I rarely think about how I got to be here- in America, with successful parents, a roof over my head, and solid education.
My story in America is 22 years old and it consists of 2 major moves- one from Kansas to Tampa and the other temporarily from Tampa to Boston for college. And these were moves my family or I had chosen.
They were voluntary. They were wanted.
But, how I came to be born in America is a completely different story.
A story of unwanted change, of discrimination in education, of traveling 100 miles to get just enough money to secure a home.
It is the story of my Sindhi grandparents-- my grandparents who would have never imagined that they would end up in America with such a privileged life.
All four of my grandparents were born in Sindh, a state in northwest India with a large population of Muslims and a smaller population of Hindus, in the 1930s. Sindh as well as the rest of pre-partition India was ruled by the British Empire.
Then, in 1947, India finally got independence and underwent a partition that divided the country into modern day India, commonly affiliated with Hindus, and Pakistan which is commonly affiliated with Muslisms.
And Sindh, though it contained a significant Hindu population, became part of Pakistan.
So my grandfather, Chain Kotwani, in his early teens at the time, was forced out of what he called home without saying bye to his friends, without visiting his favorite places one last time, without any closure.
“He had many Muslim friends,” my grandma shared, “but after the partition, they just stopped talking to each other.”
And so the fight between Muslims and Hindus ensued in India and Pakistan alike “with the result of killing a few lakh [100,000] people on either side.”
Leaving chaos for, unknowingly, more chaos, my grandfather, his 3 brothers, 3 sisters, and their parents took off to India.
And it took days.
When asked what their plan was he simply replied, “if I stayed in Pakistan I would have to either become a Muslim, be killed, or live like a third-grade citizen.”
Essentially, his family and many other Sindhis felt like they really had no choice; in order to live a life of even the most moderate quality, a life that would accept their status as Hindu Sindhis, they needed to get out of there.
They needed to find a place to call home again.
And for my grandfather’s father, this was terribly hard because he was leaving a job that he loved behind. For years he was depressed, but again, that didn’t stop his momentum; he kept moving, trying new jobs, one in Calcutta, one in Bombay, and getting his family into the best state possible.
It wasn’t enjoyable, but it had to happen.
Unfortunately, at the young age of 51, he died, and my grandfather, just 17 at the time, was left to take care of his entire family with just 46 rupees in his pocket.
17 is a highschooler with a fresh driver’s license with maybe some thoughts about what colleges seem like a good fit.
Or, at least, that’s what 17 is in America.
Back in Bombay, with little recovery time, however, my grandfather started shifting his focus on providing for his family.
Without a college degree, not to mention the hostility and discrimination many Sindhis faced from local Indian residents bitter about their presence in a country they weren’t really “a part of”, earning money was by no means easy.
“So I worked odd jobs. And I had to travel five, six hundred miles to earn this money. Bringing goods from one place to another.”
And there was no standard for pay. Oftentimes one hour of labor equated to just “one rupee.”
At most that would have been the equivalent of $0.33.
“We were struggling in our own manner,” but, “we had to think about the future, so everybody took all kinds of jobs no matter how big he was.”
Again, all these events - the departure from Sindh, the moving to Bombay, the being the breadwinner and leader of the family at an age most would count as part of their innocent years- were unexpected.
He had no plan.
He was “just trying to find out how to settle down because behind every man was a family and children. We had to think about that.”
And with this philosophy and the harder part, the commitment to it, my grandfather graduated from a newly-formed all Sindhi college in an area called Churchgate in Bombay, received a BA in Economics and a Bachelor’s in Commerce, and got a job as a respectable salesman manager earning enough money to live a comfortably.
$0.33 an hour to a stable job giving him enough money to raise and educate his children. A true transformation.
“Somewhere in between” the 40 years of not knowing where life was going or how he was going to get through it, “there was marriage and a family and taking care of their well being.”
And then came their last major move, the one that gave me the life I know today- the move to America in 1994.
America “became everybody’s dream.”
“There were opportunities.”
And, finally, life decided that my grandparents had been through enough. They arrived in a country, my future home, that was “welcoming” and “a government with rules and laws we complied with.”
With all this change, the question of assimilation comes to play; did it become easier over time? Did they lose parts of themselves?
“Well, it was gradual.”
When they arrived as refugees in Bombay, the hostility they faced was quite harsh initially. But with many of their fellow Sindhis taking the leap of faith to India alongside them “a new culture was being born.”
So here and there they started to pick up parts of different cultures all the while remembering their roots.
And in America,“a country made by all different kinds of people,” they never felt isolated or alienated.
They adopted the “broadmindedness of America,” and spent the remainder of their lives here watching their two children develop comfortable lives and raising their four grandchildren.
All this owing to the “mountainous struggle” my grandfather claims he really doesn’t "know how they got through.”
Although home will always be Sindh to my grandfather, being in America right now has made him “very happy considering all the problems faced.”
The reason you were born into the life you have now, privileges and all, is in large part due to your elder relatives and ancestors.
So learn about them.
Learn about their history. Your history.
You wouldn’t be here without them.
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