We, the first-generation migrants, always feel that a part of our soul is missing.
Its absence eludes us initially amidst the hustle of establishing a livelihood in the foreign land we've adopted as home, where we immerse ourselves in adapting to new ways of life. But this emptiness gradually becomes visible when we have achieved whatever we wanted to achieve, built a life for ourselves, and looked around only to find we are alone.
I started realizing this in my late forties, a period when my parents were still alive and still back in India.
The pain of leaving my parent’s home and the country of my birth became more intense with each visit, as I realized, my parents were getting older and older and the limited time I was spending with them wasn’t enough. It dawned on me that, I needed to start documenting the narrative of their lives for the sake of my children and their children.
I want my children to know where their mother grew up and who her parents were and where they came from. I want them to learn what they went through in their lives. And if the life was any harder or easier for them?
16. Audio Recording Deck
When my aunt came back to India after spending three years in Canada (her husband studied there for his doctorate), she brought back with her an audio recording deck along with many other things.
On this deck she recorded my grandfather reciting the names of his forefathers for up to ten generations. This tape recorder doesn’t exist anymore (this image is of a replica) but attached to this image is the history of my ancestors.
My aunt migrated to the United States in the late eighties, almost at the same time as I migrated to Australia. But we kept in touch and over the years she shared with me many anecdotes of our ancestors.
I pieced together the narrative of my father’s side of the family using those anecdotes and the stories recounted by my father when he (and my mother) migrated to Australia in 2008. While there are no means of verifying these accounts, I consider it worthwhile to document them, as they collectively form a compelling depiction of my father's side of the family.
My father’s side of the family hails from Godhpur, a village near Sialkcot, now in Pakistan. According to my aunt, our forebears came to the village and settled there during the mid-seventeenth century.
“Came from where?” I asked her.
“From Middle-East, I guess.”
“Why Middle-East? Why not another part of North India.”
“Because we are Aryan and according to historians, Aryans came to India from the Middle East.”
“But that migration happened thousands of years ago, not in the mid-seventeenth century.”
She had no answer.
“How are you so sure of that date,” I insisted.
"Because the date of their arrival is etched into a brick in the wall of the drinking-water well they got excavated in Godhpur. And, it was 1668."
I am not sure about the current existence of that well in Godhpur, let alone the presence of that specific brick, but documenting this story remains valuable as it serves as a prelude to the other narratives I am about to share.
17. A Broken Brick Wall
In late May 2016, while my father was recuperating in the hospital after an operation, I chose to take him down memory lane.
“Do you recall anything from your ancestral home?” I asked him gently when he was in a good mood.
“Yes,” he mumbled, “A lot. I used to visit there during summer vacations.”
“What do you remember?”
“There was a big boundary wall surrounding the property, the central gate was so vast that a horse cart could pass through it.”
“Was it a mud wall or a brick wall?”
“A brick wall.”
“What else do you remember.”
“There was a Peepal tree in the compound with a platform around it where people who came to see my uncle would sit and wait.
“Why would they come to see him?"
"Because he was an advocate in Lahore court. People from nearby villages would approach him, seeking his representation."
For the next few days, I surfed the internet searching for any images of an old haveli in Godhpur. To my surprise, I stumbled upon one of a broken boundary wall of a haveli that resembled what my father described.
While this isn't the exact image of my ancestral home, it serves as a reference point for other memories. One of them is that my grandfather’s grandfather was a scholar. He wrote several books in Persian. Their haveli boasted a wall adorned with books handwritten by him. My aunt mentioned that the room was adorned with wall-to-wall Persian carpet. Another picture I discovered aided in bringing this room to life in my imagination.
I find credence in this tale, considering the prevalent scholarly background among my ancestors. My Persian scholar great-great-grandfather had four sons, one pursued a career as a civil surgeon, another as a civil engineer, the third as an officer in the railways, and the fourth, my great-grandfather was a District Forest Officer, the first Indian to earn a degree from the esteemed Dehradun College of Forestry.
Such academic achievements wouldn’t have been possible without the foundation laid by their well-educated father.
18. The Red Journal
My aunt kept telling me stories and I kept recording them in this red journal.
“Did you know my grandfather (my great-grandfather) was hired by Maharaja Harisingh to formulate plans for the conservation of his kingdom's forests?” said my aunt on one occasion.
“Wasn’t he the District Forest Officer, employed by the British?” I asked.
“He was. But after a disagreement with a British Officer, he resigned from his position. His competence was so renowned that the Maharaja of Jammu & Kashmir personally summoned him and offered him the job.” she said.
“Once, Bauji (my grandfather) went to Kashmir,” my aunt continued, “There, he visited one of the forest offices where his father had worked, informing the person in charge about his father's past association with the place. The officer invited him to the main office. Pointing towards a large frame, he remarked, ‘Look at it. These are his hand-drawn plans for this specific forest, which we are still following.’”
19. Genealogy Record Book
In 1971, during a holiday trip to Kashmir with my brother, on our way from Srinagar to Pahalgam, we made a stop at the Anantnag temple at a place called Mattan. There, my father took us to meet our genealogist. I distinctly recall encountering a middle-aged man, dressed in a white dhoti and a long shirt, near the temple Sarovar. Upon learning our family name, he promptly recognized it and invited us to his office.
His office was a small room furnished with a large table and a few wooden chairs. The walls were lined with wooden racks holding heavy, old, handbound manuals (much like the image above). Retrieving one of them, the genealogist spent a few minutes perusing the pages until he located our family's record. My father had our names and dates of birth officially recorded.
Later, I learned that our genealogy is traditionally documented by 'pandas'— Kashmiri Pandits — tasked with maintaining genealogical records, a practice dating back centuries. In essence, our family history is meticulously recorded there. However, given the turbulent events surrounding the massacre of Kashmiri Pandits during the 1989 riots, there is no guarantee that our genealogical tree has endured.
20. A Tanga
Whenever I spot a tanga (horse carriage) in India, I am reminded of a story my aunt told me of my grandfather’s brother. A distinguished advocate in the Lahore High Court, he once purchased a brand-new mare for his tanga. On a fateful day, he raced the tanga alongside a railway line, challenging a train. The new and physically robust mare held her own for many kilometers but eventually succumbed to extreme exhaustion, collapsing on the spot. The loss of that mare cost the family 500 rupees. To put the sum into perspective, one could have purchased 1.8 kg of gold with that money.
21. Bricks Factory
This story revolves around a remarkable woman in my family lineage. Whenever I see a brick factory in India, I am reminded of this story I heard from my aunt again.
My great-great-grandfather’s brother, who served as a civil surgeon, was married twice. His second wife, known for her generosity, was called Shani. My ancestors were proprietors of a brick factory.
One day, chaos ensued when workers from a kiln rushed home, alarmed that it was on the brink of collapsing due to overheating. With none of the men present, Shani took charge. Consulting the workers, she learned that pouring a substantial amount of sand on the kiln could absorb the heat and salvage the structure, preventing the loss of thousands of bricks.
However, obtaining the required sand at short notice seemed nearly impossible. Undeterred, my great-great-grandmother issued a directive: if anyone in the village had sand outside their house (typically used for construction), take half of it without seeking permission and transport it to the kiln. No need to say that she saved the day.
At the time of the Indo-Pak partition, almost everyone who lived in Punjab had numerous harrowing stories to tell that left lasting impacts on them. Fortunately, my grandparents had relocated to Amritsar well before the partition, sparing them from the brutal massacres that unfolded.
My grandfather's elder brother had already passed away, and his only daughter was married and residing in Bombay, where his wife had also moved.
I have no information about what happened to my grandfather’s only sister and her husband. However, their son successfully crossed the border and was provided with a house instead of their home in Pakistan.
To the best of my knowledge, no one in our immediate family fell victim to the massacres that followed the British departure from India. Despite the staggering estimation of about 2 million casualties during the partition, our family was fortunate.
I hope this tapestry of stories provides "roots" for my children. I also hope they can now envision the lives of their great-grandparents and the place they came from. I wanted them to see it through my eyes, recognizing that my narrative is intricately woven with theirs—the same way theirs will be woven with mine.
That’s all from me this week.
See you next Friday.
Lucky you to be able to back so many generations. On my father’s side I can only back to my Great Grandfather, on his mothers side I can go back to a Great Great Grandfather, and in my mothers side of the family I can go back to early 1700’s on one side and mid 1800’s on the other. Even with that I don’t have anywhere near as interesting stories as yours, or perhaps I do and that is why I wrote so much about them. Founding fathers, businessmen, convicts, land owners, gold miners, local community advancement, there certainly were plenty of newspaper articles about them. Loving your stories, you know how to make them so readable
This is beautiful, Neera!