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A culture’s memory survives because a few understood that their stories were worth keeping.
Our Circle of Patrons are the people who carry that understanding forward — whose support allows us to seek out, document, and preserve personal histories that would otherwise disappear. Their generosity has helped build an archive that now reaches schools, institutions, researchers, and families across the Subcontinent and the world.
This is quiet, lasting work. And it has been made possible with people like them. If you’d like to become a patron of the project please write to us at hello@indianmemoryproject.com
No image or text may be used or published elsewhere without prior permission. Any unauthorised use may lead to prompt legal action. Permission requests can be sent here.
• Image rights belong to the guardian(s) of the photograph.
• Text rights belong to Indian Memory Project unless stated otherwise.
• The project does not share any information about contributors without their explicit permission.
We hope you enjoy this archive as much as we enjoy building it.
This is a photograph of my paternal grandmother Manorama Rao when she graduated and topped English Honours with the Grigg Memorial gold medal at the University level. My grandmother was born into a Saraswat Konkani Brahmin family in Madras (now Chennai) in 1917.
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
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.
This photograph may have been taken in Warangal, Hyderabad State, (now Telangana, India) or Garla, Hyderabad State, (now Telangana India) more than hundred years ago, circa 1910.
The old man in the photograph is Mateti Ramanujana Rao and his wife Cheruku Ranganayakamma. And they were my great great grandparents.
Anusha Yadav is a multidisciplinary artist working in medium of photography, paper art, and graphic design. She is the founder of Indian Memory Project, one of the most influential online public memory projects globally. The project has subsequently reshaped how archives are engaged with, generating thousands of academic, editorial, and cultural enquiries worldwide.
Anusha’s practice bridges artistic conversation, and public viewership through investigative research, aesthetical advantage, emotional connection, and care. Rooted in personal curiosities and lived inquiry, her work demonstrates that cultural knowledge can be rigorous, generous and delightful, without relying on obscurity or institutional language as a measure of seriousness.
Anusha lives and works in India, and intermittently in the UK. She can by reached at hello@indianmemoryproject.com. You can see more of her work at anushayadav.com and at foldbyanushayadav.com
