Aman’s Grandfather’s ‘tawa’: an Indian cooking pan, handmade in Letchworth Garden City Collection (Letchworth Garden City)
This tawa (an Indian cooking pan) was handmade by Gurdev Singh Shergill out of steel from the K&L factory in Letchworth where he worked. It brought familiarity and comfort to a community starting new lives in a different country.
This is a cooking pan called a tawa (or tava) which is used to make chapattis, a type of flatbread. It was hand made by Gurdev Singh Shergill, who moved from Punjab, India, to Hertfordshire in 1962, part of a new community of people who came to the UK after World War II to work in factories.
Gurdev worked at Kryn and Lahy (K&L) in Letchworth, helping to make cranes. His earnings supported his family back home in India, including his father, wife, seven sisters, and two sons. Gurdev lived in crowded, cold houses with other Indian workers, rotating shifts so that some worked while others slept. They cooked meals like daal and chapattis, that brought the comforts of home to their unfamiliar new surroundings.
In Letchworth in the 1960s, tawas weren’t available to buy in any shops, so Gurdev used steel from the K&L factory to make this pan. So it isn’t just a functional cooking pan - it represents the journey of hardworking immigrants who helped shape their new community, just as Gurdev shaped this pan from K&L steel. Today tawas are easy to find and purchase, but this one is a rare, handmade piece of history.