My grandfather, Divan Mohideen, bought a red and yellow tin coin bank in 1968, when he was 22 years old. It came from the Madras Central Co-operative Bank Ltd., one of the oldest banks in the city, its roots reaching back to the 1930s. The British had a curious habit – banks in London often gave small metal coin boxes to families, especially children, to teach them thrift and discipline.
My grandmother’s wedding card, the tea set she brought from a refugee home in Bikaner, and her mid-century Bengal Potteries plates together map her movement from Kulachi to Rajasthan.
My paternal was about thirteen (we can only estimate) when her sister and she got married to two brothers and moved away from Sukkar for the very first time. This brass dabbi was one of the many objects she and her sister brought along to their marital house in Larkana.
A few years ago, my aunt had given me a set of photos in a ziplock bag – small, black-and-white prints, some gently curling at the corners, the ink on their backs now faint with time. At first, I enjoyed them as a playful gaze into my grandfather’s life across the world, but I’ve since begun to consider them as a testimony about time, reading them as I would a biography. Then, in 2023, after my grandfather’s death, I came to inherit two of the many cameras through which he once saw the world.
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