In 1960, Shashi Kapur, a young woman in her early 20s placed an order with a leather worker in Mandalay for a handcrafted leather purse, along with a request to have her name engraved on the inner flap, complete with the title yet to be earned: Dr. Shashi Kapur.
Rajkumari Devi had embroidered this map for a school competition in the year 1948 when she was only 8 years old. Her school in Amhara, Bihar was visited by some British officials, who awarded her 10 annas for the extraordinary embroidery she had done, despite her young age.
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.
One of her aides in acclimatizing to her new environment, was the family cook, Misser ji. Custodian of lost and aged recipes, raconteur par excellence and caretaker of all the silverware used for cooking and serving – the young girl that my grandmum was, latched on to him to not just pick up the unfamiliar language and its nuances, but also conquer palates with dishes such as ‘kulfe ki kadhi’ and santre ka raita, beaten yogurt with oranges.
The coin from 1906 was no mere coin, but rather a piece of my great-grandmother’s jewellery. It was a part of her tagdi, the silver belt she wore around her waist on top of her sari, which was eventually bequeathed to my grandmother. The story goes that so beautiful was her mother that when her future father-in-law came to see the young girl, he immediately liked her for his son, and presented her with a silver coin. This silver coin, to be exact.
I have faint memories of summer afternoons when an ittarwalla, a man selling aromatic oils and perfumes – ittar – would arrive from Awadh with a black briefcase. My parents would buy small amounts of a certain ittar from him and fill it in glass jars, which were then placed inside a wooden ittardan, a small rectangular box made to store perfume.
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