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.
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.
The main driver behind the purchase of this weapon was prevention of danger. My grandfather would tell my father that after all he’d seen during the partition, very few things remained that scared him, death being the least of them all. During the violence of 1947, his family had eaten food while sitting next to dozens of dead bodies and pools of blood, and had witnessed unthinkable difficulty in trying to survive.
This beautiful thing – I was told by aaji – was a crochet needle almost 90 years old! I could never have guessed it was a needle merely from the shape. I asked her where the hook was and she smiled and slid the oval silver mechanism to the top, pulling with it a hidden hook, extending its size to 12cm.
The envelope clutch purse measures 6 inches in width and 4 inches in height. It is covered in very fine crewel embroidery – a type of surface embroidery using wool and a wide variety of different embroidery stitches. The purse was handmade in Srinagar, Kashmir and gifted to my grandmother roughly ninety years ago.
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