He has been witness to the pre and post independent India’s developmental history and was a constant companion of Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru during his gigantic task of building a new and resurgent India. He was there wherever the ‘Temples of Tomorrow’, as Nehru called them, were being built. His lunatic obsession with ‘duty-first’ drove him into taking life-threatening risks throughout his professional career. While covering Nehru’s USSR visit, he met with an accident and suffered injuries to his head. Pt. Nehru himself inspected his injuries and retorted ‘Shaheed Banana Chahte Ho Kya??’ When he was filming the havoc created by Brahmaputra in Assam, he was physically pulled away to safety by Pt. Nehru from a chunk of earth that sunk into the mighty river. He would climb onto the roof of speeding cars to take his favourite shots, which is why he was so successful as a newsreel cameraman.Pt. Nehru had a personal liking for this kumauni lad not merely for his professional competence but for his sheer dedication and determination in carrying out the assigned tasks.
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‘The Boy from Lambata’ :Book-Review
His life evolves from the place which he describes as “place where a person born poor ,illiterate and fettered to the yoke of his pair of bullocks for life”. His childhood reminds us of the various problems a poor boy faces in the remote villages of hills. The status of education, health facilities, caste-system, social stigmas, traditional bindings, village life style, and status of woman in the society – all appears in the early pages of his book. His father reminds him of a saying “A man born in hills and bullock born in the plains of the India ,face the same fate. One is yoked to go round and oil expeller and the other is yoked to the rocky ,unyielding soil and they both die young”
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