A Sindhi family recalls their dark days and how they fought post-Partition poverty
A Sindhi family recalls their dark days and how they fought post-Partition poverty
Ramchandra Tehalani, 78, sitting next to his sister-in-law Sheela Devi, who is in his late 90s, recalls: “We would both be sitting like that then. We would stay up all night – I would study and she would sew clothes.”
The time Tehalani is talking about dates back to his childhood, in the early 1950s, when his family settled in Varanasi for a poverty-stricken life after immigrating to newborn India from Sindh province. He studied at night because during the day he sold biscuits; While his sister-in-law fixed the clothes to add to her income. His mother washed utensils in neighboring houses, while his father got employment of ₹100 per month in a house in Katihar, Bihar. Her elder brother – Sheela’s husband – worked as a cook in Kolkata.
Today the family lives together in Kolkata, where they have brick kilns. But the memories of those dark days refuse to fade; In fact, they remain a source of strength in times of crisis. “Gone are the days when extra water was added to the dal so that everyone in the house could get food. But despite such measures, there were days when my mother chose not to eat so that others could eat,” says Tehalani.
His family – of landlords – was from Sukkur in Sindh, and they left everything behind in 1947 in the hope that they would return once the communal violence subsided. Little did they know that the displacement would be permanent. Tehalani was then three years old.
“What I heard is that in the refugee camp in Pimpri, Maharashtra, our people refused to accept the food provided by the authorities. The men sold fruits and vegetables in the city and fed their families with whatever they earned. Sindhis do not like to accept donations,” he says. “When I sold biscuits in Varanasi, I remember, one day I was passing by an ashram, when a sadhu sitting there paid for all the biscuits, but took only one from me. I came back home thinking that my mother would be happy, but she scolded me. He said that the biscuits belonged to him as he had paid for it. I went back to give him biscuits.”
Sheela was 13 years old at the time of Partition. He has many childhood memories of Sindh, one of them tagging along with his mother to a house in the neighborhood where a child was born. Of course, she had no idea that the newborn was her future husband.
“I studied till class 4. Then the girls had to stay in the house. , When the exodus began, girls as young as 11 or 12 were married off before crossing the border because girls who had Vermilion (Sindoor) on his head was usually spared by the mob,” recalls Sheela.
She was saved from early marriage as her family fled in 1948 after the violence subsided. They took a train to Karachi, where they boarded a ship bound for Bombay (Mumbai) and found their way to Calcutta (Kolkata), where his older sister already lived. It was here that her marriage was fixed and the marriage took place in Katni, Madhya Pradesh, where the Tehlani family lived for some time after leaving the refugee camp and settling in Varanasi.
Tehalani says: “Over the years, Varanasi became our family headquarters and Calcutta our business headquarters. My father and my older brother opened a grocery store and I started coming here in 1965, first working odd jobs and then running a brick kiln in partnership with a distant relative. We were no longer poor but life has had its share of ups and downs. I am able to overcome bad times; I had suicidal thoughts when I was young and have come out of coma twice in the years since. It is because of the love I have found in Kolkata. ,
Sheela’s husband died in 2010 and she now lives in Kolkata with her two sons. “My memories are mostly of hardship,” she says. “We fought a lot. But one thing I remember about my childhood in Sindh is the joy of saving coins to buy date candy.”