Four-year-old Ramendra was at his grandfather’s home, taking an afternoon nap, during one summer holiday. All the doors were closed, and the curtains had been drawn, leaving the room drenched in darkness, but for a single beam of sunlight streaming in through the crack in the door. Ramendra’s curious eyes followed the beam of sunlight, right up to the wall opposite the door. The wall, like a cinema screen, came alive to depict the noisy world outside. As Ramendra’s family slept—lorries, cows, people and trees—everything was visible. The room had become a pin-hole camera.
The afternoon siesta was now all but forgotten, as Ramendra rushed to see if what he saw could be replicated on a smaller scale. He picked up his grandmother’s white coloured cough syrup box and a safety pin from his mother. He punched one small hole on one side of the box for the light to be able to enter and made a larger hole on top to see inside the box. Lo and behold, he could see the trees,…