Image and Narrative points contributed by Mehak Thakur, Mumbai

This photograph is of my grandmother Damyanti dancing on the occasion of her youngest brother’s marriage on the porch of our ancestral house designed in traditional Himalayan Kath Kuni architecture in Nitther, a small village in Kullu District, Himachal Pradesh.

My grandmother says she was dancing the Pahadi Nati, a folk Pahari Dance. The traditional dress of Kullu is Reesta, an attire that was inspired by the British gown, a combination of a long kameez (shirt) tucked inside a long heavily pleated skirt accompanied with a Sluka (Jacket). Alternately, it is also made in a tunic form with woolen fabric to be worn over in winters, which my grandmother wears in this picture.

Ancestrally, my family were Zamindars (land owners) and like many land owners of the time cultivated Opium up until the early 20th century for the British until its prohibition and drop in trade. Opium consumption in the subcontinent was common and was (in some places still is) also fed in small quantities to babies, mixed in milk, and while they slept their mothers do the house chores and work in the farms. After Opium was dropped, landowners began cultivating other crops and ours grew Basmati Rice and formed Apples and Cherry Orchards.

My grandmother Damyanti Goswami Pandit (later Thakur) was born in 1947. She was the second child to a family of two sisters and three brothers. However as unspoken tradition was within several families in the subcontinent, she was offered for adoption to relatives within the family who had no children of their own. My grandmother was deeply loved and pampered, so much so that she did no house chores. As an adult and after her adopted parents passed, regional hereditary laws favoured my grandmother, because unlike much of the subcontinent at the time, daughters in our custom could inherit property and assets of their parents. Right after high school, my grandmother got married at the age of 16. I wonder about the generational irony though – she had enough sources to have gone abroad and continue her education, yet she chose a life of a wife and delivered her first child at a young age, my dad, at the age of 17. She was still a young girl herself, and there were stories of how she would be off to play with her friends while her mother took care of her grandchild, her daughter’s first born. In a following years my grandparents had four children, two sons and two daughters.

My grandfather came from a Rajput family in the same village. He was educated and the only one in the entire village to have graduated and work with government services. Interestingly unlike most women, my grandmother didn’t adapt to traditional roles of motherhood, and their four children were mostly taken care of by my grandfather while he was posted in Simla, because good education was only available in bigger towns. My grandmother, on the other hand, chose to live in the village and actively take care of her lands and farming businesses with frequent visits to Simla. The children grew up to be in the Armed Forces, Farming land and in Government services.

This photograph literally symbolizes my grandmother. I remember her dressing up like a bride whenever she got a chance and dance. My father inherited the same love for dressing well and would spend his entire pocket money on having the latest fashion copied for himself. Needless to say, their love and quest for dressing up well has been passed on to me.

Both my grandparents now stay on and off between Simla and the farm land. My grandmother is now 71, she is still immensely loved and adored by everyone in the village. She continues to actively looks after her lands and she still loves to dress up and dance like she is 16.

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