Before partition, my naani, Shanti Devi belonged to Lahore, now in Pakistan. She married my grandfather, Gyan Chand on 16th March 1950 in one of Karnal’s districts which is now Panipat. This is when she was given this keyring or ‘challa’ – as we call it in Punjabi – as a part of her wedding trousseau by her mother.
My aunt, Neelam, tells me that this silk banarasi saree had been a gift to my grandmother, Chandrika Devi, from my grandfather’s side and she wore it at her bidai, when she left her father’s home for her husband’s. It is a Gulabi pink colour and has been woven in the finest banarasi weaving technique – Kadhua or Kadwa, which means kadha hua or embroidered
In January 2019, while rummaging through my mother’s collection, I found an old looking book belonging to Daddy. With “Hem C Mahindra. Oxford. 1928” handwritten in ink on the partly stained page inside.
My great grandmother was born in a small village called Boala (now in Bangladesh). She possessed many aged utensils and other heirlooms, which were distributed among her four daughters as a part of their trousseaus during their weddings and some after her death.
Dating back to 1939, this coin box was a part of my grandmother’s wedding trousseau and of the two or three boxes she was given, this one survived the stretch of time and the tides of displacement. In case of a fall or dent, my grandmother would lose no time in taking it to the neighbourhood metalsmith for a quick fix. Sometimes she would ask me to accompany her, an excursion that I would enjoy every morsel of.
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