Presentation and unveiling of the portrait of Mahatma Gandhi in the Constituent Assembly. The Constituent Assembly chaired by President Dr. Rajendra Prasad reconvened after lunch at 3.00 pm. Shri Prabhashankar Pattani rose to address the Assembly and moved a motion “Resolved that the Constituent Assembly of India do hereby accept the portrait of Mahatma Gandhi by Sir Oswald Birley, bequeathed to the nation by Sir Prabhashankat Pattani”. He went out to narrate the story behind the portrait. When Mahatma Gandhi went to London in 1935 to attend the 2nd Round Table Conference, the great portrait painter, Sir Oswald Birley painted a portrait of the Mahatma for his own use. When his father the late Shri Pattani heard of it, he persuaded Mr. Birley to sell it to him since he intended this for India. When this portrait arrived in Bhavnagar, it was kept in the original packing and no one was allowed to see it for a long time. He never mentioned to anyone what he intended to do with it. When the Government of India Act, 1935 was passed for the first time he told his son privately that he intended to present this portrait to the Nation once […]
Walking up a winding approach from the Qutub-Badarpur road and through a postern which has a finely arched roof to enter Tughlaqabad fort complex with its size, shape and spread of over 6km in the midst of a bustling, overcrowded metropolis like Delhi is a veritable delight.
Discreetly pretentious is the mustard dome that rises loftily from behind tall iron gates opposite a decrepit Kashmiri Gate, at the intersection of Church Road and Lothian Road. This is the dome of the first ever church built in Delhi – St. James’ Church commissioned by Colonel James Skinner.
We walked out of arrivals lounge in Shiraz international airport on that November evening in 2015 expecting to be met not by the young Indian waving to us but by our Iranian guide Reza. Wondering why there was a change in plans even before we commenced our long awaited tour of Iran, we advanced towards him.
A quick photographic excursion to explore and capture natural & anthropogenic wonders, through the mind’s eye, the SLR lens and to etch them in the warp & weft of memory is now an intermittent detour from my hectic life. It is a ‘health break’, to use modern phraseology that describes necessary physical and mental activities, intended to maintain balance & composure in the face of taxing official work.
A place, which has been figuring on the “must visit” list of any serious traveler for the past two thousand years.A fairy tale land in the mysterious Schwarzwald.
Motoring into the extravagantly beautiful heights of Arunachal Pradesh, the eastern sentinel of India to reach Tawang, perched daintily 10,500 ft above msl ( mean sea level), is a blazing testimonial to the ecstatic triumph of journeying over the customary inevitability of reaching the destination.
When the clandestine love affair between Irene Adler, the Prima Donna of the Imperial Opera of Warsaw and Wilhelm GottsreichSigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein screamed through the columns of the Strand Magazine in the year 1891,
