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Remembering an Old Friend D.K. Murthy

While sifting through our picture archive, today I ran into a rare photograph, of one of the dearest friends of Kamat family. D.K. Murthy, Bangalore His name was D.K. Murthy. He probably met my father first as a customer. He was much closer to my age than my dad's, but they bonded so well! He referred to Bappa as "Professor", and visited dad's Scientific Photo Lab. almost on a daily basis exchanging literature on photography, photo-chemistry, and photo-equipment. In the days when photographic materials were hard to obtain in India (late 1970s and early 1980s), Murthy with friend Maruti Kumble, was the oxygen supplier to Bappa's hobbies and business. I don't think Murthy's financial situation was stable, but his enthusiasm knew no bounds. He ventured into advertising, furniture design, tinting (a chemical process of turning black and white photographs into blue and white or brown and white collectibles). One day in 1985 we got a rude shock -- news that Murthy had committed suicide. Till today I have no details --but it was a great loss for all of us. Death of a young friend (Murthy was probably in his 30s, not married) affected my dad very much -- "If only I knew he was in financial burden..." he'd lament, and the tragedy perhaps drove my dad to become a recluse. Anyway, I found this photograph today, and wanted to thank Mr. Murthy for the years and years of invisible, thanksless service he provided to India -- the unique service of enabling Bappa. Murthy didn't live to see the fruits of his labor -- who knew in 1985 that technological advancements of the next decade would transform the dusty, dirty photographs he and Bappa toiled to produce, be available for millions (December 2005 page viewership of Kamat's Potpourri: 4.5 million) to view and appreciate? You will find many such unsung heroes in our Acknowledgements list. For those who don't know the depth of my dad's collection, here's a statistic: he took an estimated 200,000 photographs over his lifetime (we have scanned about 11,000 of them). (Comments Disabled for Now. Sorry!) First Written: Tuesday, January 3, 2006 Last Modified: 1/3/2006 3:21:44 AM

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