My grandmother’s Singer is the model 15K, and searching its serial number EE415743 located on the front side of the machine bed, tells me that it was manufactured on December 24, 1947 – making it nearly as old as independent India herself!
But the past came most alive whenever these coins were taken out. They were charged with stories that may not have emerged otherwise – each coin held a different tale, a different style of narration, the varied emotions giving those aged metal pieces a meaning.
Dr. Ramesh Chandra De, my maternal great-grandfather, was an army doctor in the First World War. What I gather from family members is that he was first posted in the Khirgi-Waziristan division for traineeship, and then sent to France for the rest of the War in the capacity of a surgeon. Sudhir Chandra De, my maternal grandfather, chose to follow in his father footsteps and at the age of 21 in the year 1940, found himself appointed as the official physician at the notorious Andaman Cellular Jail.
This pot or Sipri, as it is known in Sindhi, belonged to my great-great-grandmother, Chaturbai. She was married somewhere in the 1890s and the metal pot was given to her on the occasion of her wedding.
Born in Saharanpur in 1901, amma was named Alice David at birth. It is difficult to say if she was an Anglo-Indian, but her mother, Angelica, had travelled from Germany to work for the East India Company.
Last year, my mother gave me a carnelian-coloured brooch from Avon, circa 1970, that belonged to her mother. I’d always known that my grandmother used to be an Avon Lady
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