The mortar and pestle now belong to me. Before me, they belonged to my mother. Before her, to her father. And before him, to his own father, a chemist in British-ruled India, born sometime in the late 1800s or early 1900s, paid little, remembered less, and gone in his sixties without leaving behind a single photograph.
Over years of use, the brushes have transformed alongside his practice: their bristles hardened by pigment, their handles stained by water and colour, carrying within them the memory of countless gestures. They are not merely tools of creation, but witnesses to the evolution of his journey.
My grandfather, Ramnik Lekhi’s Yashica 635 and Paillard-Bolex H16 cameras, which he bought during his time with CBS news, are now with me. It is with these cameras that he covered major events like the 1961 Liberation of Goa, the war with China in 1962, and Pakistan in 1965. He eventually lost his life in 1970 while covering the war in Cambodia at the young age of 40.
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.
Death transforms ordinary objects into carriers of memory. After the passing of my grandparents, their photographs, clothes, watches, suitcases, and handwritten notes became more than just belongings, they became emotional markers of time.
Receive a new story from somewhere in the Indian subcontinent in your inbox every week!