friends for a decade now. We were in college together, worked as interns, and got our first tech jobs at IBM. Around the time I quit my job, I took-off on my first photography trip to the coasts of Karnataka, to our roots, our hometown, with Santhu as my accomplice. It was a special trip for both of us.

One evening, scouring over the pages of her college autograph book yet again, I froze, and I am very certain my heart skipped a beat too. I had gone through that book time and again, but I had never noticed one particular inscription -
“Best Wishes. Bhaskar Adiga K. Kuppar house, Shankarnarayana, Udupi (S.K)”

Now Santhu, my friend I just told you about, his full name is Santhosh Kuppar Bhaskar Adiga, Bhaskar Adiga being his father’s name, and the house that I stayed at during the journey to our hometown was called the Kuppar house, and it was in a town named Shankarnarayana, in the present-day Udupi district of Karnataka.

With my heart bursting in anticipation, I asked my mother if she remembered Bhaskar Adiga, she had no clear recollection, but then she got up, went inside the house and came out holding this photograph in her hands. It was her only class photograph from college, taken during her graduation. A photograph she too had only come to possess a week ago, from my uncle while he was clearing up their now almost uninhabited ancestral home.

Humidity and lack of maintenance had damaged the photograph. In it few faces were recognizable, including my mom’s (3rd from left in the row of women.) but Rose Christabel’s face was crystal clear (2nd from right). Given that I was asking my mother to be part of an identification parade of faces that were hardly recognizable and that too 40 years later, she took sometime. Then, from left to right, slowly she named all the girls in her class. But the boys, she wasn’t sure of. She said “Maybe the 5th person from the left, on the top row, with a tie, could be Bhaskar.”

She didn’t know him that well and his face was hardly recognisable. I too had met Santhu’s dad many times, but could not picture his face with this one. I immediately emailed everything to Santhu and then called to ask him if his dad was a graduate from Poornaprajna college (PPC), Udupi, and if he had graduated in BSc, Zoology, in 1970. He cross-checked with his mother, and Hurray! the credentials matched –it was indeed Santhu’s dad. The 5th person from left, on the top row, wearing a tie… he said, resembled his dad. After all, there where only two Adiga families in Shankarnarayana, and only one Bhaskar from the Kuppar house. It had to be him.

I do not know how Santhu processed this information; But we were both thinking the same thing – “How I wish we had stumbled upon that page a couple of years earlier.” Santhu’s dad Bhaskar Adiga had passed away a year ago. I was in tears. For my parents or even most parents at the time, meeting with an old friend or an acquaintance was a rarity. My mom and her best friend Rose didn’t have the luxury of social media that I enjoy now. I was deeply disappointed . All along, I had wanted to gift my mother a small reunion with people from her younger days and her friends and I couldn’t do that.

That night I slept with great anxiety. I dreamt of Santhu and I getting our families together. I dreamt of drinking with them, laughing and talking about life. I imagined my mom and Santhu’s father recognising each other at the party, and talking about old times, about old friends, and about Rose Christabel. Maybe, Mr. Adiga knew where Rose might be. But I woke up to deep sadness and disappointment.

On the brighter side, Santhu was glad to see his father’s calligraphy skills in my mum’s autograph book. He said he would try hunting for the college photograph from his father’s collection. It may be our last chance to have a proper photograph of our parents from their college. I think the chances are bleak, but we are glad to have uncovered a shared history.

My Parents, K. M. Devaki Amma & Lt. Cdr. P.P.K. Menon. Bombay. Maharashtra. 1941

Image & Text contributed by Radha Nair, Pune

This photograph of my parents K. M. Devaki Amma & Lt. Cdr. P.P.K. Menon was taken at a Photo Studio in Bombay in 1941, soon after they were married. My father was based in the city serving the Naval Force.

My mother, K. M. Devaki Amma belonged to Feroke, a part of Kozhikode in Kerala. Her initials K. M. stood for Kalpalli Mundangad and her family originally belonged to the Anakara Vadkath lineage. The large joint family of more than 25-30 people lived in a house called Puthiyaveedu which still exists in Feroke, however the members are now settled in far flung places and my grand aunts and uncles are no more.

My mother had to give up school very early in life. She came from a large family of 14 brothers and sisters and belonged to an era where a girl’s formal education wasn’t a priority. While they grew up under the tutelage of grand uncles and aunts, they learned to cook, clean, and learnt to make do with and share whatever little they had with their siblings without ever complaining. Congee (Rice Gruel) was what they mostly had for lunch and dinner, supplemented with a little coconut chutney, and may be a side dish of some green banana, but only if they were bestowed with a ripe bunch of plantains available from the kitchen garden.

My mother and her sisters’ daily life entailed preparing food for all members of their very large family. By the light of a wick lamp, sweating by the blaze of crackling coconut fronds they would wash dishes with ash from the kitchen hearth and rinse them with water drawn from the well. My mother in personality was very self-reliant and was happy with whatever little she had.

Arranged by my paternal grandmother, when Amma married my father, a man with an aristocratic lineage and a Naval officer, my father’s cousins would scoff at her and condescendingly regard her as a ‘village girl’. They had been educated in Queen Mary’s Women’s college, Madras (now Chennai) whereas my mother had studied only up to Class IV in a local village school in Karrinkallai.

Undeterred, my father, who knew his wife was a bright and intelligent woman took her under his wing and brought out the best in her. He taught her English and bought her abridged versions of books written by Charles Dickens, Walter Scott and many other great authors. He read out passages to her and patiently explained to her what they each meant.

Thus Devaki, my mother, slowly emerged from her rural background, and became a lady endowed with great poise and charm. Not only did she steal my father’s heart, but even of those who befriended her. She became a much sought after friend by wives of both British and Indian naval officers. She taught them to cook Malayali dishes and stitch & embroider; skills, which were executed by her exquisitely. She wrote and spoke English with such assurance that she could put a present day Post Graduate in English to shame. But despite all these changes, she remained loyal to her roots, proud of her humble origins, and very attached to her siblings.

Sometimes, deep into the night I would catch whispers of my parents’ conversation as they sat and planned the monthly budget, and spoke about their dreams of providing us with the best of every thing. It was my mother who insisted that my sister and I be given the best education they could afford. She firmly refused a State Board SSC education, and insisted on us being admitted into schools which followed a Senior Cambridge syllabus. She was efficient and fiercely independent. By comparison I was a pale shadow. In fact, many times I used to feel very unsure of my self in her presence, intimidated by her indomitable spirit and the complete control she had over any situation.

When my father was suffering Cancer, she stood by him; nourishing him with love and healthy food, while my sister and I watched our father’s condition worsen by the day, helpless and often giving in to tears. My mother always remained calm, but only when he breathed his last in 1977 did she break down completely. He was her life force, and she was his guiding light. Theirs was an extraordinary relationship, always supportive of each other at all times and completely committed to each other till the end.

After I graduated, it was her dream that I put my education to good use. However, a few years after marriage when I was forced to give up my teaching post, she never forgave me till she breathed her last. To make up for it, I began to write and put together a collection of short stories, but the book never got published.
What pained me most was that I was not able to place a copy of my book in my mother’s hands and make my peace with her before she passed away in 2008.

The Tiger Man, Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. Circa 1930

Image and Text contributed by Deborah Nixon, Australia

This image was found in my father Leslie Nixon’s private collection. He was born in Agra in 1925, was schooled in Mussoorie, and trained with the Gurkhas. Later he joined KGV’s 1st OGR (King George V’s regiment).

My Anglo Indian family has a history of having lived in India for four, or possibly five generations- they were all Railways people, and my father worked during the Partition to transport refugees in and out of the Gurkha head quarters. He archived all of the family images in India and thanks to him I have been lucky to have a ‘bird’s eye view ‘ of partition. He kept a lot of old army documents and memorabilia from the few years he served with the Gurkhas. When he migrated to Australia he went to University and became a Geologist.

There isn’t a lot to say about this image as there was nothing written behind it, but to me it is a very arresting photograph. My father says he remembers the ‘tiger men’ used to come around in Jabalpur, his family home, and dance as part of the Islamic festival Muharram and he imitated the dance himself as young children do.

There is another image and narrative on my father here that sheds some light on his life in India.

My Letter to Jean Christophes. Bombay. August 10, 1972.

Letter & Text contributed by Denzil Smith, Bombay

This letter carries with it an amazing story that always has me grin ear to ear with joy.

My family are Anglo Indians and until a few years ago lived in a family bungalow in Ville Parle in Bombay. My father Benjamin John Smith was a Customs officer in Bombay and perhaps one of the few honest black sheep amongst the white embroiled in dishonest deeds. To get relief from tough days at the office, my father would find release with music. He was adept at both reading and writing music, played several instruments and when opportunity called he even travelled with the famed Paranjoti Choir all over the world.

At one such opportunity he travelled to Tours in France with the choir in 1966. The members of the choir were usually put up by local classical music aficionados at their homes in each city; and a certain Dr. Boulard and his family were to be my father’s kind hosts in Tours.
The day my father reached the Doctor’s mansion, eagerly awaiting him at the gate was the Doctor’s son, a 6 year old French boy, Jean, who had waited for my father in anticipation of seeing an Indian for three whole days. 
At first sight and to his shock the boy ran inside and wept copiously to his father, complaining “Where are his feathers!?” Clearly my brown father in a suit and tie was not the “Indian” he was expecting.

Despite the initial disappointment, my father and Jean became very fond of each other and when he returned to India, dad told me that Jean reminded him of me, that I would really get along with him, and Jean would write to me and I should reply. Jean and I soon embarked on establishing a pen-pal relationship writing letters to each other. I was curious about France and he about India and our lives. He would write me in French and I in English. Finding a french translator in Bombay at the time not an easy task but I had one at home, my father. Later Jean began writing in English which he was learning while studying to become a Doctor.

Over the years we wrote several letters to each other. In some letters I would find that Jean had packed in half used pencils and I always wondered why he would send me those as presents. As time passed, somewhere through those years our letters became infrequent and we lost touch.

Many years later in early 2011, I was travelling with a theatrical production all over Europe and also to Tours. I remembered Jean and pestered my manager to trace his whereabouts. All I knew about him was that he had become a Doctor and his parent’s address that was well etched in my memory.

Before our performance in Tours, my manager took me aside to say he had a surprise. Back stage was not Jean as you would expect but his mother, Mrs. Boulard who spoke with me in French via a translator. I could tell she was cautious about me and wasn’t about to start believing my stories about some letters and my friendship with Jean until I mentioned a family fact that very few people knew about. Astounded, she suddenly broke into English, albeit still a little cautious. She wouldn’t reveal her son’s whereabouts; instead she insisted that I leave my number with her, for her son to return the call.

With no news from Jean, and ready to leave to perform the play in Le Mans, a city 200 Kms away from Paris, I finally received a phone call and was completely overjoyed to hear a voice that said it was Jean. For two whole hours we chatted away excitedly, catching up on our lives and he was going to drive down to Aulnay-Sous-Bois, a suburb of Paris where I was performing two days later, with his girlfriend to meet with me.

It was one the most emotional and joyful moments of my life, to meet a close friend from my childhood I had never met, in our conversations we also discussed our letters and I asked him the question I had wanted to for years. “Why the half used pencils?” His answer was that he was told that India was a very poor country and he sent me the pencils because he assumed I couldn’t afford them! We laughed a lot and recollected much of our childhood and news of our families. It was simply a great great day.

A few months ago, Jean sent me this letter that I had written to him when my father passed away. It immediately reminded me of the time that was indeed very vulnerable, and the person I knew whom I could express it with was Jean.
The personalised letter-head this letter and many others were written on, was an earned luxury. It was a marketing promotion of a very popular chewing gum brand called A1, whose exchange offer was – personalised stationary for filling up an album with their wrappers that had images of country flags, cars, ships and aircrafts. It was a huge rage at the time for children my age in Bombay.

It is incredible how life is dotted with amazing presents, be it with a great father, incredible music, theatre, half used pencils, personalised letter-heads, chewing gums, and most magnificently an unexpected reunion of a grand friendship with Dr. Jean Christophes Boulard; with whom I am in touch yet again, on email.

Nellie, Mabel & Dr. Bharat Chandra Ghosh. Kashmir. 1928

Image & Text contributed by Alison Henderson Ghosh, U.K

This is an image of my great cousin Nellie Ghosh, great aunt Mabel Henderson and her husband Dr. Bharat Chandra Ghosh. Nellie was Mabel & Bharat’s daughter – and they lived somewhere in India and their house was called “Homelands”. The photograph of the house surrounded by Palm and Coconut trees suggests a coastal area. I have been researching the Ghosh family for years but haven’t yet found much information on the family after 1929.

I do know that Mabel’s father was a tea/general provisional merchant based in Edinburgh, U.K.– Mabel had three brothers, John, William and Daniel. William was a well known Scottish composer/musician and he wrote music for church organs and also recorded to vinyl, Daniel became a smuggler and was last heard of in the Caribbean. And there were three sisters; Kate & Bunty who both migrated to New Zealand, and Helen, my great grandmother, to Ireland – they were all very musically and artistically gifted. About Bharat’s family I found out that his father, Ishan Chandra Ghosh was a Professor of Mathematics and his mother’s name was Anorndomohi Ghosh – her maiden name was Sarkar.

I am unsure about how they met, but Bharat and Mabel were married in Scotland in 1905 in the district of St. Giles. Bharat qualified as a doctor in the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and at the time of their marriage they must have moved to India because he worked for the Punjab Medical Department, and then he subsequently joined the Indian Medical Services. According to the India papers in the National Library of Great Britain, Bharat was based in Ambala, Punjab as an Assistant Surgeon where he inoculated hundreds of people against the Plague in 1901-02. He was also a member of the India Medical Service at the Theatre of War in World War I.

His name appears in the quarterly Indian Army list from January 1918 to July 1922.

Date of Appointment:  6th October 1917
Rank :   Temporary Lieutenant
Promotion:   6th October 1918 to Temporary Captain

I am on the lookout for leads on the Ghosh family whereabouts after 1929, and would be happy to hear from people who may know more.

My grandmother Kanwarani Danesh Kumari, Patiala, Punjab. Circa 1933

Image & Text  contributed by Sawant Singh, Mumbai

This is an image of my grandmother Kanwarani Danesh Kumari photographed in Patiala, Punjab around 1933.

She would have been 20 or 21 years old at the time. It was photographed by R.R. Verma, a Photo artist from Cawnpore (Kanpur). Formally, she was addressed as ‘Rajkumari Bibiji Danesh Kumari Sahiba’. This is the only photograph I have of her in my possession, even though my memory of her is vastly different from this.

I remember her as a simply clad, dignified, exceptionally proud woman, who would spend her time gardening, shopping for groceries in the market, or chatting away with the gardener & her domestic staff or entertaining friends from out of town in Dehradun, (now in Uttarakhand); many of whom were people who belonged to royalty or influential circles. Her home “Sawant Villa”, named after my great grand father, was an open house with people constantly streaming in and out.

My grandmother was fondly called ‘Brownie’ by her family and friends. She was the wife of late Maharaja Kumar Aman Singh of Bijawar (now in Madhya Pradesh) and the daughter of Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala (Punjab) who was known as ‘the proud owner of the world famous “Patiala Necklace” ‘ manufactured by Cartier.

Brownie or as I called her, ‘Dadu‘, was brought up in the lap of great luxury but she understood and adapted to the simple life very well. A beautiful, strong, non-judgmental woman, she wouldn’t suffer fools and was known to never mince her words. The only thing that impressed her was a good education and believed that it was the only way one could change their lives for the better. She thus ensured that all her children and grandchildren would appreciate the value of literacy and education.

Dadu was a very social woman and loved going into the city to meet her friends. Everyone knew her in Dehradun. I remember her dragging me to meet her dear friend, Mrs. Vijaylaxmi Pandit and they would spend hours chatting away while she would keep tucking my hair away from my forehead and eyes. She was as comfortable in a Rolls Royce as she was in a local bus in Dehradun. The latter was how she travelled to visit me when I was studying at the Doon School. She insisted on teaching us how to walk barefoot on Bajri (pebbled) pathways and chew on a Datun (Neem twig commonly used to clean teeth), in retrospect I think it was to prepare us for the real world.

I also remember, a few of her interesting obsessions were collecting imported soaps and canvas shopping bags. Anyone who ever travelled abroad had to bring back bars of soaps, the canvas bags and chocolates. I remember one soap in particular in her bathroom was shaped like a fish. It seems that her quirky fascination with soaps may have passed on to me.

After an accidental fall in the early 90s, her health began to fail and she passed away in her sleep, peacefully in 2005.

This photograph of my grandmother is framed and hung in my dining room. While I never saw her dressed like this, the dignity and pride I see in it is alive and inspiring.

Margurite Mumford, and my Grandfather Bert Scott, Ooty & Bombay. 1930s

Image & Text contributed by Jason Scott Tilly, United Kingdom

I will never be sure if my grandfather Bert Scott, would have wanted me or anyone else to find these negatives;
They were his secrets for all of his adult life. He had after all kept them very safe, hidden from the moment he left India.

Bert Scott, (lower right) was my grandfather, and he was born in Bangalore in 1915. He was educated at Bishop Cottons school and he joined the Times of India in 1936 as a press photographer, where he worked until the outbreak of World War II.

With trouble brewing during Indo-Pak Partition, he and his family fled and he left his whole life behind; his country of birth, India, his friends and home. Travelling with minimum luggage would have been conditional so he chose to take only the necessary in just a few metal trunks.

Inside one of those trunks were several photo albums and pocket-sized blue negative holders that I came across many years later in my grandparent’s cupboard in 2006, a few years after Bert, my grandfather passed away. The little blue pocket-books held as many memories as it did negatives, about 100 precious moments of reflected light captured on film of our family and of some places where they had lived, but inside one particular folded grease proof sleeve were four negatives that were cut up into single frames and they were of one particular young lady; of a Margurite Mumford, a beautiful young Anglo Indian girl.

I remember one Sunday when he was alive, sitting with his photograph albums on my lap, my grandmother looked at me and stated, in a tone which sounded somewhat incongrously jealous for a woman in her late seventies, “those books are just full of photographs of his ex-girlfriends!”. My grandpa who was sitting across us, either didn’t hear the remark or chose to ignore it – the Snooker on television providing a timely distraction.

After he passed away, I found an extraordinary number of photographs of Margurite. The photographs of her are always infused with a certain playfulness during day trips to the beach or picnics by the river. There is something so obviously personal and intimate about the images. Margurite clearly loved to play to the camera or to be more precise she loved playing up for the photographer, flirting with both the camera and the man whose eye followed her through the lens. The books did have many photographs of other beautiful young women of the Raj too, but the intimacy I saw in Margurite’s images proved to me that only she was actually a girlfriend of my grandpa before he met my grandmother.

As time wore on, I became more intrigued as to whom Margurite really was. I wondered why their romance had ended. I spent hours scouring the internet in the faint hope that I might be able to find someone from her family with whom I could share her beautiful photographs. With not a clue in sight, eventually my hope began to wane but I never stopped wondering about her.

Only recently while pouring over the pages of the albums for the nth time, I noticed a faded scribble “Margurite ‘Lovedale’” by a photograph. Intrigued as to what the word ‘Lovedale’ meant I returned once again to the internet and within seconds I was on to something. Lovedale is the nickname of the Lawrence Memorial Military School in the town of ‘Ooty’ in the Niligiri Hills. My great-grandfather, Algernon Edwin Scott, had a summer-house in Ooty and my grandpa would spend weekends with him whilst he was studying at St Josephs College in Kannur. Ooty would have been the place where he must have met Margurite!

Perhaps, college sweethearts; They kept their relationship going from their first meeting in the south Indian Hills of the Deccan Plateau to the humid coastal city of Bombay where my grandpa had begun working for the Times of India. I know from the amount of photographs that I have found, that the couple took days out to Juhu beach and the Hanging Gardens on Malabar hill along with trips out to the Ghats outside of Bombay. What was most obvious is how much Margurite meant to my grandpa because he kept the negatives separate from all of the others that he had saved. The memories held on film, of Margurite seem different to the rest, they seem more personal, more intimate.

I immediately contacted the school in Ooty. They in turn put me in touch with ex-pupils who although now in their late eighties and nineties were still in touch with one another. My search led me to a woman in America, Moira who very kindly informed me that she was still in touch with one of Margurite’s sisters, Gladys, who also lived in America. I was soon sharing these images with Gladys and she remembered my grandpa very well. She let me know that Margurite was still alive and living in New Zealand, but she was now ninety-six years of age and living in an old people’s home. Her memory had dimmed, but she was physically quite well. I was then put in touch with Alecia, Margurite’s daughter and I began sending them pictures of the young Margurite – images I presume they had never even imagined existed.

In my eagerness and excitement at re-uniting people with a ‘more than half -a-century-ago’ memory, I also sent a photograph of my grandpa. I was told Margurite’s poignantly hopeful reaction was simply, “Is Bertie here?”. My grandpa was indeed the love of her life. But her family had to leave India during Partition, she had then married an Irishman and moved to New Zealand.

It had been obvious to me all along, by the very nature of the photographs, that they were in love, that they both meant an awful lot to each other. Proof, if it were needed, of the indelible nature of first love.

Hasrat Jaipuri, Jaikishen, Raj Kapoor, Shankar & my father Shailendra. Bombay. Circa 1955

Image & Text contributed by Amla Shailendra Mazumdar, Dubai. U.A.E

This is a photograph of an incredible team who marked the beginning of a golden era in Hindi Cinema’s music.

Shailendra, (my father, whom we called Baba) Hasrat Jaipuri, Shankar and Jaikishen came together to create some of the most powerful and beautiful songs of the Hindi film industry, and it was none other than Raj Kapoor who discovered and brought this foursome together.

My father, Shailendra (extreme right with a cigarette in his hands) came from a very humble background. As a young boy in Rawalpindi (now in Pakistan) he used to sing Bhajans (Religious Songs) in temples but after my grandfather lost all his money, they relocated to Mathura (Uttar Pradesh). It seemed that the times were always hard on his family. By 1948 he was an apprentice at a Railway workshop in Bombay and was struggling to make ends meet. Poetry, however was his savior & first love, and he wrote about social issues of the time and would often be invited to recite his poems at small cultural events. He came from Bihar,had lived in Rawalpindi, Mathura which made him skilled in various hindi & urdu dialects and their expressions.

On one such evening at a Poetry Soiree organised by the Progressive Writers’ forum, my father’s recitation of his poem on Partition of India, titled “Jalta Hai Punjab” caught the attention of another attendee, actor and director Raj Kapoor. It was about the massacre of Hindus and Muslims alike during partition and how it left those who witnessed it scarred for life.
Raj Kapoor, who introduced himself to Baba as Prithviraj Kapoor’s son, insisted that he wanted the same poem for his then under production film Aag. Of course the firebrand poet that my father was, and barely 25 years old, he refused point blank with a terse comment “My poetry is not for sale!”  Raj Kapoor then scribbled his name and address on a piece of paper and told him “If ever you change your mind, this is where you will find me”.

When my parents were expecting their first child, my brother Shailey, the hard times only got worse and Baba knew it was time for some tough decisions. He went back to Raj Kapoor who welcomed him and gave him the first break in ‘Barsaat’. The songs “Barsaat mein hum se mile tum sajan, tum se mile hum” and ” Patli kamar hai, tirchhi nazar hai” were to bear testimony to golden times ahead.

“Awara Hoon” and “Mera Joota Hai Japani” were two songs that won global acclaim and are popular even today. Both songs have been translated in several languages including Russian and Chinese. In fact the song ‘Aawara hoon’ even got a mention in Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn‘s novel ‘The Cancer Ward.’

I think Baba’s genius was in his ability to express the deepest and most profound thoughts in plain and simple Hindi. His songs thus reached out to the masses but without compromising on their literary appeal.

His genius also lay in expressing a grievance without offense.  In an industry where composers would recommend lyricists to producers, Shankar-Jaikishan promised Shailendra that they would recommend him around, but then forgot about it. Baba then sent them a note with the lines, “Chhoti Si Yeh Duniya, Pehchaane Raaste Hain. Kahin To Miloge, Phir Poochhenge Haal” (The world is small, the roads are known. We’ll meet sometime, and ask ‘How do you do?). Realizing the hidden meaning in the message, Shankar-Jaikishan then not only apologized but turned the lines into a popular song. The song was then featured in the film Rangoli (1962)

It was a meteoric rise for him since Barsaat, the movie that launched him. Amongst his memorable works are songs from Sangam, Sri 420, Jagte Raho, Madhumati, Guide, Kathputli, Bandini, Anarkali to name a few. He worked with each and every well known music director in the Industry, including the first ever Bhojpuri film “Ganga Maiya Tohe Piyari Chhadaibo“, with music director Chitragupta. Baba also won three Filmfare awards. “yeh mera diwana pan hai“, from Yahudi, “sub kuchh seekha humne“, from Anari and “Main gaoon tum so jao“, from Brahmachari. The last was earned posthumously.

He also produced the film Teesri Kasam based on a story by Phaneswar Nath Renu for which he was awarded the President’s Gold Medal. The film was initially considered a failure and took a toll on Baba, but ironically over time won huge critical acclaim and is now considered a huge success.

Interestingly, Barsaat was the first film for all four people in this photograph. And Baba wrote lyrics for each and every Raj Kapoor film thereafter with Mera Naam Joker as his last. He passed away on December 14, on the birthday of his mentor Raj Kapoor. I think what Hasrat Jaipuri once stated in a TV-interview was accurate  “Shailendra was the best lyricist the Indian film industry ever had.” His songs would never let us and his future generations forget that.

The Khambhaita Brothers after finishing the East African Safari Rally, 1965. Tanzania

Image and Text contributed by the family of V.J. Khambhaita, London, U.K.

Our father, V.J. Khambhaita (right) was born in Kalavad (Gujarat), India in 1934 but spent most of his early life in Tanzania, initially in Moshi and then Tanga.

In 1953 he joined Riddoch Motors in Moshi as a mechanic and from 1954-1957 he worked at the Motor Mart & Exchange Limited in Tanga as a mechanic and foreman. He then set up his own business by the name of Rapid Motor Garage in Tanga before moving to Gujarat, India. While in India, he took up an offer in 1967 to setup and manage a mechanical workshop in Moshi, Tanzania as one of four directors at  J.S. Khambhaita Limited, the construction & civil engineering firm established by and named after our grandfather in 1938, until 1976.

V.J. Khambhaita showed a keen interest in motor mechanics and was introduced to the rallying scene in the mid 1950s by close friend and safari rally driver A.P. Valambhia of ‘Babu Garage’ from Morogoro, Tanzania. Having initially raced in Tanga and Morogoro, V.J. Khambhaita together with his younger cousin N.D. Khambhaita who had already been active in go-kart racing (left in the image) began to enter regional & national events and collectively became known as the ‘Khambhaita Brothers’.

During the late 1950s -1972 period, they represented Tanganyika (renamed Tanzania in 1964 after the union with Zanzibar) with private competitor entries in a range of rally cars – all hand tuned by V.J. Khambhaita himself – to include the Peugeot 203, Ford Cortina (Mark I & II), Ford Anglia, Ford Escort, Morris, Datsun SSS and the Peugeot 504.

The brothers competed in numerous events most notably the Tanganyika 1000, Kilimanjaro 500, Usambara, Richard Lennard trophy and Kenya’s Malindi rally. These were to be springboards for a more challenging and international East African Safari Rally, which had to cover around 6000 km through Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda in 4-5 days and nights of suspension-shattering racing.

Rallying was followed religiously by the East African public and the craze surrounding it was similar to the enthusiasm seen for cricket in India or football in the U.K. Even our grandmother followed the sport. Originally known as the East African Coronation Safari, it commenced in 1953 to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and quickly gained a reputation for being extremely tough, earning international status in 1957. It was not a race for the faint-hearted, with hazards including big game hunting dotted along a route that was open to public traffic, angry mobs and children throwing rocks at passing cars.

I vividly recall V.J. Khambhaita mentioning one such instance where a village of machete-wielding Masai warriors blocked a night stage through the Kenyan bush. He promptly reversed at full speed, changed direction and took a detour while getting battered by rocks that were coming in thick and fast from local children.

Avid observers will recall the 1962 East African Safari Rally for being particularly difficult as heavy rainfall caused mayhem around the most challenging section at the muddy Magara escarpment, near Mbulu in Tanzania. Many crews found themselves stuck in the mud bath that followed and consequently retired. The Khambhaita Brothers, however, in a group B Ford Anglia managed to finish the 4970 km race intact while some of the world’s best rally drivers and their factory prepared cars littered the roadside in surrender. In recognition of this feat, Hughes Limited – a major Ford dealer in Kenya – congratulated the pair on the achievement of seeing the finishing line when so many had failed. In a letter addressed to V.J. Khambhaita, President & Chairman J.J. Hughes – the man who introduced the Ford Model T to Kenya – congratulated the pair on their…

“Wonderful driving in the 10th East African Safari Rally over Africa’s worst roads and against the cream of the world’s best rally drivers. A car in tip top mechanical condition handled by a driver in first class physical condition is hard to beat.”

The brothers won or finished highly in their class in many Tanzanian and Kenyan rallies both in their own right with other co-drivers and collectively as the Khambhaita Brothers with the family soon running out of space to display the array of trophies, shields and finisher badges/medals. While the brothers never won the East African Safari Rally outright, they certainly tasted success within the various classes and in 1962 they took the best Tanzanian entry trophy.

In the late 1960s, the brothers began entering races independently with other co-drivers, bowing to pressure from family worried about the possibility of losing both brothers in a fatal crash. They did race together one final time in the 1972 East African Safari Rally, largely because the 6350 km route started and finished in Dar-es-Salaam (as opposed to Nairobi). Their sturdy Moshi-registered Peugeot 504 suffered overheating before reaching Morogoro, Tanzania with the brothers subsequently retiring early.

To the brothers, it was always about participation and sportsmanship with a hope of winning the world’s toughest motor rally. It was an era where men were men, even with ladies participating, cars were ‘just’ cars and a sense of adventure dominated motorsports compared to the technologically advanced ‘drive-by-wire’ scene nowadays where tools, maps and instinct have been replaced by the laptop and GPS.

Following the untimely death of N.D. Khambhaita in 1973, the Khambhaita Brothers team would never race again. At this point, V.J. Khambhaita decided to end his rallying career. The family moved to London, U.K. in 1976 where our father remained in motor mechanics and later passed away in 2008. We are left with fond recollections of adventure, photo albums full of priceless moments and more trophies than all his grandchildren combined can shake a stick at. And who knows…a new generation of ‘Khambhaita Brothers’ may still race again.