MEMORABILIA

An Ode to What's Forgotten

What we have left behind shapes us into who we are today. We have a responsibility to cradle the emotions, objects and stories that the past has bestowed us with, no matter whether the process is big or small.

This is Memorabilia. An archive that seeks to preserve family history, travel back in space and time and look beyond conventional modes of boxing up history.

Shyamal Kumar (extreme right) with his college friends, 1960s

Shyamal Kumar with his family on a vacation, 1980s

Initially, Memorabilia focuses on the life and works of the late Shyamal Kumar Majumdar (1936-2015), a banker striving to turn the mundanity of his life into a ledger of art, music, sports and knowledge practices in the 1970s-80s. Shyamal Kumar was born in Howrah, West Bengal. He was a student of Commerce and worked in The Chartered Bank (now Standard Chartered Bank) from 1965 to 1994.

His interests varied from the study of History and English literature, Indian classical music, photography, collection of vinyl records, and fountain pens, among others. In the later part of his life, he suffered from what the doctors diagnosed as Bipolar Disorder.

However, intense love for music was his companion till the last day.

Concept and Mission

'A family history is always representative of something larger than itself: the social, political and cultural shifts experienced by the geography in which it is set engineers its sudden detours. We have to follow its routes.'

~ Skye Arundhati Thomas, Monograph on Homeground: An exhibition of the works of Saju Kunhan

A person's life is not just of their own but goes on to influence, change and alter the lives of many others, over time. Memorabilia intends to document and organise all one has left behind- material memory, textual documents, oral history, collections, emotions and stories.

We believe memory has its own language. Aided with an elaborate attention to minute details, Memorabilia seeks to rediscover the essence of family history as an inventory of emotional bonds within people. The greater mission is to help the essence of one's life reach those interested in peering into the magic of the past and further analyse the sociocultural narratives of the bygone days.