Though the Hindu Sindhi migration was a united move, the story of each individual was different.
There were parts of my grandparents’ stories, namely the emotions and worries, that overlapped.
But each one of them grew up with a different set of parents, were of different ages when they were forced to make this drastic move, and had different attachments to their homeland of Sindh.
They aspired the same thing : to survive.
But how they went about doing that distinguished them.
My other grandfather, my mom’s dad or my Nana, for example, had grown up in the city of Larkana with a family highly involved in Sindh's government and India’s fight for freedom. His father and uncle, both freedom fighters, worked alongside Gandhi and Nehru in a party that aimed to gain independence from Britain. In fact, they would “volunteer to go to jail sometimes to inspire a passion for independence.”
So, my grandfather learned of his people’s struggle from a very young age.
But when the partition happened, the struggle was no longer India vs. Britain but Hindus vs. Muslims.
A struggle that escalated quickly.
One day he heard that “a Hindu doctor was killed by a Muslim at a railroad station.” This led to the discovery of a list of 40 prominent Sindhi Hindu leaders some Muslims were targeting to kill.
His uncle was one of them.
So, my grandfather, his mom, his uncle, and his five brothers left “their property and furniture and cars and all behind” and came to Delhi via ship. Meanwhile, his father remained as a homeopathic, and dearly loved, doctor in Larkana with plans to keep the house occupied until things settled down and the rest of his family could return.
But, things did not settle down.
“30,000 Hindus were killed.”
They never returned.
Within a few months, his father eventually joined them in Delhi and soon started struggling to find a job.
That’s right, a doctor, someone known to have such a safe career choice, a job that can always rely on the fact that this world will have sick people, struggled to find a job.
How?
Because there were cultural barriers.
He didn’t speak Hindi, only Sindhi, and his style of diagnosing and treating worked with his fellow Sindhi villagers but didn't gel well with the Marati-speaking locals. So when he got a job at a clinic in Bombay, practicing medicine didn’t really feel the same.
In Bombay, their entire family stayed in 1 room.
“We found it very hard to survive," so they headed to Kalyan for the refugee camps. For a while, things got easier- they had a tent to stay in but more importantly Sindhis to live beside who shared their experiences. His father again felt like the doctor he used to be; getting along with and comforting his patients who understood him.
Then “one day in June it starting raining.The water started coming in the tent and all of our baggage was getting flooded.”
“We didn't know what to do.”
Luckily, a nearby school was on summer vacation and there was space in a classroom for their family to stay. They were not, however, alone; there were at least 10 other families sharing that one room.
Three or four days later, they moved to a new place which was even more cramped. They moved to the vacated military barracks, just like his future wife, and remained.
250 people to one barrack.
For two years they remained like that; crowded, but surviving.
Finally, they acquired a private room to stay in. This is also where my grandfather stayed while he completed high school and eventually college, 30 miles away from home, which was free based on a sort of academic scholarship.
Knowing that his “father was still struggling with his income”, he never spent a single cent in college. He would wake up early, take the train to college, come back, eat dinner, and walk to his father’s clinic at around 9 pm to study in the light as their house had no electricity.
There was no spending half your Convenience store points on a late-night sugar craving or grabbing dinner with friends after class. He went to school, studied, and came back.
No money spent in between. Nothing.
Eventually, he would go on to becoming a captain in the Merchant Navy and serve as an officer on ships for many years until he finally climbed all the way up to the status of Chief Officer.
During his years studying, he was often bullied. As a man with very little in his pocket and no knowledge of English, he stood out from his private-school, English-speaking peers.
He was different. And so he was picked on.
Nonetheless, this education led to a stable job.
It was a great “relief” that he “no longer had to depend on his father for money.”
Perhaps an equally as important a gift from this job was a source of hope; one of his passengers, an Anglo-American, inquired about Hinduism. My grandfather had little knowledge of the subject but told the passenger that there was a Ramakrishna center, a spiritual center, in a part of Mumbai where they would be arriving soon.
When the passenger returned to the ship, he asked my grandfather if he wanted to read the book Karma Yoga by Swami Vevikananda and my grandfather said “no harm.”
Reading it was “very soothing. I felt that things can get better.”
“It changed my perspective and my life.”
The countless number of dark times, of days when they didn’t know if they would make to the next, no longer seemed like they would last forever.
Things could change.
And if you ever meet my grandfather today he will often be next to a spiritual book with a calm, assured smile on his face.
As a Merchant Navy lecturer, which he became soon after my mother was born, he was to travel to many different countries including Singapore and Malaysia.
In Malaysia, my grandfather sought counsel in his spiritual guru asking if America was the right move for him.
And with the guru's blessing, he, his wife, and three daughters left for Los Angeles.
Though his naval license wasn’t valid in America, he worked in clerical positions and eventually got a chance to use his expertise again as anti-pollution ship inspector.
Looking back, my grandfather shared that his life was full of change.
And this is something we should all prepare for, he shares.
Whether it was changing jobs, moving to different countries, traveling miles to school, or learning different languages, my grandfather survived.
From his story, I’ve come to understand that the sooner we can hop on board with the fact that change will be a constant in our lives, the more hopeful our lives will seem. It all rests in our attitude.
“Life is only temporary.”
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