It was like stepping on to a time machine for K. V Thomas.
A visit to the ‘Kerala in The Hindu ’ exhibition at Maharaja’s College here on Friday helped the Union Minister of State for Food and Consumer Affairs travel back in time. The exhibition, which chronicles the history of the State through pages and pictures published by The Hindu over the years, features a photograph of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru addressing a gathering at Palluruthy Veli in June 1950. Sitting on the dais is a young Indira Gandhi. But the minister had an anecdote on what was beyond the frame. “In the pullulating crowd was a four-year-old piggybacking on his father, watching the Prime Minister speak. It was me,” said the minister.
Prof. Thomas hails from Kumbalanghi in the district and was a Chemistry professor at Sacred Heart College, Thevara, for many years.
Besides prominent events, the exhibition, supported by Catholic Syrian Bank, also featured photographs that reflect the daily life and culture of the State decades ago. A picture of boats jostling for space in the Mullassery canal on a market day in 1961 reminded Prof. Thomas of his trips to the area with his businessman father.
The exhibition was “a window to Kerala history,” Excise Minister K. Babu wrote in the visitors’ book, also congratulating The Hindu for organising the “unique exhibition.”
The programme was a portal into the past for those who witnessed firsthand the State’s growth into modernity. Veteran journalist M. K. Das, who attended the exhibition on the inaugural day, had his own memories to compliment the photographs on display. One of the pictures is that of C. Rajagopalachari, the last Governor-General of India, and Maharaja Ravi Varma, the last ruler of the erstwhile kingdom of Cochin, at a public durbar in August 1948. Mr. Das remembers attending the function as a little boy, less than a month after the king’s coronation.
The exhibition drew several visitors on the concluding day on Friday.
“An enlightening experience for the new generation,” is what Krishnadas M., a visitor, had to say about the two-day show.
