Image & Narrative contributed by Nishant Rathnakar, Bengaluru

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.

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