{"id":1703,"date":"2018-08-27T20:35:46","date_gmt":"2018-08-27T15:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/museumofmaterialmemory.com\/?p=1703"},"modified":"2018-08-27T20:39:21","modified_gmt":"2018-08-27T15:09:21","slug":"the-letters-from-my-grandfathers-youth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/museumofmaterialmemory.com\/the-letters-from-my-grandfathers-youth\/","title":{"rendered":"The Letters from my Grandfather\u2019s Youth"},"content":{"rendered":"
TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY SAMIYA CHOPRA<\/strong>
\nLETTERS TRANSLATED (FROM URDU) BY RAM NATH CHOPRA<\/strong>
\nDelhi, India\u00a0<\/em><\/div>\n
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For Dharam Vir Seth, my maternal grandfather, things were always about the past. Each conversation would take us across the border to the city of his birth \u2013 Lyallpur, which is now in Pakistan and has been renamed Faisalabad. I don\u2019t know how I didn\u2019t find it odd that he somehow managed to connect every story to Lyallpur in even a minor, tangential way. That a place one had left nearly seven decades ago could so strongly still linger in their memory, became quite clear with him. He would tell me about the Partition and how it forced them to flee to Amritsar and finally settle in Ludhiana. But most of all, he would speak about the habits and traditions of a time and society that no longer existed \u2013 the values that people had when he was young, how no matter how hard life became, the family support remained invaluable, and how perhaps we were not rooted to our lands any longer.<\/span><\/div>\n

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I\u2019d always listen to these stories, but perhaps not closely enough, for after his death in 2016, I chanced upon a pile of old letters \u2013 some he had written and some had been written to him \u2013 that left me with more questions than answers. There are many ways to be introduced to a person, and in the case of my grandfather, perhaps it was through these that I truly met him. We brought the pile to Delhi with us, and with each letter I read, Dharam Vir Seth and I became better acquainted. I supposed it\u2019s natural that we form associations with objects of those who have left us; an invisible inanimate bond appears, and so these simple, yellowing rectangular pieces of paper very quickly became a way of keeping my grandfather alive.<\/p>\n