One of the few remnants of my family’s connection with erstwhile Burma (now Myanmar), is a lacquerware box, an inheritance from my maternal grandmother. When my mother, Manimegalai, got married, the box was a part of her dowry and is well over 80 years old.
Apart from several novelties received from family at their wedding, a widowed aunt gifted a vermilion case or shidoor kouto to Thamma. Its uniqueness characterised by the engraving in Bengali letters — ‘chiroshukhi’ or forever happy. The kouto would be more than 72 years old now, having been passed on from Thamma to my mother and then to me.
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.
Receive a new story from somewhere in the Indian subcontinent in your inbox every week!