in August of 1990, Saddam Hussain, the president of Iraq, ordered an attack on Kuwait, and the country toppled into a state of emergency - everything came to a halt. Citizens from all over the world, including Indians were trapped in a country at war, and among the Indian community, the Bohras constituted a sizable proportion. My father was one of them.
My mother Manobina, and aunt Debalina. Calcutta, West Bengal. Circa 1940 Image and Narrative Points contributed by Joy Bimal Roy, Mumbai This is an photograph of my mother Manobina Roy (left) and her identical twin sister Debalina Mazumdar (right) (nee SenRoy) taken in the c.1940 in Calcutta (now Kolkata). It is most likely that the image was photographed by my father, the acclaimed film-maker, Bimal Roy. My mother and her twin sister were born in 1919, merely 15/20 minutes apart. However, Debalina, came first, a few minutes before midnight on November 26, and my mother a few minutes after, on November 27. Hence, while they were twins they had two dates of births. At home they were fondly called Lina di and Bina di. In mid 18th century, my maternal family, the Sen-Roys, migrated on boat up the Ganges, from Banda, Jessore district (now in Bangladesh) to the princely state of Benaras (now Varanasi). Our family is unsure why they moved to the north; perhaps the elders, like millions of others, wished to spend their last days at the pilgrimage in Benaras; nonetheless the region became their home for four generations. At the time, Benaras was under the rule of Kashi Naresh [King of Kashi (Ancient name of Beneras)] whose capital fort was situated in a beautiful city, right across the river, in Ramnagar. For generations, the royal family had been patrons of knowledge – later donating land for several educational institutions including the Benaras Hindu University. Fortunately for our family, in addition to ensuring good education for his six sons, my maternal great-grandfather also became the tutor to the king’s son, the young prince of Benaras, Yuvraj Prabhu…
My maternal grandparents, the Maharaja & Maharani of Devas, my mother, uncle and great grandmother. Bombay. Circa 1931 Image and Narrative points contributed by Cory Walia, Mumbai This picture is of my mother, the little girl in the center, and her immediate family taken around 1931 or 1932 in a British photo studio in south Bombay [maybe Kalbadevi]. There is no stamp on the photograph so I can’t tell which studio it may have been. My grandfather in this picture brought his family to Bombay specifically for having a series of photographs taken in the studio. He was very fond of studio portraiture and would travel to Bombay often to get his pictures taken. My grandfather, His Highness Malhar Rao Narayan Rao Puar was a King of a small kingdom in now Madhya Pradesh, near Indore called Dewas. Originally his family were Rajputs who like several of the other Rajput nobility embraced the Maratha/Peshwa fold and began adopting the Maratha language and customs in addition to their Rajput heritage. His family claimed to be descendants of Vikramaditya, the legendary emperor in ancient India. I hope it's true. Seated on the extreme right is my maternal great grandmother, a lady called Krishna Rao Salgaocar. She was a commoner and belonged to the erstwhile Devadasi tradition from the Devadasi house of Saligao in Goa. In this photograph, she wears black (or navy blue) because she considered herself to be a widow of the father of her children, who while alive was a leading businessman of that time but refused to accept his children as legitimate - as was usual at the time when it came to relationships or children with Devadasis.…
My parents, Umedrai and Hansa. Village Parivarnagar. 1963 Image and Narrative contributed by Bhavna Mehta, USA This picture of my parents Umedrai & Hansa, was photographed around 1963 in the village of Parivarnagar (Maharashtra) where they lived for a few years. They were married only a few months. I’ve always wondered who took this picture, staged maybe after old Bollywood movie scenes of couples running around trees. My father Umedrai was born as one of nine children to Harjivan Bhaichand Mehta and Kamala (originally Triveni) in the small town of Ahmednagar, Maharashtra India. My father’s family belonged to a tiny community of Gujarati merchants in Ahmednagar and my mother Hansa was born in Nakuru, Kenya to Nagardas and Vimla Bhuva. Leaving Gujarat for Maharashtra as a young man, my paternal grandfather established 'Harjivandas Bhaichand', a wholesale grocery store in Ahmednagar, that still provides for his great grand children more than a 100 years later. My maternal grandfather, on the other hand, had decided to make his way to Kenya as a young man and owned a textile & sewing shop called 'Bhuva Store' in Nakuru with his brothers. The family travelled to and fro to India (Gujarat) often. My parents had an arranged marriage. At the time of the arrangement, my father was working as a merchant ship's electrical engineer in Bombay with the Great Eastern Shipping Company. Right before the wedding, he quit his job which used to otherwise keep him away for a month at a time. My mother completed her Bachelor of Arts from Dharmendrasinhji College in Rajkot, Gujarat. A cousin introduced the families and they met only once before each side said 'Yes'! I was born in…
Amitabh Bachchan and I. On the sets of 'Mr. Natwarlal'. Bombay, Maharashtra. 1979 Image and Narrative contributed by Tony Juneja, Mumbai My name is Ramanjit Singh Juneja, however family and friends affectionately call me Tony, and now everyone knows me as Tony Juneja. I was born in 1954 in Patiala, Punjab, and my father worked as a liquor supplier to the Army Canteen stores and Indian Army Troops. Even as a child I was attracted to cinema. While studying at Bishop Cottons in Simla, Himachal Pradesh, I would passionately read every edition of the ‘Picture Post’, a now forgotten english magazine about hindi films - even during class. Our family used to own bonded warehouses for liquor in Nagaland, so we would travel and live in the region often. Once we grew up, my elder brother Kushaljeet (known as Tito) took a leap and began producing Assamese Films in Dimapur and Guwahati. I too, would visit Guwahati often during summer vacations and watch them shoot and so the interest only heightened. I remember in 1972, the film we were shooting was called Mukta (later it received the President's Award). And I joined my brother as a Production Boy. That was my first job in films. My role was to wake up early in the morning and ensure that the unit travels to the shooting location and then post the shoot, bring them back. Tito, my brother, went on to establish himself as a distributor of Indian motion pictures for the West Bengal territory and I moved to Calcutta (now Kolkata) with him. After a year or so my brother decided to move to Bombay, where all the mainstream movies were being made and…
