A farshi is a long voluminous garment that generously falls to the ground, and when standing or walking has a long train. The word farshi comes from ‘farsh’ or the ground/floor, which the garment trails on. This particular garment was carried from Panipat to Lahore and eventually to Sahiwal a few months after Partition.
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.
Kailash Marwah Nayyar would have been a new bride in 1947, only two years having passed to her marriage, when the family had to flee to India. Over the next few months, she sold her luxurious wedding trousseau piece by piece to help the family survive. This necklace is the only item that remains from it.
It was Nanaji’s rite of passage to Haj, which every pious Muslim craves to achieve in their lifetime. The annual pilgrimage takes place in the last month of the Islamic calendar, at the ‘House of Allah’, the ‘Kaaba’ in Mecca.
The katha stitch is a type of embroidery style which developed predominantly in eastern regions of Undivided Bengal. The word kantha means quilt and nakshi means embroidery or design. So nakshi kantha was essentially a simple and thin quilt, made by stacking layers of old sarees and/ or dhotis together.
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