The most striking – the most intense – experience Ram Gidoomal describes in his memoirs is the feeling that overwhelmed him when he arrived in Bombay at the age of 14. Suddenly, unexpectedly, for the first time in his life, he knew what it felt to fit in. It brought home the paradox of “home” for an immigrant: on one side homesickness for the country of origin, a sense of cultural belonging, allies in appearance, and the freedom from fear these bring. And on the other, the cords of daily life that tie one to the birthplace and local community.
Ram’s family endured the transition from
citizen to refugee twice. Displaced both times by political whim, they
experienced a harsh wrenching from community, culture, status and education, and
were summarily swept from wealth and comfort to situations of continued struggle
– twice. Once as refugees when the Indian subcontinent was partitioned and
Pakistan was formed, and the second when his family was removed from Kenya. As
a teenager he would discover, in immigration queues, that he was an “alien”.
And, despite his academic brilliance and significant contribution to early
workplaces, he would remain painfully conscious that he was different.
In this book about his life, Gidoomal begins
by describing his happy childhood in Kenya, followed by the challenges of adapting
to Britain in the late 1960s – unwelcoming, and one where this family with a
multinational trading operation begins afresh with a corner shop – and yet an
obvious choice for the time.
There are intimate glimpses into a family
of large and complex but congenial groups, and the poignancy of family
tragedies including the loss of his birth father and then of his father-figure
uncle who brought him up; precious memories handed down from the past,
including those of links to the lost homeland of Sindh. There are fascinating
peeps into business practices and secret codes. Later, during his blissful days
with a young family in Switzerland, he was that role-model father who changed
his working hours so that he could spend time with his children, returning to
office after they went to bed. As the years passed, Ram moved from his life in
the corporate world to one centred on social issues and philanthropy, using his
business skills to transform others’ lives. His contribution earned him a CBE,
Commander of the British Empire, from the Queen of England in 1998.
In between comes a huge, surprising transformation:
“By my early twenties, I had lost two fathers but gained a heavenly one in
God.”
This wholehearted embracing of Jesus is
disconcerting, coming from one whose community sacrificed all they had to
escape conversion. As a child in a Sindhi family, Ram grew up Hindu with Sikh
influences. At the Aga Khan School in Mombasa, he absorbed Islamic teachings. The
choice he later made, with the backdrop of his exceptional intelligence and
crystal-clear rationality, resulted from the pull of faith. Succumbing to the
warmth of its embrace, he selected a life of devotion to the Church.
Through it all, his Sindhiness remained
intact. He writes of his feeling of comfort on reading Matthew chapter 27 verse
59, about Joseph of Arimathea wrapping the body of Jesus in cloth: “The Greek
word for this cloth is Sindhon, a cloth from Sindh. A cloth created in my homeland,
holding the body of Christ.”
Indeed, the Sindhiness pervades his life:
English was the language of instruction but Sindhi was the language his mother
spoke to him in, the language the old men swore in, the language he was scolded
in. When he fell in love, it was to a highly eligible Sindhi girl – one who,
however, was initially forbidden to him as she was of another “caste”. Sunita
was from a progressive Amil family, too progressive to consider caste and perhaps
just worried about how she would adapt in his traditional Bhaiband family. Indeed,
Ram Gidoomal observed with admiration that his father-in-law treated his
daughters and sons equally, inspiring him to do the same with his own children.
One of the most prominent themes of this
book is Ram Gidoomal’s tremendous network of relationships in every area of
life. As a young executive in the 1970s, his complacent and supercilious managers
failed to comprehend this tremendous asset which could have taken the bank into
new markets with valuable new customers. For Ram, the connections were simply a
way of life, partly the community and business networks inherited from his
family; partly his own aptitude to thrive on and develop relational networks – ties
of location as much as shared cultural traditions among the diaspora flung
across the continents. Working at Inlaks, a global company with a huge base in
Nigeria, he could speak in Sindhi with the senior executives who preferred to
do so when communicating confidential commercial information.
This book has an elegant story-telling
style, weaving in humour, and creating a build-up of suspense as the plot
unfolds. Despite being put together by a professional writer, Ram Gidoomal’s voice
comes through clearly and is the same as in his 1997 UK Maharajas which
was also written by a professional. Through
the book, Ram Gidoomal’s personal motto stands out clearly: “Don’t let what you
can’t do stop you from doing what you can.”
My Silk Road
The Adventures & Sturggles of a British Asian Refugee
Ram Gidoomal CBE
Pippa Rann books & media
MRP Rs799
270 pages
Review by Saaz Aggarwal
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