Threads of Punjab

Bakshi Rana

I met Lajwanti[i] Parvati Maasi[ii], Prito Aunty and Bakshi Rana in April 2013 at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts in New Delhi. They had travelled from Tripri[iii]  in Punjab, to demonstrate the art of Phulkari embroidery. But while sipping chai with them and chatting,  hearing their stories, I realised that they had travelled much farther than that.
 

They had all learned Phulkari out of choice, to fulfil an aspiration but, none of them did this work today, for the love of embroidery. They said it was ‘majboori’[iv] that they had to do it to earn, to keep a roof over their heads. Parvati Maasi, as everyone referred to her, was the oldest and also the most forthcoming of them all, that is, apart from Lajwanti whom they all work for and who was miffed with the change in policy at the Punjab Emporium in Delhi because this had taken away a large chunk of her business. Each of them had stories to tell about errant husbands and hardships borne. Bakshi Rana and Parvati Maasi had come to India from Pakistan at the time of Partition and they had some stories to tell about that too, even though they were very young at that time. But, it was their journey through Phulkari, as women who spent their days working with needle and thread, that interested me.
 

 Phulkari, which literally means ‘flower work/craft’, is the embroidery of rural Punjab. It was traditionally passed on from mothers to their daughter.  “Ih phulkari meri maan ne kadhi, iss noo ghut ghut jhaphiyan paawan” [“My dear mother has embroidered this Phulkari, I embrace it again and again with affection”] is a song that refers to the tradition where mothers [and grandmothers] embroidered shawls for the young bride-to-be of the family.  Prito Aunty aka Pritam Kaur recounted how she had made her own dowry, yet also spoke of the work she did today as majboori. When I asked what she would do if she had all the money she could ask for. Her reply was ironical. She said she would like to buy these fabrics like she had seen us urban women do. It was disconcerting to note that she had the wealth she sought in her own hands but did not see it as such.  When I said as much, she just kept quiet.

Prito had embroidered chaddars  and dupattas  as well as woven punja  dhurries to take with her to her new home. She was born in Kinnaur village, district Patiala, around 1963; her parents were poor and did ‘majdoori’[labour],  mostly making ‘manjees’[beds made from rope] . Her mother earned through doing some embroidery work too. Although traditionally this art was practiced mostly as a personal pursuit and not something for profit or sale, it was not uncommon for wealthy families to get others to do it for them, even though they themselves had learned Phulkari work.

 

In an article for ‘Threads and Voices[x]’ published by Marg, Jasleen Dhamija spoke of the crafting of these chaddars with such affection, sense of romance and nostalgia for a time past and personal reminisces of family life in Abottabad that, I began wondering if there was any history of this craft in my own family.  I almost wanted there to be something to link me with it.  After all, I am a Punjabi by birth even if I have never lived in Punjab and, I work with embroidery.  My mother hadn’t lived in Punjab either, but my father migrated with his family to Bombay, at the time of Partition, from Multan. Parvati Maasi and Bakshi Rana also came from the same region and had seen this work being done around them, so it was plausible.

My Naani  was from Kapurthala which is in the heart of Punjab but she was married at fourteen years of age and moved to Delhi, so this connection to the traditions of Punjab was clearly not a strong one.  My mother also said that, from the age of ten, Bibijee [xii] showed a deeply religious inclination and did not do any kind of embroidery or much else aside from taking care of her home and family, adding that her own grandmother, did not do any embroidery either but, she was a fabulous cook.   Well, that put paid to hopes of any thread of interest that I had in embroidery being drawn from family tradition, at least from my mother’s side of the family. Although we are Punjabi’s, Phulkari embroidery had not been passed down through generations in my family and when I think about it, I cannot remember  seeing anyone in my family wear these embroidered shawls either.

 Phulkari and Bagh are really colourful, embroidered shawls worn by the women of Punjab[xiii] and were enormously popular from 1850-1950 AD. Their origin is lost in time but it is thought that the tradition came into India with the migration of the Jat peoples from Central Asia[xiv]. There are apparently no references to Phulkari in classical Indian literature[xv], nor are there any surviving pieces from before the 1850’s.

 History tells us that the plains of Punjab were rich cotton growing areas and almost every village had a settlement of weavers who wove the hand spun yarn provided by their farming neighbours, in exchange for agricultural produce. Spinning was a household occupation. The untwisted skeins called ‘pat’ that were used as embroidery thread were imported from Afghanistan, Kashmir and Bengal. This silk was expensive and therefore not wasted on the reverse of the cloth. The stitches were made by counting the threads of the woven structure of the cloth – typically stitches are made at right angles so that the embroidered patterns reflect light, according to the direction of the stitches. The basic stitch is a darning stitch and, a Holbein stitch is used for the Phulkari called Chope[xvi] but, several other stitches are also employed, for outlining motifs and edging the piece.

Traditionally, Phulkari was done on thick, almost coarse, cotton fabric known as khaddar[xvii] where each colour had its own significance[xviii]. This khaddar fabric embroidered with striking floral patterns is the basic Phulkari. The embroidered shawls that are fully covered with embroidery, where you cannot see the fabric beneath are known as ‘Bagh’ or a garden. Three to four narrow loom cloths were joined to form the complete shawl, typically 4 x 8 feet in size. In some areas, particularly West Punjab the strips were first embroidered and then joined. In East Punjab, the panels were usually joined first and then embroidered across the whole cloth, including the seams, for a more coherent design. The predominant colours of silk used were gold and ivory – referred to as marigold and jasmine, or wheat and barley – reflecting the agricultural tradition of the region.

In north Punjab, another tradition developed known as Thirma which was made exclusively by Hindus and Sikhs. Their colours range from rich raspberry red to pink. In some pieces, large-scale triangles interrupt the long border on opposing sides. Placing of these triangles is significant, for when worn by a bride, the triangle falls over her head, symbolizing the auspicious ‘tilak’ worn on the forehead.

Apart from regional differences there are also religious differences. The geometrical designs primarily associated with Muslim communities reflect the Islamic restraint on figurative work. Hindu and Sikh Phulkaris incorporate human figures animals, flowers  and birds, presenting a rich repertoire of designs including myths and legends but they can also be quite abstract such as patterns that recreate the ‘maze’. Another feature of Phulkari is the deliberate mistake:  because only God is perfect, so either black was added or a part of the design was left unembroidered. This was also done to avert the evil eye. After 1920, the tradition of Phulkari is said to have declined with the introduction of poorer qualities of material and fewer stitches employed. However, it is Partition that marks the greater decline of this tradition[xix].

Parvati came to India, from Pakistan, in 1948. She was six years old and does not remember much except that it was cold. A truck took all those leaving her village of Bhawalpur to Khanpur, from where they took a train to Abhor. Parvati and her family then came to Patiala and were given government quarters. Her mother worked in people’s homes, washing clothes and dishes, and Parvati would accompany her. In the evenings, they used to embroider things for themselves, one evening a Rajasthani baniya[xx] passed by their galli,[xxi] saw them working and asked them to make some pieces for him. He gave them  the ‘chaddar’, ‘golle’ and anchor-wale lacche[xxii] “Usse hum hoshiyar ho gaye, kaam karne lag gaye,” [we became wise to the profitability] and started working freelance, earning five to twenty-five paisa per motif, making one to two rupees a day. Lajwanti is a distant relative and when she started her business Parvati began working for her.

The Parvati that I met was obese; she was old with failing eyesight and diabetic but full of stories. She had retired from active work but came along with the others because they are family[xxiii]. All the four women were above fifty years and had long-standing relationships with Lajwanti. Most of Parvati’s family used to spin thread -“Gandhi wala charkha”[xxiv]– her mother, Naani and Parvati did spinning, more than embroidery even though they did embroidery for a living : “mn badde chakkar khaunda hai, Na khushi na dukhi – velli nahin baith sakdi hu, mn bahut khush haunda hai, kadhai karde karde” [the mind goes round and around. I feel neither happy nor sad. I just cannot sit idle, but when I am embroidering my mind is at peace.]

In the Marg article Jasleen wrote: “Ghoo ghuoo would go the lacquered charkha which my grandmother carried, much to my father’s irritation, all the way from Abbotabad when we moved to Delhi” adding that, the charkha was intertwined with memories of her childhood. It was her Dadi’s companion and she would spin everyday while reciting the Gurbani[xxv] or Pothwari[xxvi] songs from her childhood - “ghoo ghoo charkeya main kata ya na?”[shall I spin or not]. In Abbotabad, their ancestral home, the thread was then given to the Hindu weaver to weave and the Muslim dyer to dye a deep maroon or russet, her Dadi never dyed the fabric black or blue. Jasleen then recounts her Dadi sitting with Hazra Bibi, an expert embroiderer, who also looked after Jasleen, discussing what embroidery to do. Old, empty, English biscuit tins were filled with colourful silk threads bought from itinerant Aghani thread-sellers. Colours were selected and matched and the Phulkari work commenced by Hara Bibi, who apparently produced the finest work in that region. 

 

She also recalls karva chauth[xxvii] when her mother would dress up, wrapping herself in her wari-da-bagh[xxviii], which Jasleen’s fathers Dadi[xxix] had made for her.  Jasleen however, never learned the art as they had already left Abottabad when she would have been old enough to learn and her Dadiji never taught her. However, traditionally, she says, a girl learned to embroider from her paternal grandmother and mother, beginning with using cotton thread, graduating to embroidering her own dowry, when the older women in the family or around her, would smile and say that she was embroidering her own garden of happiness.  It was a common sight to see women sitting in an open court-yard embroidering and singing: “Bharam koiya shant, sehaj, swami, Pargas bhaiya kauul khilia” [when doubt in the mind is gone, there is peace and quietude my lord. Just as the sun rises and the lotus blooms.]

Ah! What nostalgia, but there was none of this in the stories
of the four women I met that day. They had only pain and hardship to recount. Bakshi Rana was born in Khanpur Pakistan and came to India in 1948 when she was around nine years old. She began doing Phulkari embroidery when she was about fifteen years of age. Watching others, “ik umang jaag uthi”, a desire came into being and she thought she would like to do it too. Around the same time, she was married to her dead sister’s husband, her brother-in-law, and widowed five years later at the age of twenty. Of all the four women, she seemed the saddest and wore a really haunted look. Her sister had four or five children [their stories all lack accuracy and clarity in telling] whom she brought up as her own. As I listened, I couldn’t help thinking, what a life! There was this fifteen year old with that faint desire in her heart to do some colourful embroidery work, possibly to create her own dowry, when her sister dies and the responsibility of her sibling’s family falls on her young shoulders. She doesn’t have the luxury of choosing her spouse or the pleasure of bearing her own children, so where then is there the luxury of desires and aspirations? The mind possibly shuts down all its imaginative faculties when faced with such circumstance.

It’s no wonder then, that umang turned into majboori. I keep wondering whether things would have been different if Partition had not happened and they had stayed in Pakistan, in their villages. Would these women have had different stories to recount?  As if reading my thoughts Parvati Maasi started singing this song: “Bande teri zindagi Waghe nadiya da paani, chaar din di bahar, ho hoshiyaar bandeya, nahin toh royega zaro zaar bandeya” [your life is like the waters of the river Wagah, the precious days of bliss may flow without your realising it, so be present and enjoy each day, for otherwise you will shed tears in regret for the rest of your life]

Embroidery is a great stress buster and I experience this first hand. These ladies also agreed that doing this work helps them deal with their lives in various ways and “sukoon milda hai”[xxx] but without the ability to think creatively, cultivate the imagination of women like Jasleen’s grandmother and those before her, who made things for their families, recording events in the family life through subtle changes in colour and pattern; without the freedom to do this, out of choice, for themselves, the work cannot have the same resonance and energy.

The quality of workmanship has changed. It was Punjab that was most affected with the advent of Partition and it is possible that this played its part in the decline of the art of Phulkari. But, I think that basically the creative spirit of the subcontinent had been stifled much before this. The process was slow and subtle and difficult to perceive or comprehend until things came to a head.

Indian textiles were enormously valued in the maritime trade of South-East Asia. These fabrics were used as currency for trade in spices which were prized by Europeans. Getting monopoly over Indian textiles was a way to profit in this trade. For Indonesians, the people from India who made the textiles they prized were considered gods. But when the Europeans came they did not understand the significance of this beyond the money they could make and the British were especially ruthless in this regard. Gradually, they changed the way that these fabrics were created and started introducing designs brought from Britain which were then copied and exported back. They stopped trading fabrics that the local artisans lovingly crafted, in much the same way that the women of Punjab used to embroider the Phulkaris [even though Phulkaris were not part of this trade] with marks and patterns that reflected their personal histories, investing the fabric with the labour of love.

When you take creativity out of anything you virtually kill the spirit of the person doing the work. The art of living,  understanding the freedom to create life the way you imagine it can be, which was intertwined with the concept of crafting in ancient India, is further being eroded by this frenetic age of technology.

The once creative craftsmen/artisans have become reduced to skilled labour[xxxi]. These women cite majboori as the reason they do embroidery. There is no personal investment or sense of creativity and joy. Living in poverty, personal grief and a lack of education has stifled the spirit of creativity through which humans thrive and grow. Can any art flourish and grow this way?

---

[i] Lajwanti has been awarded a master-craftsman award for phulkari. Born in Patiala in1953, she learned from her naaani and has worked in this field since a child. Her husband left her with small children [3 boys 2 girls] when she started this work as a business.  All her children have worked with her and are national craftsman awardees too. She has 500 women working for her in Tripri.

[ii] Like mother – mother’s sister is traditionally called maasi

[iii] near Patiala

[iv] Necessity/compulsion

[v] shawls

[vi] Veils/ lighter shawls

[vii] Richly patterned Dhurries [rugs] where a tool, which draws it design from the five fingers of the hand, is used to push the weft thread down.  

[x] Marg Publication, Mumbai. Volume 58, NO:4, edited by Laila Tyabji

[xi] mother’s mother

[xii] We addressed my naani as Bibijee – a traditional Punjabi way of addressing the female elders in the family

[xiii] This work was also done in parts of neighbouring Haryana

[xiv] Ancient European historical records and archaeological findings support that the Central Asian people such as Scythians, Samartians and Alans are possible forefathers of the modern Jats, in part.

[xv] The Embroidered Shawls of Punjab. John Grisham. Asian Embroidery edited by Jasleen Dhamija. 2004.Crafts Council of India

[xvi] The Chope is quite distinct from form the Phulkari and Bagh embroideries where bold patterns of stylized peacocks are embroidered in Holbein stitch with gold thread on a red/maroon khadi background.

[xvii] Coarse, cotton fabric woven on a pit loom, in plain weave.

[xviii] Four colors of khaddar were generally used where each color had its own significance– white used by old women or widows, red used by young girls and brides-to-be, blue and black were kept for daily use.

[xix] The Embroidered Shawls of Punjab. John Grisham. Asian Embroidery edited by Jasleen Dhamija. 2004. Crafts Council of India.

[xx] Trader from Rajasthan

[xxi] lane

[xxii] ‘Anchor’ [brand name] floss

[xxiii] I imagine there was also some business prudence involved as Lajwanti did not want her younger karigars[xxiii] poached upon

[xxiv] Spinning wheel used by Mahatma Gandhi

[xxv] Word of the Sikh gurus, usually sung

[xxvi] a dialect of Punjabi spoken widely by the population of the Potohar Plateau in Northern Pakistan.

[xxvii]  is an annual one-day festival celebrated by Hindu women in North India in which married women fast from sunrise to moonrise for the safety and longevity of their husbands

[xxviii] Is embroidered by the groom’s paternal grandmother in golden yellow silk. The grandmother begins to embroider when the boy is born and it often takes her ten years. The random appearance of different colours or change in pattern is not careless mistakes but represent significant events in the life of the family. The embroidery mirrors the family’s joys and sorrows so when the young bride is wrapped in this she is symbolically entering her husband’s family’s history

[xxix] Paternal grandmother

[xxx] We find peace and solace.

[xxxi] As designers many of us go into the villages and give them our designs to make. And my own experience and that of others is that even when given a free hand to create, they hesitate and prefer to be told what to make.

My Family and Other.....

“.....And your cousins, and your aunts. Especially your cousins, whom you reckon up by dozens and your aunts”[i]

 Over the years, over countless cups of tea, I have often pondered over the history of my father’s family who came to India from Pakistan. I have been curious about how much this has influenced mine and it was in November 2012, when I went to Bombay, sorry Mumbai, for my cousin Nanna’s[ii]daughter, Namrata’s wedding that I reflected upon their personal history, culture and more. There was a lot of dancing during the three-day festivities that I attended but, recovering from a sprained ankle of the left foot and a broken toe on my right foot, I was an observer, taking photographs instead. Actually, dancing is not my thing so I was quite happy clicking pictures of everyone else dressed in their finery, jiving to disco beats and peppy Hindi film songs.

 

Through this rather more reflective stance, I realised that not only was there a lot of food, loud music and dancing but that one needed a large family to celebrate a wedding in this style. My father was one of eight siblings - three sisters and five brothers. Three[iii] have passed on and the rest are in their 80s and 90s. Each had two or three children, except for my eldest bhua[iv] who had five daughters and a son. Most of my cousins have married and have children from young teenagers to those who have children of their own or, are on the threshold of marriage. So, there were lots of people around to participate in this big fat Punjabi wedding. 
 

The ceremonies commenced with a Puja in Aunty Gyan’s home on Pedder Road. She is my father’s sister, a little older than him, and Nanna’s mother, which makes her Namrata’s naani[v]. She was widowed when Nanna was just ten and has maintained a keen interest in religion and spirituality.  

There was some partying that evening and the next, but I reached Mumbai on the day of the Sagai[vi], which was followed by a Sangeet[vii] hosted by the Chaddhas - Ankesh’s family [boy’s side] at the Taj Hotel on Land’s End in Bandra. After settling into Rohini’s home and meeting her children and my nephew Vivek [Meenal’s son], whom I had not seen in years, I dressed and went for the boy’s Sangeet. It was wonderful to see familiar faces, meet aging aunts and uncles still game for the hulchul[viii] of a large family wedding. Jugnu [Preminda] and Coco [Brinda] live in the US and their brother Mickey [Pankaj Prem Nath] and his wife Ramal are doctors in the UK. Their parents live in a Railway colony in Gurgaon as their father, Prem Uncle, had worked in and retired from the Indian Railways. 
 

My father is no longer alive. He died of cancer in 1989, but I recollect him recounting that Prem Uncle, who is his older brother, was slated to go to the UK to study chartered accountancy. His berth on the ship had been booked and the course fees paid, when he decided to join the Indian Army and my grandfather instructed my father to do the course instead. It was a strange story which stayed in my head. I have always pursued ideas that I wanted and cannot imagine what it must have been like to opt for a life-long career like this. But my father did and was successful as a financial man, even though his life was almost three decades shorter than most of his siblings’.  

 

Papa was born in 1922 in Montgomery, which Prem Uncle says is a town on the railway line from Lahore to Karachi, about a hundred miles from Multan. [I guess for a railway man everything is in relation to the railway lines].  Prem Uncle was born there too. The family roots were in the fortress town of Multan but Pitaji, my grandfather, was transferred every three years, so not all of his eight children were born in Multan but, they would return to their ancestral home once a year. Pitaji, Rai Bahadur Gyanshyam Das[ix] [Matreja[x]] was a civil judge. He would stay with us in Delhi sometimes and I remember him as a stern man who spoke little and always wore a solar topi[xi] when he went out. He had retired from active service when he migrated with his family to India in 1947. His surviving younger brother stayed on in Pakistan. No-one knows what became of him because relations were strained and he had no children. Prem Uncle recounted that he had married a Muslim and converted to Islam, then left his wife and reverted back to Hinduism.
 

Prem Uncle chose to join the Indian Army rather than pursue a career in accountancy because civilian jobs were hard to come by then. He later joined the Indian Railways. During partition, being a Major in the Indian army, he was able to travel to Multan in that highly tense phase and on 13^th August 1947, he escorted my grandmother, Mataji, and his youngest sister Shallo, to Mumbai. Vishu Uncle, my father’s eldest brother, had recently returned from studying in Cambridge and was working in Bombay so Mataji went to stay with him. Pitaji was still in Pakistan and Dindi Uncle[xii] with him. Pitaji had been appointed a custodian of Hindu property and to oversee safe evacuation of Hindus from Pakistan so he flew to Bombay just before Partition. There were limited seats on the flight so he put Dindi Uncle on a train from Multan to Lahore - a traumatic journey he was fortunate to have survived. From Lahore he then travelled on a safe train. under government supervision, to Ambala where Prem Uncle was posted. He later joined the rest of the family in Bombay where most of my father’s family have since settled. My two sisters and I were also born in Bombay, but our family later moved to Calcutta and eventually settled in Delhi. 

My father and three of his brothers had left Multan before August 1947 and Gyan Aunty was already married and settled in Bombay. His parents and two younger siblings came to India just before Partition but his eldest sister and husband with five children, one a babe in arms, made the journey from Jhung [100 miles North of Multan] in November 1947. Prem Uncle travelled by bus from Ambala to meet them in Amritsar and counted 18-20 dead bodies for every mile - Muslims slain by Hindus and Sikhs. He recounted one Sikh waving a bloodied sword, shouting out loud: chuha nussriya si, maar ditta [xiii].

Urvashi Butalia in her research interviews[xiv] has spoken of the brutal atrocities that came to pass where daughters and mothers were drowned or burned alive, ostensibly to protect them and one has read of violence that was perpetrated at this time but, to hear it from family members who saw and survived it, sends shivers down my spine. 

In my family, Partition and life in Pakistan is not much spoken of and if the siblings had spoken amongst themselves in Multani, I wouldn’t have understood. This whole episode only came to light in early 1980s. I was a student in London and there was a revival of interest in all things Indian, especially the British Raj. Richard Attenborough’s film Gandhi was screened and Paul Scott’s Jewel in the Crown televised, which led to my own exploration of this era. On a visit home to Delhi, I questioned my father and was told of the evacuation duties and Dindi Uncle’s train journey from Multan.
 

At an earlier wedding three years ago, I had stayed with Dindi Uncle and Shanta Aunty in their apartment on Altamount Road and gingerly broached the subject. Then, Dindi Uncle revealed something I cannot get out of my mind: as a teenager of seventeen years he travelled alone and the single most important thing for him on that journey, from Multan to Lahore, had been to find a safe place to hide, inside trunks or some such, during the night, fearing for his life.  The mood was savage and each night people were massacred on trains crossing over to India and Pakistan. These are things one has heard and read and since Punjab was divided, it’s obvious my family from Multan would have been affected but, they never really shared much of this experience.   

Psychiatrist that are studying the consequences of  events surrounding Partition  say that, “regardless of the books written and films made about Partition, to a great degree Indians and Pakistanis have never worked through this monumental guilt, nor the other complex, concurrent   emotions. Rather, we continue to love and hate each other through petty sibling rivalry and dangerous wars.”[xv] 

I do believe such experiences must have affected the emotional and psychological landscape of individuals who underwent them, regardless of the degree of trauma. And, unresolved issues and emotions do tend to get passed on, directly and indirectly, to subsequent generations so I wanted to record a full-fledged interview with Dindi Uncle but he never got around to answering my written questions. His other siblings have also been reluctant to speak much and whatever information I have, has been prised through various informal conversations.

 

Dindi[xvi] Uncle is my father’s youngest sibling and has always been the live-wire of our family. When my elder sister Bunty got married in 1978, he began the tradition of dancing at family weddings with a glass full of Scotch Whiskey on his head. This time too, at 81 years of age, a year after suffering a stroke, he tried doing the same again.

The best part of the wedding festivities for me was to see the dress parade. The backs, or rather lack of them, of the lehenga-choli’s[xvii] and saree blouses were daring to say the least. My younger sister, Deepika, was here from Princeton, and carried off this spectacular chooridar[xviii] outfit where the kurta[xix] was virtually backless. Priyanka, Meenal [Nanna’s elder sister] and Nanna too, wore blouses that were exceptionally revealing. Each outfit the bride wore for the functions was more ostentatious than the last. At the Mehndi[xx] ceremony, bejewelled and dressed in a bright orange, elaborately embroidered lehenga, her hands and arms covered with henna, Nammu reclined on saffron and pink cushions placed on a stage, against the backdrop of a glass wall with water cascading behind it. The scene was definitely filmi[xxi] with an air of royalty about it. Her mother jokingly claimed that Nammu had even asked her friends to press her legs as she reclined on the cushions. 

 

Punjabis like to eat, drink and be merry and are generous hosts. My mother once narrated an incident when newly married; she had been reprimanded by Mataji for not being hospitable enough, because in her new family it was considered impolite for guests to eat unless you asked at least five times! On another occasion, a Punjabi friend married into a Bengali family, was bored at a recent family wedding in Kolkata so started singing Punjabi tappas[xxii]  with her daughter, which inspired their Bengali brethren to dance, uncharacteristically, on the streets, till the wee hours of the morning. My sisters and many cousins are NRI’s[xxiii] but game to travel and attend all, if not most, family weddings. As I write, Meenal’s daughter Priyanka just got married in Thailand and most that were at Nammu’s wedding were jiving to desi beats at the Shangri-La Hotel in Bangkok, just few months later.

There was a lot of preparation that went into the festivities for Namrata’s wedding. Nanna had even organised a professional choreographer to train her various cousins, siblings, nieces, nephews and children to dance to various Bollywood numbers for the Mehndi and Sangeet. As mother of the bride she did the honours with current hit song ‘Ooh La La La’, from Vidya Balan starrer ‘The Dirty Picture’, to loud hooting and cat calls from the rest of us. I recollect that when my cousins and sister married in the 1970’s, there was no such fanfare. Usually family members sang at weddings, led by some aunt or other. A dholki[xxiv]  was the only prerequisite and everyone sang and danced as best they could. The standard Punjabi songs like ‘Kala doria or ‘Sooe vacheera’ were popular. These traditional Punjabi wedding songs playfully teased the bride and groom and various relatives were part of the cheda khani[xxv] too. Sangeets then were more intimate and informal. Things had changed a lot. 

 

Punjabis are known for dikhava – pomp and show. They are emotional people and known to grieve with as much passion as they celebrate and have a tendency to live larger than life.  And when they are merry, they are very, very merry, with no scope for anything but merry making. The music and revelry is so catching that no-one comes away from a Punjabi wedding feeling anything but merry. 

As a photographer-observer of this wedding, while editing the photos I relived the revelry and meeting of aged relatives. I noted the lines that etched their faces with memory and experiences and wondered how they had not seemed to let these get in the way. Each was apparently successful in his/her chosen endeavour. Everything had been left behind in Pakistan and whatever moveable’s Pitaji had entrusted to an aide of Prem Uncle’s, to bring to India, had been looted en route, so all they had to rely upon was their education and the meagre belongings they managed to carry with them on that hostile journey.

I realise that what my family underwent was a fraction of what many others experienced. And it’s possible that their personal trauma took a back seat in the face of the national catastrophe that Partition became, but how does anyone put such experiences behind them?  How much of it has been resolved or reconciled with and how much of this lies buried beneath the rigour of getting on with living? Or for that matter how much has been subconsciously passed onto us by omission or commission are questions that keep coming up. But the naach-gaana, band baaja baarat[xxvi] continues. 

“What is history? If you mean ‘personal history’, it is perhaps what one would most like to forget”

                                                                                                                                            Thomas Merton
 

---

[i] From HMS Pinafore – Gilbert and Sullivan

[ii] Vinita

[iii] My father, his eldest sibling Shiela Aunty and his eldest brother Vishu uncle

[iv] Father’s sister

[v] Maternal grandmother

[vi] engagement

[vii] Song and dance event

[viii] Goings-on

[ix] Born 1884

[x] Sub-caste of Khsatriya

[xi] hat

[xii] Father’s youngest brother

[xiii] The mouse was scuttling away, I killed him!

[xiv] The Other side of Silence

[xv] The Psychiatrist's Partition - Anirudh K Kala, Alok Sarin and Sanjeev Jain

[xvi] Devinder Nath

[xvii] Skirt-blouse - gown

[xviii] Tights

[xix] Knee length dress worn over chooridar or shalwar

[xx] Henna

[xxi] Inspired by Hindi/Bollywood films

[xxii] Wedding songs that tease the bride and groom with rhyming verse

[xxiii] Non-resident Indians

[xxiv] drums

[xxv] Playful teasing

[xxvi] Dance, song, band, music, groom pageant

[xxvii] Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander