The journey of this box begins in Danoli, a small village in Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district, where my great-grandmother, Akkatai Gumanna, spent her childhood. In the early 1920s. As part of her bridal trousseau or rukhwat, her father Advyappa Gumanna, commissioned a local carpenter, Ganpa Sutar, to make her an Indian Rosewood vanity box—a phaner peti, as it is called in Marathi.
My chinchpeti was made in Gwalior by a local jeweller around 1968, the year I was born, and commissioned by my maternal Aaji. It is simpler than the bright, dangling chinchpetis one sees today and the word opens a jewellery box of Marathi for me.
The earliest memory I have of my grandmother’s face is her nose pin. In 1939, the year she got married, it travelled as a part of her wedding trousseau from Benaras, where she was born and raised, to the town of Bareilly. I like to imagine my great-grandmother stepping into one of the old jewellery shops frequented by the family, tucked in the narrow lanes of Man Mandir, to choose a diamond nose pin for her daughter.
The first time I encountered the locket was as a small child. My grandmother has preserved numerous photographs of her parents from their time in British Malaya and India, but one of the most prized possessions is this jade set in a gold locket that had been purchased from Malaya or Singapore by my great-grandfather.
My mother is the last remaining female descendant of my maternal family, but knows little about the pazaib. I often wonder, did Baebaejaan come to Karachi with the pair of these pazaib? Did she perhaps give one to another daughter? Or sell it to start a new life?
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