In our house, no one really would value the old, nor find it charming, but I immediately fell in love with this [tea set and watch]. My father still laughs at my obsession with these old things, but for me, it’s a little bit of preserving the lost past of Punjab and my family.
Set in black jade, the pendant has the initials of my grandparents inscribed on it in gold, intervowen within one another. S for Suraksha and P for Prem. My grandfather got this handcrafted at Kanjimal Jewllers in Chandni Chowk sometime in the mid-1950s and gifted this to my grandmother on one of their early wedding anniversaries.
The “one thing” amamma is referring to is a dressing table. In its heyday, the majestic rosewood-made dressing table must have grabbed the attention of all in the room with everyone wanting to develop a tress or a mane just to look majestic in the pristine mirror that shone large in the middle of the table.
Nearly 86 years old now, she fondly recalls how Surmewalas would sit in a line outside the Gurudwara Sis Ganj Sahib in Chandni Chowk, in those early years of Independent India. This brass surmedani was one of the first purchases my grandmother made there.
The Children’s Dictionary was published in the year 1910 by the Standard Literature Co. Ltd with publishing offices in India, Burma and Ceylon. The volumes date back to the colonial period in India and were purchased by my father whilst he was a student at St. Xavier’s College, Bombay.
A literal translation of ‘Maasina Battalu Petti’ would be ‘Laundry case or box’. This particular teakwood laundry case was something my grandparents bought as a newly married couple from a local exhibition held by artisans and Andhra tradesmen.
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