This is an excerpt from a journal entry written by my paternal grandfather, Tilak Raj Malhotra. The entries span from December 1949 to December 1982. Reading these feels like an intrusion to me, given their deeply personal nature and my lack of explicit permission. Yet, years ago, I resolved to document them on this Archive
My grandmother’s Singer is the model 15K, and searching its serial number EE415743 located on the front side of the machine bed, tells me that it was manufactured on December 24, 1947 – making it nearly as old as independent India herself!
The moulds were given to my grandmother by my great grandmother. No one knows when they were made exactly but it was before 1905. They are made of neem wood and burnt soil and differ in size as per the makeup of the sweets made using them.,
But the past came most alive whenever these coins were taken out. They were charged with stories that may not have emerged otherwise – each coin held a different tale, a different style of narration, the varied emotions giving those aged metal pieces a meaning.
Dr. Ramesh Chandra De, my maternal great-grandfather, was an army doctor in the First World War. What I gather from family members is that he was first posted in the Khirgi-Waziristan division for traineeship, and then sent to France for the rest of the War in the capacity of a surgeon. Sudhir Chandra De, my maternal grandfather, chose to follow in his father footsteps and at the age of 21 in the year 1940, found himself appointed as the official physician at the notorious Andaman Cellular Jail.
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