How one brown suitcase crossed the Indian Ocean, then a continent, and came to hold every photograph the family owns. Ba wrote each address it lived at inside the lid.
The story
“It went on the ship in 1952 with everything she owned in it — three saris, her mother's brass lota, and enough thepla for the crossing. It came off at Mombasa with the thepla gone and a cousin's wedding photograph in its place, which nobody has ever explained.”
“In 1972 it was the one bag she carried on the plane herself. The customs man in London asked her to open it, saw what was inside, and closed it again without a word. It was all photographs by then.”
How it came down to us
Nikhil was four on the ship and tells this every Diwali; his daughter Priya wrote it down in 2018. The addresses in the lid — Khadia, Parklands, Loughborough Road — are in Ba's handwriting.
What people disagree about
Nikhil claims to remember dolphins from the ship. His sister points out that he also claims to remember being born.