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 to hello@indianmemoryproject.com
• 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.
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.
In September of 1945, two months before they left for Nyasaland (now Malawi), East Africa, my parents Mangal and Madhav Thorat got this photograph taken in a photo studio in Poona (now Pune) by a photographer named Patwardhan. As the photograph may reflect, my parents liked to dress up well.
These are four images of an amusing and perhaps strange family tradition that our family has followed over decades and it continues until today.
It seems that he went along on a trip with a transport contractor for the army all the way to Assam, and then simply began driving trucks. That his own uncle (chacha) was already working here in Tezpur, also driving trucks, would have helped. After working for a few years
Although he never practiced it professionally, my father was a talented photographer and was introduced to the craft by his childhood friend Balkrishna Kulkarni whose father owned a photo studio. My father would closely observe lighting techniques, the developing process of glass plates, making prints etc. Even after rolls of
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
