In my childhood, the only Bengali books we used to frequently loan from school library used to be Chhabite Biswabhraman (‘Seeing The World Through Pictures’). Those were pre-TV days, so there was no way to know that the world is indeed a vast arena of wonders, except from radio and dour newspaper images. Anyone who came from abroad would be a prized possession of a para (locality) and it’d for many days that we, the kids, would look at him with wide-mouthed surprise.
Chhabite Biswabhraman were our windows to the world, and we knew many famous landmarks from those books. Indeed these memories came rushing when I first saw the pictures from UK below. They are so vivid and illustrative that it seems easy to capture the moments there when they were taken.
Cdr. Debashis Mukherjee has taken these pictures during a recent trip to UK, but I barely know him. It is my ‘senior friend’, Sanyal da (Sujit Sanyal) of Ongc, Ahmedabad, whose friend Debashis Mukherjee in turn is, who has sent them. Sanyal da is a great socializer and is dear to quite a few men and women. I’m fortunate to be one among them.
Off to the pictures now. And yes, do remember to come back in a few days to see some more of Debshis’s pitures – this time from the desert city, Dubai.
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