The Pen that killed the blot!

 

Published on 12 June 2026
Deccan Herald 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Train Journeys in 50's and 60's

Image
      My childhood was spent in Bareilly in North, far away from Shimoga, in Karnataka  and Parvatipuram in Andhra where my grandparents lived. So travelling southwards during our school vacations in summer was an annual ritual which we keenly looked forward to. Travel was invariably by Indian Railways. Bus or air travel was ruled out due to the distances and the cost factor. Of course, in my case we could avail of free travel by Indian Railways since my father was a medical officer in the Railways.  It used to be rather a long journey. Our schedule of typical journey by Rail from Bareilly (UP) to Shimoga (then Mysore State) used to be like this:- Day 1- Start from Bareilly in the night. Day 2 Reach Delhi the next morning.           Take train to Chennai (then Madras) in the evening called Grand Trunk Express. Day 3- Spent in the train. Meals usually from Railway Catering Day 4 -  Reach Madras in the Evening....
Read more
Image
My Encounter with a Rotary Dial Telephone (Late 1950s) You know, having a telephone at home in the late fifties was a big deal. Only senior officers, police officials,doctors, journalists or the really well-off families had one. And those early phones weren’t like the ones with dials. Most were manual . You picked up the receiver, and a polite operator would come on the line and ask, “Number, please?” Then you’d tell him/her who you wanted to speak to, and he/she would connect you. Naturally, I had no idea what a rotary dial phone looked like, let alone how to use one. I’d only heard they existed in places like Mumbai and Delhi . ( Madras and Calcutta probably caught up a bit later.) Then, sometime around 1959, my family was traveling from Bareilly to Bangalore . My cousin came along too. We stopped for a couple of days in Bombay —yes, it was still Bombay then—to stay with my mother’s uncle. He worked in the Telephone Department . And that’s where the magic happened. There, in ...
Read more

My experiments with photography in 60's

Image
During my engineering college days (1963-68) at Jodhpur one of my obsessions was photography. Had my dad's Kodak box camera to play with.(He must have bought it in 50's.) This obsession led to activities (along with my friend Joshi) such as:- 1. Taking   snapshot   of lightening- finally succeeded by using 'B' setting in the camera. 2. Learned to develop, print and enlarge B&W photos by persuading the owner of a photo studio to let us use his facilities. 3. Tried 'trick' photography like photographing a person appearing to be standing on the palm of the other person (Inspired by a scene in the movie ' Maya Bazaar ' in which a giant sized Ghatotkacha holds a tiny Abhimanyu in his palm and torments him before realising that he is his own cousin.) 4. Photographing same person in double like both Dev Anands facing each other in the same frame. Here is a sample in which I have played that 'double Role'. This photo was taken by Josh...
Read more