In 1894, my great-grandfather married my great-grandmother, Radhika Sinha, originally from Lahore, and in the early 1900s, they went on a trip to Kashmir. It was here that they bought several ornate items that have built this coveted heirloom collection, including the silver Kangri engraved with the Kashmiri chinar.
The silver mukut, like most of the accessories for my grandparents’ wedding in 1937, was crafted in Lahore. It consists of five panels bearing the images of the Hindu deities Brahma, Durga, Ganesh, Vishnu and Shiva respectively.
As the first few months of WW1 drew to a close, the British King George V’s 17-year old daughter, Princess Mary expressed a wish that ‘every sailor afloat and every soldier at the front’ should receive a Christmas present, including the Indian troops. The demand for these five-inch brass Christmas boxes was so high that many were kept by the soldiers as souvenirs after.
It is often the quietest, most commonplace objects that bear the loudest testimonies of their owners. And so it is with my grandfather. I have three of his wristwatches in my bedside drawer, the oldest one being a Titan Quartz with a gold dial with roman numerals and a small space at the bottom to indicate the date.
My mother, Kamla, got married in 1974, when she was sixteen years old, and at the time of parting, her mother, Rajkali Devi gave her daughter four things, one of which was this ornate silver sindoor dani in the shape of a kamla flower, the lotus.
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