Minal
Hajratwala's first nonfiction book ”Leaving India" has been
widely discussed among immigrant communities in the U.S. She has spent seven
years to complete the writing. She traveled five
continents and nine countries to fulfill the
mission. ”Leaving India" is a unique blend of personal elements and history,
according to famous book reviewers. She has discussed the gain and loss of
immigrant community in her book. Minal worked for
San Jose Mercury News
for over six years. She has
been an activist of lesbian journalists association. Living in San
Francisco, she has received many prestigious awards and recognitions for
journalism and poetry. She
shares to CalicutNet, her experience of
the soul-searching journey and sublime, diligent researches to Rajesh
Kumar Edacheri, in an exclusive email interview.
Q. What prompted
you to write a non-fiction book on immigration?
A. In
our families, migration stories are often told as very personal. But of course there
must be huge social and economic and political factors at work, to make
people suddenly uproot themselves and migrate.
There are reasons
that certain borders were open or closed to Indians at different periods in
history. So I set out to understand how these larger forces of history
intersected with individual lives. I wanted to understand not only why my
family was in the United States, but also why I have thirty-six first
cousins who live all over the world, why my grandparents and great-parents
left India, and how our diaspora grew – from fewer than
400,000 people living
outside India a century ago, to an estimated 19 million to 30 million people
living in diaspora today. All of those questions are connected, and in the
answers are connected too.
Q.
You took seven years to publish this first book "Leaving India". Was it a journey
searching for the roots?
A. I traveled to New
Zealand, Australia, Fiji, Hong Kong, India, South Africa, England, Canada,
and of course throughout the United States—basically anywhere I had family
members. In each place I interviewed as many relatives as would talk to me
on the record, and of course I stayed in people’s homes. I had already met
most of them at one time or another over the years, because people in our
family travel a lot. But it was wonderful to get to know my relatives in a
different way. As a child and then a young woman, I was naturally limited in
the kinds of conversations I would normally have. But as a researcher, I
could talk to everyone, from elders to teenagers. In each place, I also met
with academics or historians who had insight into the history of the South
Asian community in that particular country or city. And I went to local
libraries and national archives to look at documents related to the early
history of Indians in that area, censuses and statistics about the
community, Indian newspapers and newsletters, and mainstream
newspapers—really anything that would give me the texture and context for
the personal stories that my relatives were telling me.
Q. You spent seven
years on a foggy hill for writing this book? Did you enjoy that
tranquility or were disturbed any time because there is a journalist within you,
searching for every new development, basically?
A. I was a journalist
and a poet for many years before I began this book. It turned out that
neither poetry nor journalism was quite big enough to hold my family
stories; I needed a narrative, almost epic form. I was interested in the
challenge of combining reportage with a more emotional voice. And it turned
out to be a challenge, indeed. In addition there was the challenge of
sorting through all of the material I had gathered in my research: a box of
more than thirty audio taped interviews, an entire file cabinet of archival
papers, and several dozen books. It was more hard work than tranquility,
although I certainly was lucky to have a quiet and beautiful place to
write.
Q.
The prominent international book-reviewers points out the colorful blend of
personal traits and historical transformation of Indian lives abroad in
"Leaving India." How do you feel this?
A. I’ve been delighted
with the reviews and am glad that people are enjoying the combination of
personal stories with historical and political information.
Q.
How do you look on the book-publishing arena of immigrant community?
A. There is a very
vibrant community of writers from South Asian and other immigrant
communities in the United States now, and I think it’s wonderful that our
stories are being told.
Q. Your mother was
born and reared in Fiji and father in India. How was your
childhood experience?
A. I was born in San
Francisco, grew up in New Zealand, and then in the suburbs of Michigan in
the United States, so I had several different childhood experiences. We
always had some Indian community around and since both of my parents were
Gujarati, we had Gujarati food at home and so on. But at the same time my
parents believed in enjoying “the best of both worlds” so they also worked
hard to give us American experiences such as Christmas.
Q."Hajratwala"
Is this name has any root in Gujarat?
A. Yes, hazrat was the
word for prophet and my great-great-grandfather was said to have had the
gift of prophecy.
Q. How did you
feel the transformation of weavers' life in Gujarat?
A. The weavers in
Gujarat suffered with the rise of machine-made cloth.
It was difficult to
make a living and this led people to seek work as tailors in the cities,
first Surat and Bombay, then eventually overseas.
Q.
Is it really a painful experience, leaving home country and migrate to
another from your experience?
A. For some of
the people I interviewed it was painful, for others it was exciting and
beneficial. I think there are usually both some loss and some gain;
how much of each depends on people’s individual circumstances, who and what
they were leaving behind and how their lives unfolded.
