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.
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.
The nilavilakku, as it is commonly called in Kerala, or the vazhaipoo vilakku as it is known in Tamil, is common to both states. Nilam, meaning floor, is in reference to the floor-standing lamp while vazhaipoo likens the top of the lamp to the banana flower. The exact date and origin of Pradeep’s vilakku is unknown, but it can be traced back to beyond the 1930s in Madurai.
I was at my maternal home in Ajitgill village, Faridkot, looking through old things when I saw my nani’s sandook in the corner. It wasn’t locked so out of curiosity, I looked inside. It was like opening a pandora box. All of her things were still in there. Her clothes – she would wear men style kurtas with a collar and pockets on both sides, with a ghaghra – her trinkets, handwritten notes, and photographs. It was then that I felt closer to her than ever before.
In those days, included in every dowry was a sewing machine, and this belonged to my great-grandmother. The sewing machine is a Singer, with gold embossed work and dates back to the early 1940s. Portable in nature, a standard 14 inches in size, it has a wooden cover with my great-grandfather’s initials P.S Hora (Prem Singh Hora) painted on it.
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