I Can't Believe That was Kamat! M. J. Rajeev Gowda is a talented photographer from Kolar. His photographs
have been exhibited at several places. He has been an enthusiastic admirer of
Bappa's books for a long time, and then he saw this picture (shown below).
He writes: (translated from Kannada; paraphrased) One of the complex experiences in life happens when a person you were
familiar with, but one you least expected, goes on to achieve great things in
life, and you exclaim "I can't believe he did that!" Quite another
type of excitement happens when suddenly you realize the person you accidentally
met (like in front of you in a line) is a great man you admire. The thrill is
even more when you don't recognize the person immediately, but have a good time
with him anyway, and only later come to know of his identity, and exclaim
"I can't believe it was he!" When I saw the picture of the smiling man in front of the closed, dusty doors
of Scientific Photo Lab, I felt this second type of trembling joy. I just
couldn't believe it was the same man I had met accidentally in 1992, and even
had learnt a few photography tricks from! I just did not know this Kamat
was the same Kamat who captured our imagination via his travelogues, research,
and website for so long! My buddy Mallikarjuna, also a great admirer of Kamat, deeply regrets even
today that he never got a chance to meet Kamat in person. Coincidentally, I had
not only met Kamat, but had been his customer/student. Through my interactions
with him, I had recognized Kamat's extreme simplicity, his refusal to get rich
from his talents, and his helpful nature of sharing his own light. What I didn't
know was it was that gentleman in that tiny shop of Malleswaram was Dr.
Krishnanand Kamat!
I Can't Believe That was Adiga Q: How does the teacher know the students cheated?
A: They all have made the same mistake!
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Mistaken Identities |
Poet Gopalakrishna Adiga was frequent visitor to Bappa's lab, so was poet V.G.
Bhat. That was twenty years ago, and my visual memory failed me and once I made
the mistake of identifying Bhat as Adiga. After a relative of Adiga contacted me,
I promptly apologized and corrected it (see Vikas's Goof
Log). Anyway, the funny part is, all those people who had stolen our pictures over
the years didn't know that I made the mistake, and it was a tell tale evidence
of their content theft! What is surprising is, Yahoo
Search's top match is making the same mistake. Perhaps their crawl-cache is
old, but now you know who the culprit is.
(Comments Disabled for Now. Sorry!) | First Written: Monday, December 6, 2004 Last Modified: 12/6/2004 10:25:04 PM |
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