The Captain of a State Hockey Team

This is a picture of my late maternal Grandfather, Surendra Behera (Right most in a striped blazer) from his Utkal university days when he played Hockey for the Orissa state team in 1949. At the time, he was 24 years old and studying Law, after graduating in Arts from Ravenshaw College (he did not complete his law degree). The people in the photograph were from different colleges under Utkal University.

The pocket money photograph

My father Subhash Goyal was born in 1968. He grew up in Bathinda, Punjab with four of his siblings (two elder sisters and two younger brothers) and a large extended family of 19 cousins, innumerable aunts & uncles, all of whom lived on the same street. This photograph of him as a young teenager is special to me and when I asked him about it, he tells me that it was taken when he had gone for a trip with his parents to the much revered Vaishno Devi Temple after his Board exams. He spent half of his pocket money  (5-Paisa) to secretly get this photo done in a studio in front of an old camera in Kashmiri attire. The idea of a solo photograph was fascinating to him.