“My family were pioneers of photography in the Subcontinent”

While clearing a godown in our house in 2015, I chanced upon a wooden box with a sliding cover. On close inspection, it contained ten 10”x12” B&W glass negatives photographed between c. 1897 to 1910, covered in cobwebs and fungus. It turned out to be part of my grandfather’s photographic portfolio.

My father, the first antiquarian of Calcutta

My father, Nirmal Chandra Kumar, born in Calcutta, Bengal in 1917, grew up to be an avid reader, hungry for knowledge and to make a living, he worked several odd jobs and tried his hand at writing, which in his own words he said he failed miserably at.