Nirmal Verma was a Hindi writer of repute whom I had met a few times and clicked his pictures. He was a literary giant I came to know the day I attended a writers’ conclave at Delhi’s Habitat Centre where stalwarts like V S Naipaul and several other big names from all over the world were participating. That was also the last time I saw Nirmal Verma and clicked his pictures from a distance – he was sitting on the stage along with others.
I first came to know of Nirmal Verma’s name after reading a short story in a Hindi magazine during my college days. Though I don’t remember the name or the plot of the story, I clearly remember having loved that story. Since that day I had been nurturing a desire to meet Nirmal Verma.
His elder brother, Ram Kumar was a painter as well as a writer. I had met him several times and also taken pictures of his paintings for the Hindi weekly Saptahik Hindustan. He was very friendly, and I used to bump into him very often at inaugural shows at art galleries.
My first opportunity to meet a young Nirmal Verma came through a phone call from Bombay (now Mumbai) from Dr Dharmaveer Bharati, the editor of Dharmayug magazine, a very popular and pictorial Hindi weekly published.
Dr Bharti gave me an address and a phone number and asked me to call immediately a young Hindi writer called Nirmal Verma, shoot his pictures as quickly as possible, and send him his pictures he needed urgently to be published in the next issue of Dharmayug.
Nirmal Verma was already aware about my call and the urgency of the pictures, so he agreed to meet me the very next day at his house on the given address. Nirmal Verma used to live in Old Rajedra Nagar those days; his house was next to a covered nullah. I climbed the first floor where he was waiting for me. Because of the urgency of the pictures, I decided to use a large format 12 frame camera.
I made him sit next to a window in that small room. He kept on smoking continuously during the shoot. The pictures came out very well. Dr Bharti was very happy and thanked me for sending him such good pictures so quickly.
The views expressed here are the author’s own and The News Porter bears no responsibility for the same.
