A Place Within (45 page)

I tell the woman I am looking for a place called Gadhada, where my ancestor came from. This does not surprise her; others have come by with similar requests. This must be Gir Gadhada, she says; the other Gadhada is Swami na Gadhada, where the Swami Narayan people have their headquarters.

I learn that there is a community policy to move from villages to larger centres, for social reasons like marriages, for educational opportunities, and for safety. There is also a trend for young men to go away to Kinshasa, exactly what I was told in Dhroll, which I think of now as Somani Town. These young men set themselves up overseas and return like big shots, the woman says; but they also send for other youths from the area and employ them. History repeating itself, for this is exactly what the people who left a hundred or more years ago for Zanzibar and Mombasa did, though the east coast of Africa was not a desperate place, as the Congo is now. In Zanzibar and Mombasa, communities were established, traditions preserved and developed, generations progressed. These new entrepreneurs will probably head off somewhere else from Africa.

Gir Gadhada, my ancestor Nanji Lalji’s birthplace, is near a town called Una, which is where we proceed. The woman says she will make a phone call about us to the office in Una, where there is a khano.

In Una, a market centre for the local villages, it is easy to find the local Khojas. We ask for the khano at a shop, are pointed to a boy selling fruit at a stand. He is the mukhi’s brother’s son, a young man who has just finished school, he informs us, after the initial greetings. Behind him is the mukhi’s fruit and vegetable store. The young man tells us to go straight, turn right, then right again at the “vadalo,” which turns out to be a large banyan tree.

The mukhi’s house is across from the khano, which is represented as elsewhere by a large gate. A quiet place, closed, unprepossessing. There is an entrance across the street that leads into a yard, at the end of which is the open door to the mukhi’s house. We have disturbed his siesta, and he doesn’t look very happy, the first time I have seen such a reaction from a Gujarati Khoja, let alone a mukhi. There is a daughter of about eighteen around, the mukhi himself is seated on a chair. The house looks prosperous, a new-looking television on a stand is showing a movie. We are given tea and uncomfortably try to make conversation. Yes, he says, there is a village called Gadhada…Very soon a well-dressed young man in his twenties arrives and rescues us from our ordeal; he is the local Khoja administrator contacted by the woman in Junagadh regarding my inquiries concerning Nanji Lalji Bhimani. This is a good pretext for departure and we hasten out with the young man to his office.

He opens the khano gate and we enter a paved courtyard above which stands a quite magnificent structure. Not the Taj Mahal, of course, we are in a village. But the contrast with the outside, and with the house we have just departed, is striking. It is a tall, two-storey building, with arched doorways and decorative details. There are two flights of stairs, one for the men, the other for the women. We take the former to the second floor, where the congregation hall is, as well as the office.

The young man tells me, when we are alone in the office (my two companions, “outsiders,” are waiting downstairs), that he has taken a census of the community in the region. He shows me his results, tabulated in a ledger-style book: names, numbers of persons in each family, levels of education. A full report on each family, the last names, I notice, all with the typical ending,–
ani
. He travels by motorbike regularly to the villages, collects his data in Gujarati and enters it into a computer, also in Gujarati. His salary is three thousand rupees and is hardly enough; in Bombay, he is
aware, the salary is five times as much for the same job. He has a wife, and a child in nursery school. He confirms that Khojas are moving to the larger centres, and that many young men are going to Africa. He has his own passport prepared. I ask him about the recent violence. He says Khojas were spared personal attacks, but property was burnt down. A Khoja boy was surrounded at a bus station by a mob. But they spared him when he identified himself as a Khoja, walking him home just to make sure he was who he said he was. In the Muslim area two Hindus were killed. But, he is convinced, as are many in Gujarat, that there is an active campaign to keep the Muslims economically backward. After every so-called riot they are set back.

He comes with us to Gir Gadhada, leading the way on his motorbike with us following in our taxi.

We arrive at a large, rather messy-looking village: untidy narrow dirt roads, abandoned dwellings. There are a cobbler shop, two tailors, some clothing stores, a barber, a provision store. The khano has been recently closed, the blue door firmly padlocked. It seems to be a large building. There are one or two Khoja families around, including one with a provision store, attended by a young woman. We inquire about local history at a few shops and are directed to the home of someone called Baap Bhai, a turbaned, mustachioed man—at not much more than sixty hardly the aged person we expect, but very much with the bearing of a chief. We are in a courtyard, entered from the street, and there are two women about, one of whom is Baap Bhai’s mother. There is a low bench-swing on the verandah, on which, at his invitation, I come and sit next to him. He can’t tell me much except that this was a Khoja village once. The village accent is caustic, and the speech fast, not so easy to follow, but his manner is kindly. His people, the Vanyas, had come later and been welcomed, he says. When he was young he had heard of a place called Nanji Khoja’s house, from where, presumably, this Nanji Khoja had departed. He could tell
the history of his own community up to ten generations, but how could he tell mine? he asks. Why, I ask myself, could my people not preserve records like their neighbours did? Could it be due to the initial conversion, the first exile, as I see it, then the consequent uncertainties? I can hardly assume that Nanji Khoja was my ancestor Nanji Lalji; perhaps he was, perhaps not. But that Nanji and Vassanji are Khoja names in this village does not lack significance. Gujarati names are regional, communal, generational.

It pleases Baap Bhai no end that I have returned to the village of my ancestors. After tea and water, we go to what looks like a square or crossroads and sit down outside a shop, on chairs brought out for us. People gather, drawn to the strangers. Kids play around. A bearded man in a green shirt goes inside his house, returns wearing a new white shirt for the benefit of the camera. There is talk of Nanji Khoja: people point to where the shop had been, but are vague. Nobody seems to know exactly. The village had been smaller once, and all the Khojas, it appears, had farmed and run shops.

There is no Kunta Kinte moment; I did not come looking for one. If there ever was one close to it, it was when I first stepped on Indian soil, undertook that quick tour of the country that began with a train ride, the Puri Express.

It is dusk when we return to Una, which, like all Indian towns at night, thrums with busy life—noisy, dusty, brilliantly lit, people out to buy their necessities. We pause at a food stand for a meal. The khano is in progress; something is being sung that we can hear all the way down here, and it sounds nice, but I can’t recognize it. We have omelettes and scrambled eggs made for us by a Makran—a Baluchi whose family came here some generations back. His way of making scrambled eggs is to put oil and onions into his large pan, throw in red chili powder and salt to create a stinging mist, to which he is immune, then add more spices and mix them in before adding
a whole egg and scrambling it. The omelettes are cooked similarly.

We depart for Baroda via Bhavnagar on the coastal road. Our young driver, who may soon be off to Dar es Salaam, is as reckless as ever, the music on his tape a hip, modern mix, very much popular with the young, though he does not realize that its main refrain is a line from a well-known Sufi qawali, an ode to Imam Ali. The night is thick and dark, lit periodically by lonely roadside shrines to Shiva awaiting the upcoming festival of Shivratri.

During this trip, while asking for directions, I have learned a new Indian English expression, “road to road,” meaning a direct route, one road leading to another, more or less.

More Road-to-Road: Gujarati Fragments

THERE ARE THE OTHER PLACES
in Gujarat that I passed through, or stopped at, or visited briefly out of curiosity or whim, all memorable nevertheless, some intriguing, some literally wonderful; and there are the people who touched my life momentarily, the driver, the greengrocer, the priest, the doctor. Places and people that would make a much longer narrative, but I turn away from them reluctantly and move on in this madness that has become the endless quest for a place.

1. The Mohammedan

Your next driver is a Mohammedan, I am told by the long-legged youth bringing me back from Champaner. I did not know the term was in use any longer anywhere in the world, it sounds medieval, but in Gujarat, much to my surprise, it is current. The Mohammedan driver turns out to be one Sharif Bhai, a middle-aged man (a surprising contrast to the near-teenagers I have had before) who lost his home during the violence and lives in the Tandelja area of Baroda with his brother-in-law. His house was gutted and even his safes were mutilated, he complains forcefully. It’s
the latter offence that irks him more. He seems rather dense at times but knows his way around the state because he used to drive a “luxury” (a tour bus) for ten years, and he takes Raj Kumar and me to a few more places of interest in Kathiawar. The frequency of his swearing increases the more he gets to know us. His taste in hotels runs to dharamshalas, in the search for which, once at Somnath, he lands us in a ditch; and he has a predilection for stopping at the worst eating places. As soon as we’ve eaten some tasteless food at a desolate dhaba, we drive past restaurants bustling with custom. He acknowledges with a kiss of the hand and touch to the forehead any roadside shrine we pass.

2. The African Indians

Jambur is a village in the back of beyond, almost at the end of a coastal road from Somnath. The town just before is Sasan, and already here we see the presence of the Sidis—a few young men sitting at a roundabout (it’s Sunday), a man in the pilot seat of a tempo full of people. And as we proceed further along an old and narrow road, we know we are in Sidi territory. So as not to seem inquisitive—which is what we are—and rude, we ask for a dargah, a shrine; there’s bound to be one.

We head off towards where we are directed, and come to a green and white building, people walking in and out the courtyard through a gate. A “maanta” is in progress, we are informed, and we throw off our shoes and hurry into the courtyard. A crowd has gathered, through which African-looking boys run chasing each other. In the middle of the crowd a black goat wearing a garland of marigolds and roses is being prodded towards the dargah entrance by a Sidi man. The majority of the people are not Sidis, however; they have come from outside with a maanta, a prayer to be answered and offerings for the pir, Hazrat Nagarchi Baba, who is buried here. Now the doorway to the mausoleum is crowded with women offering prayers to him, while outside the reluctant
goat is being cajoled towards the steps. If the goat goes up, the pleaders’ desires will be fulfilled, the maanta will have been accepted. But this goat refuses to budge. A young boy pushes it with some violence and is scolded.

Four black men appear at the outside gate, two playing drums, one, who is blind, playing a flute, all smiling and laughing. An old black woman among the bystanders begins to dance by herself, in slow and understated but very deliberate motions. The fourth man, who is without an instrument, also begins to dance; as he does so, making leaps and bounds, he collects money from the people, snatching bills in his mouth, handing them to one of the drummers, who seems to be the leader. People give money to their kids, from whom this young man accepts them; if the child is small, he picks it up, dances with it. Some people now place bills on the ground, which with a somersault the dancer snatches in his mouth, hands them to the leader.

The drumbeat is loud, the compound now packed with people.

A small white goat is pushed in through the gate, washed at the taps, garlanded. It steps up to the mausoleum.

We learn that the goats will be slaughtered and eaten. A young man sits down to chat with us outside the gate on a stone bench. His name is Abdulrazak, his family is from Junagadh, and he is doing his FYBA at a college in Veraval. What’s that? First-year B.A.

3. Ghadiali Bawa—The Pir of the Clocks

Sharif Bhai our driver brings us back to Baroda through Rajkot. On the way we treat ourselves to Kathiawari cuisine: bajra rotlo, bhinda, daal, bateta, khichdi, and papad. Later the driver stops at a place at a highway junction which he says makes the best burfi in Gujarat. Gujaratis living in America buy kilos of it to take back. And so we buy a couple of pounds.

The final stop before we reach Baroda in the night is the roadside dargah of Ghadiali Bawa. It’s dark and raining, the traffic
heavy, headlights hurtling past reflecting off the tarmac. The shrine is modest, open at the sides, consisting of a green latticed fence around a grave. Above, in a haze of incense, hangs a tube light, and still higher, from the beams under the corrugated metal ceiling hang a few square and many round clocks of all sizes; in their midst a framed photo of a bearded man, the Bawa. You can buy garlands and such to place on the grave, but many people give clocks. Some of them have been placed on shelves further from the grave. This Bawa is a favourite of taxi and truck drivers—perhaps because they work to time, in a sense they live by it.

4. And on and on, this endless quest. Dholera, Jaffarabad, Somnath, Karimabad, Rajkot, Siddhpur, Bharuch, Navsari, Sarkhej, Godhra
…
Dholera
, once upon a time a thriving port that boasted eighty thousand souls; now with a mere three thousand. Its harbour silted up, and the once-elegant, now tottering wooden houses tell the tale of its demise. A solitary Khoja family plies its vegetable trade and has its own private shrine. We can’t refuse to share a meal.
Jaffarabad
, a thriving fishing village of picture-postcard beauty. The young Khoja mukhi begs us to spend the night, but we can’t.
Somnath
, a late-night arrival, when Sharif Bhai through sheer obstreperousness runs into a ditch.
Karimabad
, a Khoja colony in a large city, guarded by two vicious dogs; the friendly retainer at the gate lets me in quickly enough, tells me to go to the khano, but confesses a niggling doubt to Raj Kumar, who is waiting outside, that my beard looks somewhat Christian to him.
Rajkot
, the great city where I once spent only a few hours, and another time missed an appointment I needed to keep.
Siddhpur
, the ancient and lively city where a wedding procession is on when we enter, a uniformed band playing at the main intersection and a young man lip-synching to an old film song; sitting in the verandah of a house, some Momins tell me the story of their banishment here by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (for heresy, what else).
Bharuch
, once a great port, now famous for
the peanuts sold outside.
Navsari
, where a Hindu group (if labels mean anything in the context) worship a medieval Ismaili missionary in a modest temple; a ginan book lies open on a podium; the furtive priest says they have to worship with some caution.
Sarkhej
, a great complex with marvellous buildings, containing the tombs of Mahmud Begada and the Sufi Ahmed Khattu. It’s hot, and the marble floors burn our bare feet.
Godhra
, the tinderbox that set off the Gujarat violence; I visit three schools, feel much apprehension, see some hope, and fear.

In East Africa my community and other Indians, mostly Gujaratis, were scattered around similarly, sometimes a family or two to a village or town. Thus, endlessly: Babati, Mengo, Tororo, Mpwapwa, Songea, Singida, Kilosa, Lamu, Machakos, Kibwezi…We were a small minority, sometimes fearful. My ancestor Nanji Lalji left from Gadhada for Africa. Did he know, I wonder, that the Sidis living nearby were from that same part of Africa he was heading for?