"One Picture And One Story Week #11"

Those people who belong to a countryside have houses which contain traditional things. People call them antique we call them signs of our ancestors.

We also have couple of old processions in the form of a trunk and tape recorder. I needed to click some vintage shots so i chose them to be in my pictures.

It was for a contest which our event-horizon used to organize on steemit Pakistan 2years ago.
Recalling the old steemians who have left it, is such a nostalgia. Those people were my early inspirations.
Anyhow, i did a shoot and made a setup to make it look actual vintage without much filters.

For you these are just the pictures and old objects, but these are the STORIES calling the humans to explore them.

This trunk belonged to my grandparents, and that tape recorder is 25years old (my father brought it from abroad).

I was raised in a joint family system under the shade of my Grand father, my Grand mother had died when i was only three years old.

It was my Dada Abu who would tell us old stories about his childhood sometimes. One of these were about the migration that he did with his family from India to Pakistan in 1947.

He was twelve years old when Pakistan came into being.

People who suffer in wars have to pack their whole life in one trunk in pursuit of a peaceful land. It's rooted in our instinct to migrate from a land where you are under strict restrictions to practice your religion.

My grandfather settled in Gujranwala after migration, he got married to my Grand mother who used to live in the small city near Lahore.

This trunk went to her belongings, she was one of the most humblest women on earth. She would keep her belongings in this trunk which is rusted now. These belongings were her couple of clothes, one of these was a Kafhan, which she had got stitched for herself.
Everytime she fell ill she used to open this trunk and see her kafhan.

I don't recall her memories clearly, i just have a few flashbacks of her, i don't know if these are real, or I had just imagined them after hearing her stories from my elders.

My mother tells me that i used to fight with my Dadoo like the kids do, to show tantrums. And she would reply that I'll tell your father once he comes from abroad. My mother had recordered our conversations in this tape recorder. We have them, but i never listened them. And my father couldn't return on time to say her last good bye.

I recall listening 90s songs on this tape, we didn't have cable in our home during that time. We never heard about this cable word before. When my elder cousins asked Dada Abu to get a cable connection in our house. He got so angry, but they convinced him saying cable also has good things to show.

He eventually agreed and used to see more films than others afterwards:p

My grandparents had sung folksongs and nohas. It was the way of the old people to express their sadness and their emotions. All their words were recorded in this tape, but i never listened them, only heard about it from my elders.

We still have their tapes but we don't listen. Life is going on its way that we barely greet a person sitting beside us. Who will bother herself to indulge in the old processions of our ancestors.

When i was in my early teens, i heard it one night finally from my Dada Abu. He wasn't singing to anyone but to himself. He was laying alone on his cot, with his tv on, no one around him, he was shedding tears while talking, my dadi ammi died long ago.

I listened to him sitting behind him, keeping a safe distance to not let him know, i sat there crying. I listened a person who was recalling the time when he had to pack all his life in a suitcase to migrate.

I wonder why old grandparents are kept in the corner of our houses. They sometimes act like the children and we get annoyed. They can't rule anymore on the house that is filled with their own children. That's why they cry knowing their children who are busy enough to give them a company.

I wish no parent goes unhealthy to the bed or cot and cry all alone.

This trunk now lies in the corner of the rooftop of my uncle. Their home is empty now, no one lives there, but this rusted trunk, which holds a thousand stories inside it.

Inviting
@fatima66 @kunwal @arshani