Family Heirlooms, Antiques & a Prized Library

Soumya walks down the memory lane and tells us about family heirlooms, antiques, and his grandfather’s prized library. An exclusive for Different Truths.

The oldest living antique at home is me, some six decades, and the oldest once living, some fossils surreptitiously collected from Akal, Jaisalmer, some six million, but it hasn’t been at home that long.

The oldest heirloom is a gold mohur, allegedly Akbari, apparently the last of a hoard, handed down the generations to the first born. For the rest of the time, it rests in a bank locker.

No one could read Persian, till my daughter’s Annaprasan, when it last came out, my wife, who could, deciphered it and declared that it was issued by Nawab Aliwardi Khan.  The antiquity was reduced, but still it was something to stare at and gloat over.

The other heirlooms that last came out on the same Annaprasan, some three decades back, the ornate silverware for the Payes to be cooked in and the utensils for the child to eat her first non vegetarian rice banquet, at least theoretically, as in reality the family feasts on it and not the infant, went back into the massive trunks they came out of and returned to the loft.

On our return to Kolkata, while taking stock of what was left in our unoccupied family home, those trunks turned out to be empty. As were the glass cabinets, which held the porcelain and glassware. Only a peculiar item was left behind, a feeding bottle belonging to my dad, so probably more than eighty years old.

As there had been a series of caretakers taking care of the house all these years, we couldn’t say who took care of the missing heirlooms.

But that isn’t the oldest item that still has pride of place in our home, and proudly displayed. It’s the remnants of my grandfather’s library, which has several first editions bought when the actual first edition came out, like when penguin started publishing, they gave serial numbers, and granddad subscribed to them, and had numbers 1 to 60. Similarly, Wodehouse when he was an upcoming author, and Mark Twain’s Tramp Abroad, of which the first edition was still in print when he was a student

Most of these were worm ridden and unreadable and couldn’t be kept with the others to avoid spreading the disease, but I could salvage some, and treated and restored them. They have the pride of place in our family library, the oldest objects resting here.

Picture design by Anumita Roy, Different Truths