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New Delhi: Shekhar Borker became famous at the age of 8 in 1957. Ironically, he has never met the photographer who was instrumental in making him a celebrity when his photo was printed on 32 million postal stamps.
Shekhar was a Class II student at Modern School, Barakhamba Road, New Delhi, when one of a group of photographers assigned by the Indian Post and Telegraph Department to capture young faces to feature on Children's Day stamps thought he had the perfect picture.
Now 58, Shekhar recalls: "During our lunch break I happened to be eating a banana. And without my knowledge, a photographer took the shot. Mine was one of the 10,000 photographs that were shot from all over India."
His picture made it to the final shortlist of five photographs that highlighted at least one of the three aspects of child development - education, nutrition and recreation - that the shutterbugs had been briefed to keep in mind.
Breaking the news
It was only when the school principal, M.N. Kapoor one day called up the young boy's father, D.S. Borker, to seek his consent for his son's photograph to be published that the family knew. For one-and-a-half months after that there was no news. And then suddenly, one day the family was invited for this big event on November 14 when the stamp bearing Shekhar's photo was released by then prime minister (Pandit) Jawaharlal Nehru.
At the venue, he was asked to enact his picture on the stamp. "I was made to sit on a chair and given a banana. As I tucked into the fruit, (Pandit) Nehru came in. He tugged my nose saying 'Go on eating bananas'," he reminiscences.
Indira Gandhi, who was then the vice-chairperson of the Indian Council of Child Welfare, told Shekhar's mother, Mohini, that the committee members had observed her son for over a month to see whether he deserved the honour - and concluded that he was indeed a very well-behaved boy. "I still remember, she gave me a kiss on my cheek and the minister of communications, Lal Bahadur Shastri, presented me the commemorative volume."
Having featured on the first Children's Day stamps, the Borkers were soon deluged by people seeking the young boy's autograph. The young boy would happily spend hours obliging his admirers until his mother one day put her foot down.
"While signing, I used to write my name in full, a practice that I continue even today," he says.
Every year, the postal department releases new stamps on November 14. Incidentally, fifty years later, in 2007, an official from the postal department located him at a get-together and the department got into action. As part of its Children's Day commemoration, the department released two new stamps which were presented to Shekhar by the Minister of State for Communications, Shakeel Ahmad.
"It was a very poignant moment for me. I used to be known as the 'stamp boy' then and, being referred to by the same name brought back umpteen childhood memories."
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