| Janata Database is a Database of Indian People Long long time ago -- I am talking of the time when my dad was a young boy in Honavar -- perhaps 1940s -- there was a faithful laborer in Honavar. As was common among his Halakki tribal community, he was a daily wage worker and earned very meager wage. Then during the annual village car festival, the temple chariot, a rather large structure, lost control as it was being pulled by the devotees and ran over a young boy's feet. Of course this is before the Indian independence, there was no hospital or doctor in Honavar. In the pandemonium that followed, the tribal man was ordered to carry the boy (who later became my father) to a tribal doctor -- you know the medicine man who fixes bones by bamboo plasters. The tribal man carried the boy on his shoulders for miles for treatment of the broken bones. Anyway, I found the picture of that tribal man -- Bedu Gowda, that my father took perhaps in 1975. © K. L. Kamat
Bedu Gowda, Honavar, Circa 1975 I am having so much fun building the Janata Database. This is because all those people my father met or photographed are now transforming into historical figures. Whenever possible, I am identifying them, so a historical record will remain on our website. Compiling it is a lot of fun for me, because either I know them or know a story about them. Not all the stories can be published of course, because I do not have their permission to tell their story. But my journalistic freedom allows me to document them as historical figures, and relate other oral accounts and attributes to them. 
See Also:
• Story of Anmoree
• Car Festivals of India
• Never Been Photographed
| Comments (0) | First Written: Monday, June 01, 2009
Last Modified: 6/4/2009 8:53:25 AM |
| 
Vikas Kamat
