{"id":549,"date":"2017-11-23T10:41:05","date_gmt":"2017-11-23T05:11:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/museumofmaterialmemory.com\/?p=549"},"modified":"2017-11-23T22:43:04","modified_gmt":"2017-11-23T17:13:04","slug":"travels-across-countless-jojans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/museumofmaterialmemory.com\/travels-across-countless-jojans\/","title":{"rendered":"Astral travels across countless Jojans"},"content":{"rendered":"

TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY YUVRAJ KHANNA<\/strong>
\nNew Delhi, India<\/em><\/p>\n

The terrain of our childhood is made up of stories. But I truly believe that it is those same stories that mould us into the people we eventually become. One such story that I remember is of a book, a book running through the six previous generations of my family. It is the Janamsakhi based on travels of Guru Nanak. This Janamsakhi, older than the independent India we live in, was passed down to my maternal grandmother, my nani<\/em>, by her elders in circa 1945.<\/p>\n

Clad in an ornamental Urdu script on its pages, it\u2019s not a book any one of us in the family can just pick up for a leisurely read. This privilege rests only with my grandmother. The rest of us only have the pleasure of hearing it read aloud in a her distinguished voice, reciting soulfully the old <\/u>words and accents, both of which have been largely forgotten now.<\/p>\n

My grandmother, a gifted artist is also an unparalleled storyteller and I, unfailingly, till date, continue to play the part of a curious grandchild wanting to listen to her stories of old. Tales from her childhood in Bannu, the sweet shops in Lahore, stories of my Brigadier grandfather. But no such story-filled day was ever complete without a story of one of the Gurus of Sikhism. Even as recently as last winter, when she sat wearing a Kashmiri firen<\/em> embroidered with delicate florals, her head covered with a dupatta<\/em> and the Janamsakhi open on her lap, I thought of something I had pondered on repeatedly in the past. That this was not how I opened books, and therein lay the beautiful peculiarity of the Urdu script. This Janamsakhi, like all Urdu literature, was written from right to left, unlike any book in English or Hindi. And for that very reason, her hands too traversed from right to left as she read each line and turned each page. The pages of the hardbound codex were dull beige in colour, still in pristine condition despite the book\u2019s years. The text was printed in simple black, some images printed in more colourful reds and blues with ornate borders around the page.<\/p>\n

\"Gian<\/p>\n