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 CAST OF CHARACTERS Uncle Kushi, my mother's uncle, my great-uncle His mother, my great-grandmother My maternal grandparents Uncle K in 1954 Tuberculosis (TB) has historically plagued India, and despite steps taken by governments, remains rampant and often deadly today. Until the 1950s, the only way to cure it was believed to be waiting it out, often for months at a time, alongside rest, open air and adequate nutrition.  Due to its highly infectious nature, several sanatoriums sprouted across the country to enable the isolation of TB patients. It was at one such centre in Ranchi, likely the Ramakrishna Mission Sanatorium, that Uncle Kushi found himself confined in 1956. His mother kept him company, contagion be damned (or maybe she was immune?) When my grandparents got married on 3 October that year, Uncle Kushi was still unwell. My grandfather – his older brother – had taken exactly three days' leave for his wedding, and the newlyweds spent one of those in Ranchi. It looks li...

Returning to my grandparents' home after seven years was bittersweet. Everything has changed; much of the time I felt like I existed between the wonder of the new and the ghosts of the old, trying to reconcile the familiar with the unfamiliar, separating the superimposed layers of what my eyes saw and my mind remembered.  It was the first time I'd returned since my grandfather passed away in this house that he built, this adventure that he gave us all. I wanted to feel his presence, imagine his movements, his path through the home, his favourite position with the best mountain view, the table where he would cut paneer with precision prior to selling, the sound of his army boots on wooden floorboards, the nook where he watched TV. Some of these, including the stove upon which I once burned my hand, have been erased. We can't live in memory and time won't stand still, and so much of the old is...just falling apart.  And maybe it's change that helps us cope, rewriting...

CAST OF CHARACTERS: Patsy (Patience), later known as Tara, my nani or maternal grandmother Heather Cameron, her lifelong friend Vindri (Virendrapal), my nana or maternal grandfather His parents Me Joni James (soundtrack) When my nana would visit us in Delhi, he used to look up at the sky – infamous for its haze – and point at the lone(some) star that was visible, saying to me, " Be like that star. Always be an individual, no matter what others say or do. "  An article in The Times of India in 1953 described his plans to travel the world on a bicycle. He did embark on this journey. It took him 12 days to reach Bombay from Delhi, from where he hopped onto a vessel to Basra, Iraq. I don't quite recall all the places he travelled to, but most likely they were Kuwait, the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Mosul, possibly Syria, and he did make it to Turkey – where one of his favourite stories involved being kicked out of a restaurant for abusing their offer of free unlimited bread....

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 photograph...

CAST OF CHARACTERS: Marina Keys, my great-aunt Patricia, her childhood friend My grandmother Mr. and Mrs. Keys, my great-grandparents Marlene, my (older) great-aunt Mother Dolores, a nun at Loreto Convent, Asansol On 22 October 2021, I received a very mysterious message through my website.    Patricia wrote that she spent her adult life trying to reconnect with her "very best school friend" and "soul mate", Marina Keys, who happened to be my great-aunt. They went to school at Loreto Convent, Asansol, and were "inseparable" – but lost touch when Patricia's family moved back to England.  I used to spend many weekends at the Keys' house. We would leave the convent, cross through Saint Patricks' boys' school, over the wall and into the Keys' garden. Many a time we would sit under the tamarind tree, eat lots of tamarind and then wonder why we would get [a] tummy ache. I have always lived with regret that we lost touch. I remember that when w...

CAST OF CHARACTERS: Elsie, my great-grandmother Patience, my nani (maternal grandmother) Suzanne Neve, actress, as Emma Carleton Hobbes, actor, as Sherlock Holmes In a letter to her daughter Patience dated 4 July 1970, my great-grandmother Elsie wrote about enjoying BBC plays on the radio: "Do you all hear the BBC plays on the transistor? Did you'll [sic] hear the 'Conquest' by Somerset Maugham the other day it is a lovely interesting play & acted so well really — BBC is tops & we hear all this on that small Phillips radio we bought from [?] for Rs 100 — we play our records on the other radio — we made the Gram elec. — the other radio we have to play on a battery — Batteries have become so expensive now eh!" I was dreaming of connecting with my great-grandparents by listening to the same things they once listened to, but... does W. Somerset Maugham even have a story called Conquest ? I tried researching more about the BBC Radio in India — most likely the p...

CAST OF CHARACTERS: My dada (paternal grandfather) My dadi (paternal grandmother) My nana (maternal grandfather) His younger brother A bookshop owner in Assam A bookshop owner in Ferozepur I was at a wedding in February when I learned something new about my dada – that he was a voracious reader, and a lover of arts and culture. I never got to meet him, so I was moved by this tidbit. What could I have learned from him? What could we have exchanged ideas about? Thus far I'd known of him as a dental surgeon, albeit one who had made a multi-generational family tree. This was a whole new world opening up.  As I stuffed my face with food, I also learned that my dadi , whom I've also never met, was a reader too, and encouraged this habit in her children. She took them out to watch a play every month. She insisted that they read or borrow at least one book in Hindi when they visited the Dilli Public Library opposite the old Delhi railway station. No wonder, then, that my dad and his s...

CAST OF CHARACTERS: Wild mushrooms My mother My nani (maternal grandmother) My nani's mother (my great-grandmother) My father My bua (father's sister) My dadi (paternal grandmother) My brother Me Did you inherit any weird tastes from your family? One of the oddest things "passed down" to me is an unhealthy suspicion of mushrooms. I didn't eat them growing up, and until recently, I thought my mother hadn't either. We asked my nani once if she liked mushrooms, and she said that she never knew what they were when she was younger (and no).  When my grandparents decided to build a house in the Himalayas in the late 1960s, there were wild mushrooms to contend with. These could be poisonous and risky, so my great-grandmother was naturally stressed about this particular dietary adventure that I presume was communicated to her.  In this letter from 1970, my great-grandmother writes, "I always feel nervous about you'll eating mushrooms anyway & more so now...

I've been living in the past a lot lately. It started, perhaps, with looking back to find out what had always mattered to me, and reorient myself a bit. Moving onwards is inevitable, but sometimes the past provides answers about the future. Perhaps it was also a little bit about the reality we now live with. We're more careful with our future planning; there's a lot of "let's see" and "fingers crossed" than there was pre-pandemic. For a while, it was too hard to envision anything about the future, even the near future. No wonder then that the past became a refuge. ( And  I've also been working on two personal projects that deal with history.) Sometimes I can't believe that I'm the same person who travelled, had adventures of a sort, that feel like a lifetime ago. Yet I recognise that somehow, I'm living many of the lives I'd hoped for. Not all of them, but that's mostly okay. I do lament the others at times, but I don't th...

For reasons I can't quite explain, I've always been obsessed with my family history. Heck, I'd say I'm probably interested in anyone's family history, because it's fascinating. But one's own seems almost like lore – you grow up hearing names, anecdotes, little factoids at various times, never knowing how all of them connect until you really try to put together the pieces of the puzzle. My mom says I was a chatty child, even before the age of two. That tracks. She also said I was always curious about all my aunts and uncles, and would routinely rattle off their names (sounds annoying), almost as though I was building a family tree in my little head. Well, she didn't say that last part, but how else would you explain it? More than once while I was growing up, and when I was all grown up, I drew family trees on the largest pieces of paper I could find. Even when it wasn't homework. And because my grandmother was forthcoming, or perhaps because I badgere...

In February 2016, my grandmother and I went on a long train journey. It was dark and uncomfortable, and at one point there were cockroaches on me and I read fan-fiction to forget them. View this post on Instagram Train view...15ish hours ago. Still not arrived at our destination 😒 #India #travel #journey #train A post shared by Kriti Bajaj (@kritibajaj21) on Feb 5, 2016 at 11:18am PST Eventually, though, our train made a one-minute stop at our destination at 4 a.m., and we hopped out into the cold. A frigid auto ride later, we were in the warm glow of my great-aunt's living room, sipping coffee and eating plum cake. This was the first time that someone called me "my girl." I like to think that this was where it all really began . I had always been curious about the place that my grandmother would disappear to once a year, the place where my mother used to pluck fruits from trees during school vac...