Our maternal grandfather, Shri O.P. Gupta, retired from Administrative Services of the Military Engineering Services (MES) from Fort Williams, Kolkata. While in Kolkata, he had fashionable suits tailored at Chowringhee tailors and always looked dapper when he came to visit us in Durgapur.
He was a self-taught man - schooled in Urdu and Hindi, he picked up English on his own later (his favorite book was Strunk & White's Elements of Style). He wrote in a pearl-like hand, his letters to my mom and dad always a treasured possession for their crisp prose.
Later in life he turned towards spiritual questions and followed the teachings of Ramana Maharishi.
Our maternal grandmother, Smt Premlata, was a remarkably resourceful - and strong - woman. She was constantly repurposing saris and salwar-kameezes - in fact almost any spare material - into carry-bags (thailas) etc - when she was not busy making a variety of achars and chutneys, potato chips and black-carrot water (kānji/काञ्जी)! Her cooking was quite divine; she often added milk to paratha-dough to make doodh-ke-parathe. She also made melt-in-mouth flaky, multi-layered, folded ajwain parathas, square-shaped ones and lachcha parathas!
Below - please find evidence of some carry bags made out of material from an old mosquito net as well! And the beautiful embroidery in a framed Welcome sign!
Unfortunately, we seem to have very few images of our grandparents - even fewer of our paternal grandparents (Ammaji & Babaji) - but here goes, with what we do have -
