Seven years ago, Samrata Salwan Diwan started working on a passion project: putting together her family’s history in a book for her maternal grandmother. “Growing up, my grandparents would recount captivating tales about their lives, spanning their childhood, the ancestral home, friends, cousins, and the challenges of forced migration during Partition. My paternal great-grandfather and the family, compelled by the events of Partition, had to leave Peshawar and move to Delhi as refugees,” she says, adding how the project led her to create similar projects for others.
A year later, New-Delhi based Samrata launched Family Fables Co., a publishing company that helps individuals, families and institutions document everything from family histories to recipes. “It’s disheartening that many of these stories are gradually fading with time. We often underestimate the value of our experiences and, on a broader scale, our family histories. While there is an inherent curiosity about our roots, we sometimes find ourselves unsure of which questions to ask,” adds Samrata who holds a postgraduate degree in International Relations from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
