For many, medals and other service memorabilia might just be pieces of metal and cloth till the time one realizes the history and the struggle that is undertaken to earn them. The courage and sacrifice of my ancestors is embedded within these medals; each disk, each ribbon is laced with their ambition and dedication.
Apart from his daily exercise of reading the news, my grandfather would read his prayers from an Urdu Gurbani Gutka. A Gutka is a small sized book containing chosen hymns or shabads (sacred verses) from Sri Guru Granth Sahib and other Sikh scriptures. When the sun would set, he would wash his hands and feet and bring out the Urdu Gutka which was kept in a wooden cupboard in his room.
In 1978, two years after my great-grandfather’s demise, this Philips radio was bought at the price of 1000 rupees by my grandfather, Mukut Yadav. It replaced a black tape-recorder he had, until his friend; who also owned an electronics shop in Kishangarh, convinced him to buy a radio. My grandfather saved for months from his already meagre income, without my grandmother’s knowledge and bought the radio to her surprise.
In 2016, I chanced upon a pile of old letters that left me with more questions than answers. There are many ways to be introduced to a person, and in the case of my grandfather, perhaps it was through these that I truly met him.
This lehenga was given to my paternal grandmother as part of her wedding trousseau in 1930 and dates back to that time, most likely having been made in Varanasi. It accompanied her when she got married and moved to Ajmer, Rajasthan from her natal home in Indore. Many decades later, she presented this lehenga to my mother, who then brought it to her home city, Jodhpur.
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