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.
Photographed in December of 1957, this is my mother Kaushalya Lakhani. She was adoringly known as Dadi Lakhani in the homes of Bhopal. Clad in gorgeous theatrical costume for a play, this portrait, one of the oldest in our family, is of a dynamic and versatile lady who had a lasting impact on hundreds of lives and destinies in Madhya Pradesh. The picture was taken by her husband, my father Vasudev Lakhani, an amateur yet ardent photographer.
This image of my Grandparents, Om Prakash Gupta and his wife, my grandmother, Ramkali Gupta is one of the oldest photographs we possess. The original image was photographed and hand painted in a photo studio in Bhopal around 1975, right after the birth of their fourth son, Sanjay. While the original photo print was lost, a bigger duplicate still exists, framed and hung in a corner of our home. While my grandfather’s past exists in a few blurry anecdotes within the family, it is my grandmother who has really lived and witnessed a kaleidoscopic life.
My great grandfather, Sukhsampat Rai Bhandari. Ajmer, Rajasthan. Circa 1955 Image & Narrative points contributed by Myra Khanna / Rachana Yadav, Gurgaon Volunteer Assistance : Myra Khanna, New Delhi This is the probably the only photograph we have of my maternal great grandfather Sukhsampat Rai Bhandari or as we refer to him Nana Sahib. Born in 1891, Sukhsampat Rai Bhandari was the eldest of four brothers. He was brought up in Bhanpura, a district in the Central Provinces of the subcontinent (now Madhya Pradesh, India). I never did get a chance to meet him, but stories my mother and grandmother tell me about him make me feel that would have been an honour to know him. While there is some documentation that mentions our ancestor Rao Raghunath Singh Bhandari as the acting King of Jodhpur from 1713-1724, I am not sure how it all turned out because in our family’s current memory we had humble beginnings from a village called Jaitaran (Jodhpur District). The family then migrated to their maternal land Bhanpura where Nana Sahib was born. After his birth and as tradition was, his umbilical cord was cut and buried in the soil of our family home’s courtyard and a tree was planted. The house still stands in Bhanpura today, and in it’s courtyard so does a grand tree. In 1904, at the age of 12, Nana Sahib was married off to 13-year-old, Roop Kavar, my great grandmother. Nana Sahib was not interested in the family business and ran away to Jodhpur to complete his education. He excelled at Marathi, Hindi and English languages and self-published his first works by translating Ralph Waldo Trine’s In tune with the Infinite in…
The Tiger Man, Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. Circa 1930 Image and Narrative 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.
