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.
Baba’s books represent an amalgamation of varied interests. From key writings of Tolstoy, Gorky, modern Russian literature and politics to British literature on farming and horticulture; from the works of Dinkar, Benipuri and Renu to books of portraits; as a child, I was never able to see his literary interests in one light or shall I say to put him in a box.
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.
I’d often hear about my grandfather, the late Atulya Kumar Banerjee’s travels’, particularly about an epic bicycle journey that he undertook in his 20’s from Calcutta to Kashmir in 1933.
Recently, I had a chance encounter with my grandfather’s box of documents and family history. I am twenty-two years old with a bare minimum knowledge of the history of the British Raj, and yet I am still able to comprehend the gravity of these heirlooms. A memoir preserved through decades by several generations.
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