There is an object in my kitchen that does not belong only to me. It belongs to Nanna to her hands, her afternoons, her particular way of making everyone around her feel held. It is a Sarota: a betel-nut cutter, small and bladed, made of steel, worn smooth in the places where her fingers rested.
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.
It was a polaroid-shaped, black-and-white photo that I was holding in my hand, and the beautiful, long-haired woman in it was my grandmother.
The 70 year old ashtray is made of brass, with a head resembling Mahakala, a deity revered in Buddhism and associated with wisdom, protection and the removal of obstacles, and limbs shaped around the belly, which doubles as the deposit area. Though not of great antiquity, it has been an important part of three generations.
I discovered this postcard quite unexpectedly in our family home in Digboi, Assam. More than just a piece of paper, it felt like a doorway into a moment from sixty years ago. Finding it made me curious about a chapter of my grandparent’s lives that I had never witnessed — a time when they lived apart, Babaji in London and Biji in Phagwara. I found myself wondering what he had written to her, how long she had waited for news from him, and what she must have felt when this postcard finally arrived.
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