Marie walked over into the darkness of the projection room. She hadn’t expected to see herself on a large screen. She sat there for a long...
Marie walked over into the darkness of the projection room.
She hadn’t expected to see herself on a large screen. She sat there for a long time watching herself in loop.
The sound of the Lord’s Prayer in Armenian travelled across the room of the bara Armenian Club in Queen’s Mansions.
The exhibition of the book had just opened.
Slowly people started to trickle in.
Marie’s drill was followed by all. They walked involuntarily into the projection room with the sound of the music; on their way out, they found Marie with her red hair and red sweater narrating stories of her Armenian heritage.
“Are the Armenians after all the founders of Calcutta?” This question refused to leave me after I read it in a 1936 Bengal Past and Present article by Khoja Israel Sarhad, while sifting through other journals at the Asiatic Society of Bengal.
Quiet, often invisible, and now mostly forgotten in a frenetic city, the Armenian contribution cannot and should not be forgotten.
Somewhere over these years of photographing, researching and spending time with them, I think that became my main motivation – the contribution cannot be forgotten.
Why should they not be considered the founders of modern Calcutta?
The first Christian grave of the city is that of an Armenian, “Reezabeebeh, wife of the Late charitable Sookias”, circa 1630. That was 60...
