Proud to be a Sikkimese: Sikkim Travel, Culture & Local Heritage

Indian Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru arrives at the Residency in 1958 where Apa Pant, the Indian Political Officer waits to receive him (IPR Collection, Govt of Sikkim).

Homai Vyarawalla, India’s first woman press photographer claimed to fame was her photographs that showed a transition of an Independent India in the first four decades. A winner of Padma Vibhusan , the second-highest civilian award of India, Homai Vyarawalla was an active press photographer from the 30s till the 70s when she finally retired She started her career from Bombay Chronicle and ended it with   The illustrated weekly of India . She passed away early this year at the age of 98.   Some of her poplar photographs included the celebration of the first Independence Day , Nehru lighting a cigarette on the lips of Ms. Simon, wife of the then British High Commissioner to India, funerals of great leaders in Gandhiji , Nehru, and others.    Interestingly it is written in Wikipedia that most of her photographs were published under the pseudonym “Dalda 13″. The reasons behind her choice of this rather amusing name were that her birth year was 1913, she got m...

  These newspaper cuttings belong from the personal collection of Late Pem Tshering and are now under her daughter Sabnam Lama. Late Pem Tshering had done marvelous work in putting off the newspaper cuttings that hit the headlines all over the world regarding the political turnover at Tibet in 1959 through the newspaper of Amrita Bazar Patrika, he passed away in 1975 and he was Inspector of Police, Frontier Check Post posted at Kalimpong.

These newspaper cuttings belong from the personal collection of Late Pem Tshering and are now under her daughter Sabnam Lama. Late Pem Tshering had done marvelous work in putting off the newspaper cuttings that hit the headlines all over the world regarding the political turnover at Tibet in 1959 through the newspaper of Amrita Bazar Patrika, he passed away in 1975 and he was Inspector of Police, Frontier Check Post posted at Kalimpong.

I was going through an article from the book "The British, The Bandits And The Bordermen," and there is something I could not stop myself from sharing with my readers. It is an interesting anecdote; it could have been more serious then, but I could not let off my smile from it while reading it now. The book is more of a biographical account of Border Security Force's founder-director general, K F Rustamji.  The book is based on more than 3,500 pages of Rustamji's diaries, and the articles present first-person accounts of some of the tumultuous developments, such as the partition, Chinese aggression, and the Indo-Pak war. One of the articles writes about a unique gift Jawaharlal Nehru received on his 70th birthday from Madhya Pradesh Police. The gift was nothing more than news " of the death of the dreaded dacoit Gabbar Singh, who went on to achieve cult status post-Sholay." Rustamji writes, "Gabbar Singh and his gang had been killed in a bold encount...

Gangtok, 1st October, 1968 Chogyal Palden Thondup Namgyal, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Princess Sangay Dekila, Sir Tashi Namgyal, Shrimati Indira Gandhi [in kho (Bhutia Dress)], Princess Pema Tsedeun and Ashi Tashi Dorji of Bhutan. Information provided: Tenzin Chukie Tashi