The forgotten Hathiwalas of Surat

A few years ago, while I was trying to piece together my extended Surati Bohra (Dawoodi Bohras from Surat, Gujarat) family tree, I chanced upon a few photographs that had lain forgotten between photo album sheets for over a century. Photographed circa 1904, this picture could very well be one of the oldest family treasures we have, and it took me some time to ascertain who the people in these photographs were. That little girl in the photograph is my paternal grandmother Kulsum Bengaliwala (née Hathiwala), and the adults are her parents – my great-grandparents. But we didn’t know their names, and even my father’s sister, my aunt, couldn’t remember.

On our last name ‘Telang’

IMP Research Intern : Priyanka Balwant Kale, Pune Image and Narrative Points contributed by Sumedha Deshmukh, Pune The above photograph is of my parents, Rajaram and Annapurna Telang, taken in Urun-Islampur (Islampur for short, in Sangli District) Maharashtra, in 1956. The image below shows my older siblings, Ramesh and Snehlata, photographed in 1955 when they […]