On 9 June 2020, out of the blue, the way such things tend to happen, I received an email from one Anil Jaisinghani with subject line “Total...
On 9 June 2020, out of the blue, the way such things tend to happen, I received an email from one Anil Jaisinghani with subject line “Totally Impressed”.
Anil was writing to tell me what had happened to him after he read my 2012 book Sindh: Stories from a Vanished Homeland: “So happy to read your book…THANK YOU for making me feel whole rather than a lost Sindhi.”
The thought that someone could read something I had written and feel better about themselves somehow made being locked down feel less grim. Then, on 19 June, Shradha Shahani’s evocative piece about her grandmother’s Sindhi Curry commemorating World Refugee Day prompted photographer Ritesh Uttamchandani to propose a collection. I put out word for essays that evoked the Sindhi identity – that nebulous and fast-evolving entity – and with a tight deadline, and was gratified, and overwhelmed, by the quality of what I received.
By this time, I already had some small understanding of the Sindhi identity. A startlingly heterogenous community, generally an unpredictable sort of people, reduced by circumstances to a caricature inspiring prejudice and derision – in a time of crisis, they had acted as one.
Learning
In 1947, when they were ejected from their ancestral homeland, this minority formed a...
