A white marble bust, 38 by 37 centimetres, with wavy hair arranged carefully around her face and a draped cloth across her chest. At her base, carved into the stone in plain English letters: MIGNON. She has lived at the entrance of our home in Agra for as long as anyone can remember.
Over years of use, the brushes have transformed alongside his practice: their bristles hardened by pigment, their handles stained by water and colour, carrying within them the memory of countless gestures. They are not merely tools of creation, but witnesses to the evolution of his journey.
This stone-carved vase was purchased by my maternal grandmother’s paternal grandparents in the 1920s from Benaras. It has been in my family for around five generations, travelled across countries, multiple cities and wars.
What I really enjoy about both the carpets is that they are clearly handmade. There are mistakes. They’re not symmetrical, the spacing isn’t perfect, she kind of runs out of space at one point and then squeezes everything together, which all of us, when we’ve written in notebooks, have done when you run out of space on one line.
I have seen the wooden crocodile crouched under my mother’s cousin’s shelf for several years now. This Burmese crocodile can be traced back to Sarat Chandra Chatterjee – the renowned literary figure whose contributions to Bengali literature have been immense, most notably Devdas – who spent years living in Burma, working as a clerk.
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