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Category: Books

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

My grandparents’ ‘Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam’

Omar Khayyam composed this collection of four-line stanza poems, or rubai, as they are known in Farsi, sometime between the late eleventh century to early twelfth century, before he died in 1131. History further made itself known in a personal and intimate way as I read the Bengali inscription on the first page – β€œTo Priti and Dilip Bandopadhyay – on their wedding, 6.6.66”.

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The Children's Dictionary

The knowledge legacy

The Children’s Dictionary was published in the year 1910 by the Standard Literature Co. Ltd with publishing offices in India, Burma and Ceylon. The volumes date back to the colonial period in India and were purchased by my father whilst he was a student at St. Xavier’s College, Bombay.

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The Little Webster belonging to Bhavi's grandfather

The Little Webster

I was quite small, the first time I set my eyes upon this tiny dictionary. It was during our annual summer holidays, spent happily at my grandparents house in Jabalpur. The dictionary belonged to my maternal grandfather who purchased it from a bookshop in Kashmir on his honeymoon in October, 1957. This little Webster is a classic 18000 words Liliput pocket dictionary with 799 pages.

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Mohan Singh Matharu's Urdu Gurbani Gutka

A Sikh man’s Urdu prayers

Apart from his daily exercise of reading the news, my grandfather would read his prayers from an Urdu Gurbani Gutka. A Gutka is a small sized book containing chosen hymns or shabads (sacred verses) from Sri Guru Granth Sahib and other Sikh scriptures. When the sun would set, he would wash his hands and feet and bring out the Urdu Gutka which was kept in a wooden cupboard in his room.

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Cultural bridges of an era gone by

‘Let’s Put the Little Things Right’ is a book that was first published in 1973. It was written by Colonel Lionel Gregory, the founder of Comex – The Commonwealth Expedition. Comex was started in 1965 as an expedition from Britain to India in support of the multi-cultural ideals of the then called British Commonwealth. The book belongs to Promod Shanker (my father-in-law).

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About

The Museum of Material Memory is a digital repository of material culture of the Indian subcontinent, tracing family history and social ethnography through heirlooms, collectibles and objects of antiquity.

Through storytelling, each post on the Archive reveals not just a history of objects and the people they belong to, but also unfolds generational narratives about the tradition, culture, customs, conventions, habits, language, society, geography and history of the vast and diverse subcontinent.


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