TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY AANCHAL MALHOTRA
New Delhi, India
It was never unusual to be greeted into my paternal grandmother’s home by the gentle humming sound of a sewing machine. Portable but not quite compact, one could often find her seated infront of it, head lowered in concentration, spectacles on, as she aligned, folded and readied a piece of cloth. Every now and then, she’d turn the machine’s hand wheel and the room would be filled with rhythmic clicking as it laid down stitch after stitch. For as long as I can remember, this Singer Sewing Machine was a fixture in my grandmother’s home, a regular companion to be taken out every few days or weeks. And each time it was brought out, we would hear the story of how it was used to make entire outfits for my father and his sisters throughout their childhood. But it was only in my twenties that I learnt how it came to be in my grandmother’s possession in the first place
Saubhagya Guliani, only ever known as Bhag, was born in 1932 in Muryali, Dera Ismail Khan, North West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, present-day Pakistan). She was the fourth of six siblings, raised by a single mother, Lajvanti. In May 1947, against the backdrop of communal violence and demand for Independence, 15-year old Bhag completed her Matriculation. At Partition, the Gulianis migrated across the new border to a refugee camp set up in Meerut for displaced families from the Frontier region. On account of being educated, Bhag’s elder sister, Shakuntala was offered a job there, which provided some income to the family. They stayed in Meerut for seven months, until Lajvanti got a job as a teacher in a government school in Delhi.
In the capital, the family registered themselves at Kingsway Camp, where Bhag lived until she was married in 1955, and Lajavnti for even longer. Kingsway, estimated to have accommodated over 30,000 refugees, was the biggest camp in the city. Spread around the old British barracks of North Delhi, it was divided into four lines for incoming refugees – Hudson, Reeds, Outram and Edward – where housing was provided on the basis of need. Because Shakuntala had managed the camp in Meerut, she was appointed as one of the Commandants at Kingsway as well, and given barrack #16 on Hudson Line. Incidentally, my paternal grandfather’s family lived on Reeds Line.
With two elder daughters already married and the youngest two still in school, Lajvanti would come to rely on both Shakuntala and Bhag to help with the finances. She wanted Bhag to learn a practical skill that could translate into employment. To that end, a Government of India, Ministry of Labour certificate shows that Bhag [the name mistakenly written as Bhagwati] was a trainee of the Displaced Girls and Women’s Vocational Training Centre from March 28, 1948 to March 8, 1949 where she learned tailoring. The teacher was an Englishwoman, and during the course, Bhag lived at the Hostel for Displaced Women on Curzon Road with the other trainees.
In the weeks after my grandmother’s death in 2023, I found this certificate in an old file and was struck by its serendipitous survival. She’d often told me that no documents remained from their time in the camp, and yet, here it was. It is the only record I have ever seen where my grandmother’s address listed as Kingsway Camp – physical, tangible, transcribed in official ink for posterity. Bhag graduated top in her class, and to celebrate, Lajvanti bought her a Singer sewing machine, which cost about Rs.800 at the time, nearly five and a half months of her teachers’ salary. It is this very sewing machine that I grew up in the company of.
Across the world and nearly a century prior, in 1850s America, the New York Herald reported that there was “no class of workwomen. . .more poorly paid for their work or who suffer more privation and hardship” than a seamstress. All female members of society were expected to know how to sew, and to make a single shirt took nearly 14 hours. In Boston, Isaac Merritt Singer, failed-actor-turned-inventor, was considering a prototype for a new sewing machine. Rather than creating stitches that required the machine shuttle to go round in circle, he envisioned the straight line of a needle moving up and down. His version allowed one to make a shirt in just an hour. He patented it in the year 1851 [leading to the war on sewing machines and several lawsuits with existing patents and designs] and began marketing his machines internationally in 1855.
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! The Singer 15 model was born in 1895, with several alterations and improvements as time passed. Perhaps the most striking feature of the machine is the logo decal on its bed.
The Indian Star was used on several machines exported for sale to India, and each of the 8 points bears the word SINGER in a different local language – Urdu, Telegu, Oriya, Malayalam, Singhalese, Kannada, Hindi and Gujarati – with English in the centre. While the machine does show evidences of wear in some places, this star remains vividly painted in gold and red, with only a few scratches. A floral border runs across the bed plate, and the arm of the machine reads SINGER in gold and black, with an incredible illustration of a Sphinx on the very right edge. The top of the arm reads ‘The Singer Manufacturing Co’, with indications for oil.
On the right side of the bed plate is a small compartment that holds spools of thread and other sewing apparatus. I clearly remember my grandmother opening the underbed of the machine, but since her passing, I haven’t been able to figure out how. One of my great misfortunes is that I did not inherit the skill to sew and so I am often afraid to disturb the machine, keeping it just as she had. A pale yellow thread sits idly in the spool pin, unravelling itself underneath with no cloth to hold onto, as I turn the wheel gently. Momentarily, I am reminded of a cotton suit she had in the same colour as the thread, and I find myself wondering whether that was the last thing she had repaired before her passing.
The machine has an underbed mechanism and works with a hand crank wheel, which my grandmother often lovingly oiled and cleaned for smooth functioning. Both use and age have settled into the machine in a way that tracing the discolouration, I can actually trace my grandmother’s movements. Sometimes, if I touch the wheel in the same way that she did, I can pretend that she’d been using it just moments ago. But this is the great paradox of inherited objects, how they simultaneously conjure the presence and absence of the person who once owned it, drawing a porous border between solace and grief.
The sewing course on Curzon Road was just one of the professional certifications that my grandmother undertook, for she also completed courses in administering ‘First Aid to the Injured’ and ‘Home Nursing’ at The St. John Ambulance Association, passing the examination on November 28, 1949. After returning to Kingsway Camp, Bhag began volunteering at the Social Service department, where she taught adult education – everything from sewing to manners, etiquette, and basic English. Impressed, the camp-in-charge transferred her to work at the newly set-up Faridabad refugee camp, and by 1951 my grandmother had a stable job at the Ministry of Rehabilitation, while all her sisters and mother worked as well.
In the tumultuous months from leaving Dera Ismail Khan to settling in Delhi, everything they once had – wealth, status, safety – was lost. But as the women of the Guliani family rebuilt their lives, they became resilient in ways they hadn’t needed to before. Safe in its rounded wooden cover, my grandmother’s beloved Singer Sewing Machine holds within its body, these decades of her history, of independent India and the personal struggle to survive and succeed.