Memories are made of this

With all my ranting on politics and my nostalgia for Cathedralites and Stephanian news, I still have time to rummage my old photos and live through of some of the memories that are generated. In doing so I came upon this picture:

Picture of Susanna and Jaakko taken in 1971

One may claim that it just a picture of our two first born, Susanna and Jaakko, at their joint birthday party held in our home in Defence Officers Colony, Nandambakkam in November 1971.

This picture was taken by a friend (who was also related to me), the now late Dr. Basu John, who was the owner of a well-known photographic studio in Chennai called Klein and Peryl, who was photographed by Jaakko in 1999 relaxing in his home:

Picture of the late Dr. Basu John taken by Jaakko in 1999

That's nice, one could claim - subject takes descriptive picture of photographer 28 years onward.

Jaakko also took a picture of the enlargement of 1971 photograph as it lay in the late Dr. Basu John's home in 1999. It was something that Basu John was very proud of.


Jaakko's photograph of an enlargement of the original photograph as it lay in the late Dr. Basu John's home in 1999

Still no big deal one could say, till we look at the size of the enlargement and recall the history of the camera that took the original picure.

The original was taken a camera jointly developed by the late Dr. Basu John and myself in 1971, made out of black plastic pieces stuck together, with a lens and optics designed by the brilliant brain of the late Dr. Basu John, while the body and other plastic components were designed by me.

And our calculated market price of launching this camera as a mass produced item in 1972 had been estimated as Rs. 30 per piece, or less than Euro 0.50 (less than a dollar)!!

However, there was much beween the cup and the lip.

A little while later, as Dr. Basu John was sitting with me in my office in the house where the photograph was taken, there was a telephone call to him saying that his studio was on fire. He rushed to the studio. But it was just too late. Some parts of it had been gutted by the fire and all the development plans for this cheap camera had gone up in flames.

After this, neither Dr. Basu John nor I had any inclination to follow through this project.

However, just to be sure that our concepts had been right, Dr. Basu John enlarged the original negative to as large as was possible in his studio, just to see when the image would breakdown.

That is the image you see in Jaakko's photograph when he visited the late Dr. Basu John's home in 1999.

Even at this enormous enlargement, the photograph, even at the edges showed no sign of breaking up!!

The late Dr. Basu John was a great photographer, a wonderful brain as regards optics.

On this day, of no particular significance, I take my hat off and hang my head in remembrance of this outstanding member of the Malayali community of Madras / Chennai.