The Cloth Merchants Of Ujjain

in August of 1990, Saddam Hussain, the president of Iraq, ordered an attack on Kuwait, and the country toppled into a state of emergency – everything came to a halt. Citizens from all over the world, including Indians were trapped in a country at war, and among the Indian community, the Bohras constituted a sizable proportion. My father was one of them.

The Gujarati family in Madras

This fading, tattered photograph carries in it the story of my Gujarati lineage’s courage and survival instincts – and how they came to call a south Indian city, Madras (now Chennai) their home – an antithesis to their familiar north Indian environment. This photograph taken by a professional photographer in 1952, is indeed the oldest family photograph we possess. While it is a rich a source of family memory, time has been harsh to it.