Leaving India Read online

  Leaving India

  My Family's Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents

  Minal Hajratwala

  * * *

  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt • Boston New York

  2009

  * * *

  Copyright © 2009 Minal Hajratwala

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,

  write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.hmhbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hajratwala, Minal.

  Leaving India : my family's journey from five villages to five continents /

  Minal Hajratwala.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-0-618-25129-2 (alk. paper)

  1. Hajratwala, Minal. 2. Hajratwala, Minal—Family. 3. Gujarati

  Americans—Biography. 4. Children of immigrants—United States—

  Biography. 5. Immigrants—United States—Biography. 6. Gujaratis

  (Indic people)—Biography. 7. Immigrants—Biography. 8. India—

  Emigration and immigration—Psychological aspects. 9. East Indians—

  Migrations—Case studies. 10. Emigration and immigration—

  Psychological aspects—Case studies. 1. Title.

  E184.G84H35 2009

  973'.049140092—dc22 [B] 2008036079

  Printed in the United States of America

  Book design by Lisa Diercks

  Typeset in Minion

  Map by Jacques Chazaud

  DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Photographs on spine: TOP: The author at Disneyland in 1978,

  after her family moved from New Zealand to the United States.

  BOTTOM: Kaashi R. Narsey, the author's grandmother,

  with her middle son, Ranchhod, ca. 1936.

  * * *

  for my family

  past, present, future

  given & chosen

  * * *

  Contents

  Acknowledgments [>]

  A Note on the Text [>]

  1. Water [>]

  PART ONE: "COOLIES" [>]

  2. Cloth [>]

  3. Bread [>]

  PART TWO: SUBJECTS [>]

  4. Salt [>]

  5. Story [>]

  PART THREE: CITIZENS [>]

  6. Brains [>]

  7. Shelter [>]

  8. Body [>]

  PART FOUR: DESTINY [>]

  Chronology [>]

  Notes [>]

  Selected Bibliography [>]

  Family Trees [>]

  Map [>]

  Index [>]

  * * *

  Acknowledgments

  This project benefited deeply from the contributions of my parents: translators, guides, fans, and storytellers. I am grateful for their ongoing and unconditional love.

  To write a first book is to pay off many debts. I give thanks to the myriad beings of many realms who helped me grow into my voice:

  Almost every member of my extended family hosted, fed, or chauffeured me during the course of eight months of travel and research; they are in my hearts, and I hope they will forgive me for not naming them all individually. (Similarly, my deepest apologies to those whose names do not appear in the accompanying family tree. As it is meant to clarify relationships for the reader, the tree includes only those who appear by name in the book. Absolutely no slight or offense is intended!) A list of those who graciously submitted to interviews appears in the bibliography.

  I would be remiss not to thank personally Mukesh V. Khatri and his family in London, with whom I stayed an entire month; Dinesh and Kokila Kalidas, members of the motel diaspora, who arranged accommodations for me around the world; and Kiran C. Narsey, who generously allowed me to draw from his unpublished history of the Narseys firm. In the category of virtual family, Ahalya and Sarosh Katrak (Mumbai) and Swapna and Sanjeev Roy (Kolkata) hosted me for many research days and made necessary introductions.

  Many thanks to the scholars and sources who generously shared their expertise and pointed me toward resources I would not have discovered otherwise: Brij V. Lal and Padma Narsee, Australian National University, Canberra; Kanti Jinna, Canberra; Kalpana Hiralal, University of Durban-Westville; and Joy and Peter Brain, Durban. Radha Patel lent me a substantial portion of her desi diaspora library. Falu Bakrania allowed me to audit her "South Asian Diasporas" course at Stanford University, bringing me up to date on academic work in this area. Paul Tichmann assisted me in accessing the Kapitan file in the archives of Durban's local history museum housed in the Old City Courthouse. Additionally, librarians and library staffs around the world have my greatest appreciation, particularly at the National Archives of Fiji, National Archives of South Africa in Cape Town, Gandhi-Luthuli Documentation Centre at the University of Durban-Westville in South Africa, National Library of India in Kolkata, University of Pune, University of Mumbai at Kalina, British Library in London, Columbia University in New York, Stanford University in California, San Francisco Public Library, University of Michigan libraries including the Bentley Historical Library, Canton Public Library in Michigan, and Azaadville Public Library outside Johannesburg, South Africa.

  In India, research often seems possible only through acts of grace. In Mumbai, Sadanarth Bhatkal made it possible for me to conduct research at the Asiatic Society. In Ahmedabad, Rashmikant and Meghlata Mehta made the needed calls of introduction. Varsha Jani of the L. D. Institute of Indology in Ahmedabad kindly shared her thesis on the Solanki dynasty. Bhartiben Shelat and her staff at the Bhojai Library in Ahmedabad photocopied rare books and made it possible for me to view Solanki-era sculptures in the collection. V. P. Trivedi at the Gujarat Vishwakosh Trust gave me access to that encyclopedia publishing house's private library. At the Vadodara Central Library, Chandrakant P. Toraskar assisted me in finding Gujarati texts.

  When at last I let go of my geekish love of research in order to actually write, I was blessed to have the most capable of research assistants, Ahmad Musaddequr Rahman, who worked tirelessly for a year to track down government documents, articles, and elusive facts. Hedgebrook writer's colony provided me with the space, solitude, and support necessary for plumbing the mystical depths.

  My route to publishing was seamless and enjoyable, thanks to Sam Freedman, proposal midwife, and Anna Ghosh, agent extraordinaire. At Houghton Mifflin, I was blessed with an amazing team of editors. Eamon Dolan, Anjali Singh, Beth Burleigh Fuller, and Katya Rice each played a crucial role in championing and shaping the manuscript. I am so grateful for their kind, incisive encouragement and care.

  Personal thanks go to the members of my writing group, Pueng Vongs, Sandip Roy, and Daisy Hernandez, whose gentle, incisive critiques were a steady source of inspiration and improvement. Linda Gonzalez, Canyon Sam, Sunita Dhurandhar, and others wrote with me in community, easing the isolation of our writing lives. Lisa Margonelli, Nancy Netherland, Soo Mee Kwon, and Raoul V. Mowatt generously provided feedback on the manuscript. Coaches and teachers, formal and informal, offered wise counsel that guided me through every aspect of the process: Susan Griffin, Liu Hoi-Man, Kate Reber, Ryumon (Hilda Gutiérrez Baldoquín), and Little Clarence. Extra-special gratitude goes to Shaily Matani, who did all of the above and more; to Miriam Kronberg; and to Parijat Desai. Finally, George "Daddi G" Ophelia endured the trials of being a writer's partner with the compassionate patience of a Zen monk, and even served as research assistant from time to time; I was sustained throughout by her steady support. Of love, one can never say enough.

  * * *

  A Note on the Text
/>
  As a reader, I find it most inconvenient to be forever flipping to a glossary in the back of a book. When I find it necessary to use non-English words, therefore, I define them nearby, preferably in the very same sentence. A few basic terms recur throughout this book and are worth explaining at the outset:

  Gujarat is an old name for a region that has been apportioned many times over the last few centuries; I use it to refer to the area now within the modern state of Gujarat. I use southern Gujarat to refer to the southern portion of the modern state of Gujarat, from Vadodara to the Maharashtra border. Navsari and the other villages of my family fall in the southernmost part of this area. Prior to independence, one district of this region was named "South Gujarat," but I have avoided that capitalized term, as it is confusing in the modern context. I use the term British Gujarat to refer to the portion of modern Gujarat that fell within the British-ruled region called the Bombay Presidency, and which included the city of Surat.

  Gujarati refers to the language, people, and things of the Gujarat region. It can be used as either adjective or noun. Thus, my family is originally from Gujarat; we are Gujaratis, we eat Gujarati food, and the language we speak is Gujarati.

  Khatri refers to the clan—a subgroup of a caste, and the people and customs related to it—to which my family belongs. Other groups in other places throughout India also use the same word. In this book, it refers to the members of this group who originate in five particular villages in southern Gujarat.

  Politics has a tendency to muddle geography; unless otherwise noted, place names in India and elsewhere refer to modern boundaries, though the territories may have gone by other names during the period discussed. However, I use the variant of the name that is relevant for the time period in question; for example, for the modern city of Vadodara, previously known as Baroda, my spelling varies with the context.

  By Indian diaspora, I mean people who trace their roots to India, however that locale was defined at the time of emigration. Although certain early emigrants came from what is now Pakistan or Bangladesh, the task of statistically winnowing them from those who came from modern "India" seems both impossible and unnecessary, for in their own eyes they too came from India. After 1947, my Indian diaspora refers to these earlier emigrants, their descendants, and emigrants from independent India. It does not include, however, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who emigrated after independence; their stories must be considered in the light of their homelands' own divergent histories, a project that is beyond the scope of this book.

  Occasionally, when it is necessary to speak more broadly, I use the terms South Asia and South Asian diaspora. South Asia encompasses the land that falls in the modern nations of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Burma (Myanmar), Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. South Asian diaspora is thus an umbrella term for emigrants from this region and their descendants. I use it sparingly, aware of the tendency for the Indian experience to overshadow those of smaller groups.

  Finally, although sizable migrations have taken place within South Asia at various times (notably from India to Burma and Sri Lanka), I restrict my definition of the Indian diaspora to those who traveled outside South Asia. Re-migration from neighboring nations is frequent and difficult to track; to include these migrants might artificially inflate the diaspora figures, and I have chosen a conservative, if somewhat arbitrary, approach.

  When rendering Indian languages in English script, scholars use diacritical marks to distinguish a hard t from a soft t, a long i from a short i, and so on. I find these marks minimally helpful for pronunciation, maximally confusing to the casual reader, and most bothersome to the noble typesetter and copyeditor, in whose good graces it is always wise to remain. So I prefer a phonetic approach. There is one significant vowel distinction, which I render as follows: aa for the long a (pronounced as in father), and a for the short, neutral a (as in elephant). For proper names, however, I follow common or traditional usage. Thus I write Navsari, Gujarat, Hajratwala, although these are pronounced Navsaari, Gujaraat, Hajratwaalaa. (For the very curious, Minal is pronounced MEE-nalr; it rhymes, roughly, with venal, not banal.)

  My family speaks a village form of Gujarati, particular to our region and caste. Many of my interviews took place entirely or largely in this Gujarati. (Translations are mine, except as noted.) Speakers of a more formal version of the language may thus find "errors," as I have tried to render our folk speech faithfully, rather than "correctly."

  Similarly, all beliefs, rituals, and superstitions described herein are particular to my people and, in some cases, only to my family. Despite the efforts of various sorts of charlatans, don't let anyone tell you they have the "correct" version of Hinduism. Hinduism is a vast, diverse religion; nothing depicted here (or anywhere) should be taken as a universal Hindu or Indian principle, for there is no such thing.

  Finally, the reader should know that this is a work of nonfiction. I have been asked frequently whether I am fictionalizing, and the answer is no; whether I have changed people's names, and the answer is—except in one case, noted in the text—no; whether I am breaking or am tempted to break confidences, and the answer is no. The journalist in me is scrupulous about such matters, and no "poetic license" has been taken. Those family members who are main subjects and were alive at the time of the completion of the manuscript have had an opportunity to read their sections in advance and to correct matters of fact. All remaining errors are, of course, mine.

  In rendering dialogue, I use quotation marks for words I have heard personally; some are translated by me. For bits of conversation that were related to me by one or more people who were present, I use the European system of dashes to introduce speech; the reader should take these words as conveying the sense, but perhaps not the exact text, of the conversation, which was sometimes being recalled many decades afterward. In this category, too, are the family letters rendered in Chapter 6 (Brains); the letters themselves, alas, no longer exist. For conversations described to me by someone who was not present, I do not attempt to quote directly. For internal thoughts or very lengthy anecdotes that were voiced in an interview with me, I use the person's exact words (sometimes in translation) in italics; otherwise, I do not attempt to reconstruct internal dialogue.

  This book was eight years in the making, and to write it I interviewed nearly one hundred family members, friends, and community sources. I would not intentionally compromise their truth. Where their memories contradict one another, I have either made the differences transparent, or I have not included the incidents in question. In my heart the journalist and the poet hold hands and walk into the dark, each with her own methods, her own sticks and tools. It is for others to say how "literary" or "creative" they find this text; for myself, I am comfortable with the knowledge that it is, to the best of my capacity, simply nonfiction.

  And inasmuch as the house of history is, like the house of dreams and other things of that sort, ruinous, apologies must be made for discrepancies.

  —Abdul Qadir Badauni

  * * *

  On the sixth night Vidhaataa, Goddess of

  Destiny, takes up what she finds below the

  sleeping infant: awl and palm leaf under a string

  hammock, or ballpoint pen and blue-lined paper

  under a crib from the baby superstore.

  She eats the offering: sweets, coins.

  She writes.

  Reviewing the accumulated karma of past lives,

  enumerating the star-given obstacles of this one,

  she writes.

  And what Destiny writes, neither human nor god

  may put asunder.

  1. Water

  The remnants of the Solanki dynasty were scattered over the land.

  —James Tod, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, 1829

  "THE LAKE OF NAILS is where your history begins," Bimal Barot tells us.

  Dust filters through the half-light of afternoon. I am slightly nauseated, two days of traveler's sickness
and a journey through winding alleyways—not to mention several countries, by now—having taken their toll. After interviewing relatives at half a dozen stops on my forty-thousand-mile-plus air ticket, piecing together the story of our family's migrations, I have come to India: to find whatever fragments remain here, to trace the shape of our past and learn how it shadows or illuminates our present.

  Written records about private lives, though, are sparse. In English they come only from encounters with the colonial bureaucracy, usually at or after the moment of emigration. Before that, any information is kept in Gujarati, the language of our region, and in the Indian manner—which is to say haphazardly. Historical property records are inaccessible, but a date engraved on a house tells when it was built. Birth certificates may not exist, but an old lady's memory links a child's birth with a cousin's wedding with an eclipse of the moon.

  But there is one objective Gujarati source, a collection of books filled with personal data. In the time before widespread literacy, one caste had access to the written word. Others, if they could afford it, paid these learned men to keep track of—or spruce up, if need be—their personal histories.

  So I find myself sitting, with my parents, in the home of our clan's genealogist.

  ***

  In a way it is astonishing that we have arrived here at all, on the strength of a name and a vague address given to me in Fiji weeks earlier by a distant uncle, who last used the information several decades ago:

  Behind the Temple of Justice

  Vadodara

  Gujarat

  INDIA

  Vadodara is busy and industrial; home to 1.4 million, it is the third largest city in the state of Gujarat. Its air, which these days is a soup of diesel and factory fumes, was once so fragrant that it drew vacationers of the highest rank. The Prince of Wales, visiting in 1876, enjoyed the flowered breezes of the Garden Palace as a guest of the local maharaja—a kept man of the British Empire, who despite liberal inclinations squandered his people's money on luxuries and on making a good impression. For the English prince's visit, the maharaja ordered an honorary parade of soldiers, elephants with parasols, drums, spears, flowing robes, and horses kicking up dust. In this manner also, more pomp than substance, the maharaja ruled over the five villages where my ancestors lived.