By Dr. K. Javeed Nayeem, MD

Very recently, to refer a patient to her, while trying to call up Dr. N. Harshitha, an ENT Surgeon, who works with me in the Apollo BGS Hospitals and who shares the workplace with me in the OPD, I noticed that she had put up a very interesting profile picture.

It showed her, with her outstretched hand, catching raindrops, falling from the tiled roof of an ancient village house. It was a most beautiful picture and the photographer in me was so mesmerised by the ethereal quaintness of the image that I asked her where that picture had been taken.

She told me that her younger brother, Sumukh, who is now an engineer in the US, had clicked it some time ago, in her grandfather’s house, in her ancestral village called Kannambadi, near the Krishna Raja Sagar Dam. That is when the name rang a bell in my mind and I called her to my consultation room and told her about the picture of a very ancient house from her village, that I had seen in an exhibition of photographs held very recently by one of my friends, Ashvini Ranjan who was an accomplished hobby photographer and about whom I had written in my column, very recently.

I also told her that the picture had also been included in a coffee table book entitled ‘In True Colours’, that Ashvini had brought out very recently and which I had with me. I told her that I would go home and send her the picture of that house in the book, for her to check if it was her ancestral house.

And, the moment I sent her that picture, she messaged instantly, to say that it indeed was! It was a most unusual coincidence, because her profile picture, taken in her ancestral house recently, matched the picture of that very same house in the book which was taken by Ashvini in the year 2009, when Dr. Harshitha must have been a schoolgirl, in plaits!

The next question I asked her was whether she could identify the two people sitting in the open verandah of the house, when she said that they were her maternal uncle Jaganna and his wife, Bharathi, who now lived in that house, along with her grandfather, whose name was Thammaiah! She said that a few movies too had been shot in that house, with the latest being the Kannada movie O Mallige.

She went on to add that the house still has some artifacts gifted to her great grandfather, by Maharaja Sri Krishnaraja Wadiyar, because he used to be a regular invitee to the Dasara Durbar, as a special guest. That was not all.

She told me that references to that house and a mention of her complete ancestral lineage and the contributions of her forefathers to the village and the construction of a temple there by them, to ward off an epidemic, were on record in Volume six of the Epigraphica Carnatica, which had been published in the year 1977 by the University of Mysore.

The next day, she brought me a copy of the voluminous book, which had been gifted to her family by the Mysore University, which I am now reading over the past one week, where the references to her family and their familial house, appear on pages 120 and 121.

When I narrated all this to my friend Ashvini, he was most intrigued and said that he would send me a print of the photo of her ancestral house, as his gift to Dr. Harshitha, which when I delivered to her, gave her a most pleasant surprise!

Now I have something very unique and unusual to say about Ashvini Ranjan too. The man has nine siblings, four brothers and five sisters, spread across the world and they have all travelled together, in one group, to different places across the world, thirteen times!

Perhaps because thirteen is considered an unlucky number and to beat any bad luck that might be associated with it, they are now doing it for the fourteenth time and right now, even as I am writing about them, they are all huddled together in London, reminiscing about their childhood, in Shivarampet, here in Mysuru!

As Ashvini was leaving for London, last week, he messaged to me requesting me to write a review for his book and also added that he needed it in a little bit of a hurry. I messaged back to him saying that he had nothing to worry because I would see to it that my review about his book, would be there to receive him at the Heathrow Airport upon his arrival there. And, it did, for which he was most thankful.

But to ensure that and meet that deadline, I had to sacrifice my own weekly article, which is why you missed seeing it, last Sunday!

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