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.

Constance, our fiercely independent grandmother.

The lady you see in this photograph is my grandmother. She was born as Constance Karuna Charles to an affluent family in Mysore state, southern India, in the in the late 1890s. Around 1910, when she may have been about 12, her marriage was arranged with a man named Durraswamy around 1910. Two years later at the age of 14 she was left widowed, with one baby son in her arms – Arthur.