I believe folktales handed down inter-generationally are an essential part of our identity – influencing who we are, the decisions we make and the directions we travel. I have researched my family tree extensively, and choose to tell these stories visually. For my latest work I have interviewed my husband Keith, and this is his story.
After graduating from Sandhurst Military College in England in 1940 my husband’s father chose to join the British Indian Army. Nobody knows why. After his de-mob at the end of WWII he saw future opportunities for himself and his young family back in the country he had fallen in love with. The family returned to India in 1952 and he took up a position with an engineering company, first in Bombay (now known as Mumbai) and then in Calcutta (Kolkata).
I have created a contemporary version of a Kavad, a traditional Indian storytelling box that a storyteller would use when teaching his villagers about Hindu mythology. Using the family’s photo albums and 6mm black & white film as reference, as well as my husband’s diary entries, distant memories and vivid imagination, I have recreated the story of a young English boy’s eyes being opened to the exotic sights, sounds and smells of a very different world for the first time.
His story was reimagined in this book by his son Christopher, and read by his great-nephew Sammy.
