REVIEW
Leaving India: My Family's Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents
Minal Hajratwala,
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Rs 1,055
Blurb
An inspiring personal saga that explores the collisions of choice and history that led one unforgettable family
to become immigrants. In this groundbreaking work, Minal Hajratwala mixes history, memoir, and reportage to explore the questions facing not only her own Indian family but that of every immigrant: Where did we come from? Why did we leave? What did we give up and gain in the process? Beginning with her great-grandfather Motiram's original flight from British-occupied India to Fiji, where he rose from tailor to department store mogul, Hajratwala follows her ancestors across the twentieth century to explain how they
came to be spread across five continents and nine countries.
to become immigrants. In this groundbreaking work, Minal Hajratwala mixes history, memoir, and reportage to explore the questions facing not only her own Indian family but that of every immigrant: Where did we come from? Why did we leave? What did we give up and gain in the process? Beginning with her great-grandfather Motiram's original flight from British-occupied India to Fiji, where he rose from tailor to department store mogul, Hajratwala follows her ancestors across the twentieth century to explain how they
came to be spread across five continents and nine countries.
As she delves into the relationship between personal choice and the great historical forces — British colonialism, apartheid,Gandhi's Salt March, and American immigration policy — that helped to shape her family's experiences, Hajratwala brings to light for the very first time the story of the Indian diaspora.
This luminous narrative by a child of immigrants offers a deeply intimate look at what it means to call more than one part of the world home. Leaving India should find its place alongside Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family and Daniel Mendelsohn's The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million.
Minal Hajratwala's evocatively written personal saga, Leaving India, explores the myriad journeys and trajectories of the Indian diaspora through the stories of her own extended family. Descended from the Solanki dynasty of warrior-kings who ruled Western India until they were vanquished, the family became weavers on the advice of a benevolent goddess. And passed “quiet lives” in a clutch of villages in the Gujarat region.
Opportunities were scarce in the villages of British India. Hajratwala dismally notes that in 1909, the town of Navsari in Gujarat had 600 liquor stores and just one school. The migration began in the aftermath of the great famine of 1899, and the family found homes in places as far flung as Fiji, South Africa, Australia and America.
Hajratwala's great-grandfather, Motiram, was the first to leave. Starting out as a tailor in Fiji, he rose to become a retail store tycoon with hard work, endurance and an innate skill for enterprise. Over time he brought his relatives over – first the men, then the women – to assist in expanding his interests. And so the family's exodus began.
The tale is knit together with India as the focal point and the different ports of disembarkation as nodes which are offered up as stories in themselves. The accounts of her relatives are linked to the particular set of themes that the Indian diaspora engaged with at the time.
Opportunities were scarce in the villages of British India. Hajratwala dismally notes that in 1909, the town of Navsari in Gujarat had 600 liquor stores and just one school. The migration began in the aftermath of the great famine of 1899, and the family found homes in places as far flung as Fiji, South Africa, Australia and America.
Hajratwala's great-grandfather, Motiram, was the first to leave. Starting out as a tailor in Fiji, he rose to become a retail store tycoon with hard work, endurance and an innate skill for enterprise. Over time he brought his relatives over – first the men, then the women – to assist in expanding his interests. And so the family's exodus began.
The tale is knit together with India as the focal point and the different ports of disembarkation as nodes which are offered up as stories in themselves. The accounts of her relatives are linked to the particular set of themes that the Indian diaspora engaged with at the time.
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