Monday, May 14, 2012

The G K Vale romance


GK Vale is a huge name in photography down South. More than 100 years into business it was the first shop to introduce colour photographs in the South in 1970. Credited with making the maximum of marriages and also breaking some. What is more interesting than the shop's history is the fact that not so long back in history, it was almost mandatory for most prospective bride & bridegrooms to click their pictures in their studios & come back to the same studio, to click a 'happily every after' marriage picture.

Few years back while passing one of GK Vale studio's in Bangalore, an ex-colleague doubled up in laughter. On my asking why, she narrated that every time she and her husband crossed the particular store, her husband would stop their car & in an almost ritualistic prayer offer a few galis( curses) to the store for misleading him into being straddled with a wife who appeared something else on photographs & turning out to be something else when they got married! All this was of course way before photoshop & curiously enough the couple is immensely happy today, but the husband never really stopped cursing GK Vale!

( Image courtesy Google)

4 comments:

Vikram Waman Karve said...

Your post evoked nostalgia. I have black and white photos of me as a baby and with my family taken in the 1950s at GK Vale (the envelope and emblem behind the photo is still there). Thanks.

Rajkumar R said...

Interesting :)

Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury said...

Thanks Vikram & Raj :) Glad you gus liked it.

indu chhibber said...

it's good that he did not let the initial disappointment spoil his marriage.istridev