New Delhi Archives - Page 2 of 2 - INDIAN MEMORY PROJECT

“I lied to the Prime Minister of the country.”

From Rajiv Gandhi to me. New Delhi. December 1, 1985

From Rajiv Gandhi to me. New Delhi. December 1, 1985 Letter and Narrative contributed by Swati Bhattacharya, Gurgaon Blame it on my only child-ness if you must, but I love famous people loving me. I like provoking intimacy. But only from the jet-setting beau monde. I crave intimacy from people who have no business to get intimate with me. After coming back from school (Delhi Public School R.K.Puram), and doing the stuff I had to do, I'd sit down and think of writing to someone. The first person I had written to was Hiroko Nagasaki, a Japanese 13 year old swimmer who had swept the Asian Games in 1983. She and I became pen-pals for the next two years. She'd send me paper stickers, perfumed erasers and then one day in school somebody stole my Hiroko box. Traumatic as it was, I quickly recovered because by then I had received a flowery handmade-paper letter all the way from 22, Zaman Park, Lahore, Pakistan. Imran Khan, the famous cricketer, had written to me. The letter became my raison d'etre for a while. The fact that love does find a way, the fact that the letter had 18 red flowers printed at the back, and the fact that it had been signed as 'Imran' and not 'Imran Khan', to me it was a sign of a cosmic connection. We were meant to be and all that...Anyway, I lost this letter in a crowded Mudrika bus, while doing my nth show and tell. The letter I am sharing with you is one that still lives with me. Born out of jealousy, it got written in the November of 1985, when newspapers were full of Rajiv Gandhi writing to a Sri Lankan kid. The TV cameras had gone loooking for her and captured…

The Goud Saraswat Brahmins who converted to Catholicism

My parents and my brothers at my Christening. Sacred Heart Church, Santa Cruz, Bombay. 1971

My parents and my brothers at my Christening. Sacred Heart Church, Santa Cruz, Bombay. 1971 Image and Narrative contributed by Wanda Naomi Rau, Mumbai This was an image taken at my christening at the Sacred Heart Church in Santa Cruz, Bombay (now Mumbai). My father had invited 100 people to celebrate that I, a girl was born nine years after two boys. My brothers even got the day off school. It was tradition in Goa to have at least one son carry the family name and another follow priesthood. My father José Luis Alvaro Remedios, from Saligao, Goa was to become a priest, since his older brother Hubert had moved to Bombay to pursue his Masters at St Xavier's College. Hubert, unfortunately died of Typhoid around the 1940's and my father had to leave the Seminary. However, The Seminary takes you through a tough academic route which covers both main stream subjects and theological studies. Perhaps his significant learning was that of Latin, which I regret I did not learn from my Father. However I think my love for history, academia and music is inextricably linked to my father's genes. My father moved to Bombay to look for a job. He began working with Reserve Bank of India, and held the job for 38 odd years until he retired as the Asst. Financial Controller. He met my mum, Maria Aida Bertila Silveira from St. Mathias, Goa, through a formal proposal. My Mum was 30 years old and he was 35 when they got married. They lived in Byculla for the early years and then moved to the Reserve Bank Quarters in Santa Cruz. My Mum was a home maker and raised two…

Love in time of War

My Parents Ronald and Beryl Osbourne, at Kohat Pass (NW Frontier Province), Pakistan. April 1946

My Parents Ronald and Beryl Osbourne, at Kohat Pass (NW Frontier Province, now Pakistan). April 1946 Image and Narrative contributed by John Reese-Osbourne, Australia I first learned of the Indian Memory Project from an article in ‘The Australian’ of May 2011 (a News Ltd daily newspaper). After visiting the website, it occurred to me that others searching the pages might be interested in a brief glimpse of Indian Army life from the viewpoint of a British officer and his family in 1945-46. It may shed a personal light on that brief moment in time just before the watershed of Independence and the bloody shambles the politicians made of partition. This images is of my parents taken on 23rd April 1946, and it show them at the top of the Kohat Pass, near Tribal Territory. My mother is wearing a revolver!. On the back of some of these photographs, she has captioned them as ‘the gateway to 30 miles of tribal territory’. My father Ronald Osborne was born in Wales in 1910 and worked as sales manager in London for Geo. Wimpey & Co., then a large builder of houses. He volunteered for the British Army in 1939 just before universal conscription was introduced. He served initially with the Royal Engineers and fought in the abortive Norway campaign before undergoing commando training and going on the far more successful Lofoten Islands raid to destroy an oil refinery held by the German forces. Selected for officer training, he found that the pay in the Indian Army was higher than in the British forces and chose to be commissioned into the Royal Indian Army Service Corps, serving in the North African and…

A serious family photograph

My father's family. The Datta family. Location either Delhi or Simla. Circa 1940

My father's family. The Datta family. Location either Delhi or Simla. Circa 1940 Image and Narrative contributed by Saugato Datta, London This photograph of my father’s family was taken in the courtyard of my grandfather’s government house on Irwin Road (now Baba Kharak Singh Marg,Delhi). Seated in the middle are my grandparents, Sailendraprasad Datta (1898-1956) and Bibhabati Datta (1906-1977). My grandfather was a civil servant and moved to New Delhi from Calcutta in the early 1920s. My grandmother was a housewife. She grew up in Muzaffarpur, Bihar. To the left of my grandfather is their eldest child, my aunt Uma Datta Roy Choudhury (1926-2009). She was a statistician, joining the Indian Statistical Service when it was founded after Independence, which was also the year she got her MA from St. Stephen’s College. She later consulted for UNDP and lived for many years in the then Czechoslovakia (Now Czech Republic and Slovakia) and later in Zimbabwe. To the right of the my grandmother, is my oldest uncle, Kalyan Kumar Datta (1928-1998). He was a pilot for Indian Airlines and lived in Calcutta. The little boy on the left is my father, Kamal Kumar Datta (born 1938). He studied Physics at Presidency College, Calcutta and Brandeis University in the US, and was a professor of Physics at Delhi University till he retired earlier this decade. The other kid on the right is his brother, Saroj Kumar Datta, (born 1936) who was also a Stephanian. He worked for many years in Air India, and has been with Jet Airways since it was founded. he currently works as Jet’s Executive Director. He’s still working, though he recently turned 75. The two youngest kids are apparently beaming because they were given books to entice them to sit still for the…

All translations are machine generated, hence they are not 100% accurate.