Blind Boys » Archive » Charli Bikaner-Crime Doesn’t Pay-Anonymous

« Previous Next »

“Charli Bikaner mysteriously disappeared 48 years ago”, says his nephew Sunil Dhawan rolling eyes as if he wasn’t sure.
Praveen Dhawan the elder of the two nephews says Charli was a private detective originally coming from Ferozepur, Punjab.He ran a lodge as a cover for his detective agency. A friend of the police and the CID. “As a detective these pictures were a way for him to tell people that crime doesn’t pay.” adds Praveen.

Sunil says that he was just a regular lodge owner and took these pictures just for ’shoque’ as a hobby, to impress his police friends.
more than that they won’t say much about Charli.
Why was he called Charli Bikaner ? – “i don’t know, must be a popular man.”

Dozens of framed pictures of Charli’s opus were mercilessly nailed to the wall. Stained all over, with different streaks of colour on the frames, the walls around it must have changed its colours many times.Some had tape to hold together the cracks on the glass.
It was fantastic!
exciting!
i asked them about the negatives-” i don’t know”
can i take them out of the frames and scan them then?- no!
can i take pictures?- yes.
so here we are
so many images were lost that the few dozen or so that remain seem like a jigsaw puzzle to decipher.

What a day, stumbling upon Charli Bikaner!
as i sat in the evening with the pictures, i couldn’t stop smiling.
i’d like to believe that i share the same simple pleasure of pictures just as Charli Bikaner did half a century ago.
His lightheartedness put a spring back in my step.

-Kapil Das

And let’s not forget the photographer who actually took these photographs.
Charli’s accomplice.
Three salutes to him.