Interview with Minal Hajratwala

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.