The Jaffna Collection  |
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THE ORIGIN OF
THE JAFFNA COLLECTION
The Jaffna Collection is mostly the work of Kumaran who now
lives in Singapore. Below is a short biography with the history of these
pics...
Kumaran, the
author of these photos was born in Sri Lanka in 1960, but spent much of his
childhood in Malaysia where his father was employed.
During holidays in Sri Lanka, a favourite mode
of travel from Colombo to the ancestral home in Jaffna would be by train, the
Colombo to Kankesanthurai express known as the "Yal Devi". It was during these
trips that Kumaran developed his love for the railways.
In his adult years he aquired his father's Ashai
Pentax SLR camera and his own Olympus compact from which these photos were
taken. The high cost and shortage of colour film in Sri Lanka those days
enabled Kumaran to make friends with train crews by the simple expedient of
photographing the drivers and sending them a complimentary copy of the shots.
This and the fact that a maternal uncle worked in the Telecommunications
Department (which handles communications for the railways), helped gain access
to the locomotive cabs and ride with the drivers on a few occassions.
The photos credited to M.
Muthukumaraswamy were taken by another maternal uncle who was a civil servant
and retired as Registrar to the Supreme Court. He was a keen photographer too
and these black and white shots were taken (on a twin lens Yashica) at the
behest of his train mad nephew living in Malaysia.
The station closest to the ancestral home in
Jaffna is Kondavil, so that's the reason a lot of shots were taken there.
Kondavil is a few miles north of Jaffna town on the way to the terminus of
Kankesanthurai.
Today Kumaran lives
in Singapore where he practices architecture and in his free time indulges in
his interests in trains. Apart from the Sri Lanka Railways, his passion also
extends to the Malayan Railway, KTM, which is similar in many ways to Sri Lanka
as both railways were established and run by the British during the colonial
period.
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Page first published on the
26th June 2002 |
