An old photograph you like

There's a black-and-white photograph in my parents' bedroom that I've loved since I was a child. It shows my grandmother as a young woman, standing in front of a river ghat with three of her younger brothers.

I think it was taken around 1972, so just after independence, in my grandmother's home village near Barishal. It was taken by a travelling photographer, which was quite common in those days; he came to villages with a big camera on a tripod and people paid him to take family portraits. My grandmother told me it was the first time any of them had been photographed.

What I love about it is the expressions. My grandmother looks very serious, almost stern, because she was told not to move, but her youngest brother clearly couldn't keep still, so his face is slightly blurred, and he's obviously laughing. The background shows wooden boats and a huge banyan tree that, sadly, doesn't exist any more.

I like it because it's a window into a world I'll never experience. When I look at it, I think about how much has changed in just two generations, from a village with no electricity to me studying on a laptop in Dhaka. It also reminds me that my grandmother was once young, with her own plans and worries, not just the gentle old lady I knew. These days we take hundreds of photos a week, but this single picture means more to our family than all of them.