I know my grandfather, Mahboob, only through remnants, but perhaps remnants are not small things. A ring, a letter, a postcard, a photograph: each carries a version of him, and each is made more alive by the stories my grandmother, his Dilruba has attached to it.
One of the most integral parts of the wedding day is the card, and it became important and special at my parents’ wedding too. Both sides created their own wedding card. But what is fascinating is a short message, handwritten on the card in black ink by my mum, addressed to my father!
I told Daddyji that we found something that looked like a family tree. He unfolded it, leaned forward, adjusted his glasses, and read aloud in his soft Punjabi-inflected voice: “Shajara-e-Nasab, Bahl Baradari, Qasba Urmar, Zilla Hoshiarpur.” The words came easily to him, as though they lived somewhere familiar in his mouth.
In 2022, we chanced upon a yellowing leaf of paper from the past, buried deep in a drawer among other documents. This was my great-grandfather, Bidhu Bhushan Sarkar’s election pamphlet from the first State Legislative Assembly Elections held in 1952 in West Bengal, independent India.
I found this letter written by my grandather to my grandmother on the eve of India’s Independence in 1947. It was posted from Muzaffarnagar to Deoband.
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