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A whiff of ittar
December 28, 2018December 28, 2018

A whiff of ittar

In praise of the handmade
May 20, 2020May 25, 2020

In praise of the handmade

My Nani’s Paijeb
June 15, 2020June 15, 2020

My Nani’s Paijeb

December 20, 2021December 21, 2021

Sangeet Benode, 1913

In my possession is a manuscript that is now more than a century old, comprising of 300-350 handwritten pages. The name of the book is Sangeet Benode and can best be described as a treatise on Indian Classical Music. Written in Brajbhasha, khari-boli, and Sanskrit, it is a collection of over one hundred original bandishes or compositions in different ragas.

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The ivory surmedaani and bindi stick

As a part of her trousseau, on her wedding – which incidentally took place during the India Pakistan war of 1971 – my maternal grandmother, Shashi Bhalla (neé Sood) carried a few objects from her mother’s trousseau from Bombay to Delhi. Two of these were later passed on to her daughter, my mother, Sapna Puri, and have now found their way to me. A surmedaani, and an ivory stick used to apply bindi.

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Sentiments, sofa sets and songs

This three-piece sofa set was bought by my great-grandfather, Dr. R. Krishnaswami in the late 1940s. My grandmother, seven or eight years old at the time, remembers accompanying her father on a walk to Mount Road, then home to various furniture stores. It was purchased for 175 rupees, a price considered extremely high for that time period, given the socio-economic conditions of the country post-Partition.

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A dining table for the generations

There was literally nothing that Kiran Chandra Roy could do when the tenant fled from Itarsi in Madhya Pradesh, rather than pay months of outstanding rent. The silver lining was that he was a skilled carpenter and in his hurry to flee, had left quite a few pieces of furniture behind, which Capt. KC Roy, my dadu promptly confiscated and carted home. That is how this teakwood table came to our family in the late 50’s.

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Heirlooms from the Modern Gentleman

The two boxes – one engraved with flowers and leaves, and the other, a cigarette holder – that my mother had bequeathed to me not only belonged to my maternal grandfather, but they were also crafted by him. My nana, Naresh Chandra Sharma used to work at a wood factory in his hometown of Sitapur, in Uttar Pradesh.

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About

The Museum of Material Memory is a digital repository of material culture of the Indian subcontinent, tracing family history and social ethnography through heirlooms, collectibles and objects of antiquity.

Through storytelling, each post on the Archive reveals not just a history of objects and the people they belong to, but also unfolds generational narratives about the tradition, culture, customs, conventions, habits, language, society, geography and history of the vast and diverse subcontinent.


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