It has been a couple of weeks since I returned from my grandparents' home in Himachal, not without a couple of heirlooms. Among them, some albums that my nani dug out from her big box bed because I asked if she had anything for the archives, convinced that she didn't, that I had already seen everything on my last trip seven years ago.
Three albums emerged, black sheets alternating with fragile butter paper, two filled with monochrome square memories secured with tiny triangular corners. My mother said that had been my nana's role – or passion, perhaps? – arranging the photographs into narratives. I wonder how he managed it with his giant fingers that made it impossible for him to play the guitar, he'd complain, because he couldn't press down on just one string at a time.
One album filled with photos he took of his wife, hand-coloured, sometimes a little too vivacious. As I perused the pages this week, I realised two things – I had never seen most of these photographs, and my nani was so lucky she had someone who wanted to portray her in the best light in those moments, whatever else happened before or after.
It was emotional, seeing people I thought I knew well in lives where I hadn't known them at all; was that really her, gazing out of a car window? Was that him beaming up with such joy? Yet these feelings weren't new. I wrote a poem in 2008, after nani gave me her wedding album to keep, long before I got into family history work. I called it "Sepia Faces".
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