HER PAANDAAN
By Affan Baghpati
The hands of time mold everything, even the seemingly immutable objects that populate our daily lives and rituals. While some objects evolve in their meaning and functionally, others lose credibility, fall out of use, and find themselves relegated to the dark shadows of our memory. If our forefathers reminisce about jewel encrusted silver pacifiers to soothe their little ones, it is possible that our generation will fondly remember plastic objects in a similar way, and bemoan suspicious inventions like holograms.
This rumination on the malleability of memory brought me to my dadi (paternal grandmother), Naseema Begum, and her paandaan. I once asked her when she started eating paan. To my surprise, she calmly replied that she never liked eating paan at all. It was only for my grandfather that she dressed paan twice a day — a slow and elaborate ritual of love — before noon and during dusk. Once dressed, the paan were placed in a small dibbiya (box), which worked as a handy container, akin to the sleek cigarette cases we see today. Like other household things, the paandaan had its own thikana (rightful place) — the right side of the dressing table in my dadi’s room. It was, ultimately, a symbol of responsibility and adoration between the spouses.
Untitled
(From Affan Baghpati’s A-Levels art portfolio, 2010)
Graphite on paper, 48cm x 35cm
Details Of My Grandmother’s Paandaan
Photo: Affan Baghpati
This paandaan, along with a multitude of items, was part of the trousseau lovingly curated by her mother, Waheed-un-Nisa Begum, who at the time, was a resident of Hyderabad Colony near Hazarat Ganj, surrounded by their famous aam ke baaghat (mango grove), in Lucknow. After the partition of India, she, along with her husband, children and a few siblings migrated to Lahore in 1964. Later, the family moved to Karachi, which was known to be “a city that welcomed diverse ethnicities including those who spoke only Urdu”. Along with her, the paandaan too, made the meandering journey from Lucknow to Delhi (where she married), onwards to Lahore, and eventually finding a home in Karachi where she breathed her last in 2018. She was among the last of her generation, who dressed their paan at home and spoke impeccable Urdu. Born in a Nawab’s family, and educated at Aligarh University, my dadi lived Urdu, in a way that language translates, and is translated to one’s lived experience. None of my aunts or uncles picked up the dialect of my dadi. Perhaps my dadi’s faithful paadaan will eventually fade into a distant memory of a loving gesture, with its complex history and migration lost forever.
With an ever-evolving material culture, traditional practices such as the dressing of paan become inconvenient and obsolete. Therefore, it becomes critical to document the stories and meaning they carry. This will not only serve as a nostalgic window into our past, but also help us determine the future trajectory of material culture. When I see gorgeous family heirlooms at a retail store, I am baffled by how families can discard their history and family traditions. I realise, with a tinge of sadness and regret, that the next generation will only be able to access material culture of South Asia and their own ancestral practices through books and the internet.
For South Asians in the region and abroad, the paandaan has become symbolic of their collective memory and shared history. I sought out several people in the crowded alleys of social media to uncover the journey of the paandaan, from being a ubiquitous household item to becoming antiquated and unfamiliar in our brave new world. What follows is a brief compilation of paandaan memorabilia, including photographs and stories, from people in the region.
Naseem Sahib, Karachi, Pakistan
I spoke to Naseem Sahib, who owns a family business of metal antique items at Peetal Galli in Karachi. He spoke to me of the Lucknowi style Gumbat-wala paandaan, which typically bore a meticulous repoussé of flowers, and was contoured in the shape of a dome, reminiscent of Islamic architecture. It will come as no surprise that the literal meaning of Gumbat is a dome, a familiar sight marking the apex of a mosque. The surface of this paandaan was regularly tinned, a procedure to keep copper utensils fresh, hygienic and lustrous. In another ritual of household upkeep, a local craftsperson would go door to door collecting copper utensils that needed a polish, and return them a few days later in their newly-found glistening and reflective glory. However, as people gravitated towards steel or mass-produced Chinese ceramic utensils, so dispassionately renewed after a few minutes in a dishwasher, these copper utensils fell out of use. Predictably, this craft of tinning and the local craftsmen who practiced it, also died out.
Like A Lazy Ocean Hugs The Shore
Affan Baghpati (2018)
Originally installed at AAN Ideas Art Space and Museum, Karachi
Brass, wood, fabric, polyester cotton; 14cm x 25cm x 18cm
Abid Husain, Lucknow, India
Abid Hussain’s memory of his nani’s paandaan bears the same imprint of bittersweet nostalgia and the struggle against our society’s collective amnesia. Abid was born in Lucknow but currently resides in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a separation from his home which is both physical and metaphorical. Born into a Shia family of Nawabs (Shirazi) and Mughals (Mirza), Abid had a taste of the royal hangover while learning about his own heritage. He remembers that he first saw the practice of dressing paan when he was six years old. His seventy five year old nani would chop the supaari (beetle nuts) with a sarauta (nutcracker), and then proceed to pick the critical ingredients from her paandaan: choona (lime), kattha (catechu), saunf (fennel), kimam (liquid tobacco) and the preferred Banarasi leaf which was dark and bitter, or the Maghai leaf which was sweeter. The process involved selecting the leaf, spreading choona and katha on it evenly, adding kimam and sprinkling a few pieces of supaari before wrapping up the paan in a beeda and offering it to others. In a sweet family tradition of gratitude and reciprocal civility, everyone who received a paan had to say Salaam to her before putting it in their mouth., similar to, but somehow deeper than the casual, modern day thank you. In Abid’s family, the paandaan always had to be made of pure silver, and no other metal would do. Every girl received a paandaan as a parting gift in her dowry, up until the 70s. While some of these paandaans were brand new, others were family heirlooms, handed down through the generations. While every mother in Abid’s family currently owns a paandaan, some use it, while some keep it only for its sentimental value.
Abid Hussain’s Grandmother’s Paandaan
Photo courtesy: Abid Hussain
Zamin Abbas Rizvi, Allahabad, UP, India
Zamin Abbas Rizvi shares a picture of a paandaan that his mother received from her own mother. Zamin’s mother comes from a tehsil in Eastern Uttar Pradesh where her forefathers were christened ‘Ameer-us-Sadr’, the head of seven districts during the British rule. This paandaan is among the few pieces of family history that Zamin’s mother managed to preserve.
Zamin Rizvi’s Mother’s Paandaan
Photo courtesy: Zamin Rizvi
Ayesha Khan, Toronto, Canada
Ayesha shares a picture of her dadi’s paandaan from a visit to India in 2015. Her dadi, Begum Akhtar lived in the city of Bulandshahr, and Ayesha remembers seeing this hundred year-old paandaan, a wedding gift from her parents, always by her dadi’s side.
Begum Akhtar’s Paandaan
Photo courtesy: Ayesha Khan
Sadia Aaminah, Karachi, Pakistan
Sadia’s nani used this paandaan to store sundry items like buttons and beads that fell off of her clothes. While she does not know the exact origins or usage of this paandaan, she predicts that her nani inherited this from her own mother after her passing.
Sadia Aaminah’s Grandmother’s Paandaan
Photo courtesy: Sadia Aaminah
Aoun Naqvi, Lucknow, India
Aoun captures his cousin lovingly dressing a paan for him using his own paandaan, and reminisces about his childhood when he would observe his cousin’s mother dressing a paan at home. She also had a parrot that would come and bite him every time he got close. He rues the fact that modernity has left little space for traditions and rituals in Lucknow.
Aoun Naqvi’s Relative’s Paandaan
Screengrabs courtesy: Aoun Naqvi
Acknowledgements
S.M. Nadeem Baghpati | Mansoor Baghpati | Naseem Sahib | Zamin Abbas Rizvi | Abid Hussain | Ayesha Khan | Aoun Naqvi | Chetna Singh | Sadia Aaminah Her Paandaan
By Affan Baghpati
Human imagination has often imbued material objects with meaning, transforming them from items of utility to symbols of nostalgia, cultural identity and emotional valence. The handkerchief, for instance, served as a delicate excuse to unite lovers in the past — a token to be shared and cherished, bringing with it the bittersweet longing of eventual return. The frenetic pace of our modern life has endangered many such objects and with them, the rituals, practices and manifold meanings they conveyed and sustained. Such objects, once functional in regional households, are quickly losing or have already lost their value, resulting in a greater loss of cultural mores and collective memory.
Affan Baghpati explores the delicious history, origin, design, craftsmanship, functionality and memory of one such object: the paandaan. A common sight in South Asian society, paan has been enjoyed by erstwhile royals and nobility, and till date routinely consumed by common folk at humble paan stalls haunting bustling streets in Pakistan and India. Among several stories collected through social media, he charts the journey of his own grandmother’s paandaan, which she brought from Lucknow to Lahore, and then to Karachi, after Partition. Intertwined with these stories and memories is an examination of a shared cultural practice, that of patiently dressing a paan at home, which is lost in the rapid and mindless consumption of our current times.