In the year of Madhubala’s Tarana, my great-grandfather bought an ornate wooden item for my great-grandmother from Madhubani. It was a Thekua mould made out of mango wood in the colour tan, lightweight and palm-size, the first gift purchased after their marriage.

One of the few remnants of my family’s connection with erstwhile Burma (now Myanmar), is a lacquerware box, an inheritance from my maternal grandmother. When my mother, Manimegalai, got married, the box was a part of her dowry and is well over 80 years old.

My grandmother recalled how my grandfather had actually bought these glasses in the mid 1970s from a shop in Pragati Maidan, Delhi. At the time, there were two sets of six glasses each – of one set, now four remain and of the second set, there is only one left. Classically meant for brandy, my grandfather and great-grandfather used to drink whisky in them.

This Chunni or nose ring found its way to Bombay on the nose of its fiery, feisty owner, Lakshmibai Chhabria. She continued to wear it even after she lost her husband, her eldest son and her land of birth, all with one single Partition line, lakeer, as they call it in our family.

The Pears Cyclopaedia was first published in 1897. Sold for a shilling, it was originally referred to as “A Mass of Curious and Useful Information about Things that everyone Ought to know in Commerce, History, Science, Religion, Literature and other Topics of Ordinary Conversation.”