Banker Nivas is a house in Tellicherry - a small, coastal town in Northern Kerala. It's where Dad spent his childhood having first entered the place as a 6 month old baby, soon after it was constructed some months before the second world war began. It's also where he passed away 80 years later. He didn't live there all his life though. Those two events - of having been carried in for the first time and later carried out for the last time - bookended a life of some decades as part of the diaspora outside Kerala.
The diaspora. Migrants. Tellicherry natives. Keralites. Indians. Others. People who leave home seeking a better life.
Returning later. Returning older. Returning 'home'.
Or maybe not.
The house my grandfather - the Banker - built.
As a kid from Hyderabad, these were two weeks well spent. These were also two weeks soon forgotten once I was back in Hyderabad. It was only in my late teens at university in Southern Kerala, that I began engaging more deeply with the place and the stories of those who lived there: dad, his siblings and their parents.
Mum and Dad would eventually return to Banker Nivas. A move that took me by surprise though it meant a lot to Dad - he insisted that he wanted to be there when he died. And so it was. By now I was working in Bangalore and would make trips to Tellicherry. Trips to see my parents. It was on one of these visits that I came across a stack of albums. Page after page of neatly attached photographs. Several old pictures, some old post cards and even some old newspaper cuttings. Pictures that spoke of journeys, college, friends, family and home.
I finally got around to creating a digital archive to preserve them and this site is a curated selection of these pictures. These photographs are a window into an era long gone - the 20th century - and through them I explore this period and how my family navigated it.
Through it all, I try to explore the meaning of 'home'.
I finally got around to creating a digital archive to preserve them and this site is a curated selection of these pictures. These photographs are a window into an era long gone - the 20th century - and through them I explore this period and how my family navigated it.
Through it all, I try to explore the meaning of 'home'.