The story of this ‘vari da baagh’ begins with bebeji. It was hand-embroidered in around 1965 and given to my dadi as part of her wedding trousseau. The baagh is made of red “khaddar” hand-dyed and hand-woven cloth.
The story of this ‘vari da baagh’ begins with bebeji. It was hand-embroidered in around 1965 and given to my dadi as part of her wedding trousseau. The baagh is made of red “khaddar” hand-dyed and hand-woven cloth.
These beaded dogs were made in my grandmother’s natal home in Chabua, a small town in upper Assam, sometime in the late 1960s, most certainly before 1968, the year my grandmother, Shushila Devi Lohia, got married.
The cupboard is a tall and narrow one, measuring 6 feet in height. It has four shelves inside, and a pull-out drawer symmetrically placed in the middle. The piece was in display in a furniture shop, and the shop keeper enticed him to pick it up. At Rs 200, it seemed a great bargain for a wooden unit claimed to be made of teak.
As a part of her trousseau, on her wedding – which incidentally took place during the India Pakistan war of 1971 – my maternal grandmother, Shashi Bhalla (neé Sood) carried a few objects from her mother’s trousseau from Bombay to Delhi. Two of these were later passed on to her daughter, my mother, Sapna Puri, and have now found their way to me. A surmedaani, and an ivory stick used to apply bindi.
This Majnu Khes, was brought over to East Punjab by my grandfather, Devinder Singh and his family, while they migrated from West Punjab, during Partition.