A toddler stares intently at the lens; a garlanded couple pose, perhaps for their first photograph together; and schoolgirls in pigtails smile bashfully in sepia — all memories from a bygone era. All images for sale in Mattancherry, the quaint, crumbling quarter of Kochi.
With no details about the people on either side of the camera, such photographs are piled high in antique stores across Jew Town. Sold for a few hundred rupees, or thousands even, the price is often contingent on a buyer’s bargaining skills.
Although most of these pictures appear to be from Tamil Nadu — the names of the studios written in a neat hand — even the shopkeepers who sell them rarely know their provenance. Some say they might have been left behind by those who migrated to foreign lands. Or sourced from homes that were demolished or partitioned and sold in pieces. Homes, perhaps, long-abandoned by all but time and dust.
Whenever I visit Mattancherry, I always wonder what stories these pictures might tell those who buy them. Will their new owners hang them in ornate drawing rooms in Europe? Treat them like a work of art? What is it that makes the buyers gather images and stories of strangers to make them their own?
by Thulasi Kakkat