SUCH A LONG JOURNEY

The granddaughter of Mohamed Amzad of New York, whose ancestors left India for Guyana in 1888, traces the family’s roots to India and a century-old journey reaches an emotional milestone at a rustic destination in Uttar Pradesh

THE road to Parsa Surat village in Basti in Uttar Pradesh is motorable only in patches. But that’s never been too much of a problem considering cars seldom come this way. And then when they do, villagers stop to stare at them. Today when a cavalcade of four vehicles stops outside Shaukat Ali’s hut, it’s not just a few people, but the whole village that turns up to welcome the guests.
The moment merits the attention. It’s a homecoming at the end of journey that began a century earlier and spans three continents. It began at Parsa in Basti in 1888, then on to Guyana, a British colony in South America, to move forward and merge in the melting pot of New York. Today it has come full circle to where it started from: Parsa Surat, Basti.
Businessman Mohamed Amzad, 74, his 72-year-old wife Ashiran, their children and grandchildren have come from Manhattan to meet their relatives in the village their ancestors left in the 19th century to work as indentured labour in the then British colony of Guyana.
The ‘‘Yanks’’ are taken straight to where Shaukat’s father Mohammed Siddiq usually rests.
Behind the frames of her spectacles, Ashiran’s eyes are wet. Mohammed Siddiq is clearly pleased to receive his cousin’s family even though he had never heard of them before this in his 80 years.
Ashiran’s daughters Bebe Khan and Saforah Khan and their families follow next. Saforah’s 21-year-old daughter Shazeda is busy recording the reunion on her Handycam.
After all it’s a moment she’s waited and worked for this past year.

IT all started a year ago at the New York City College where Shazeda was studying for a degree in Psychology. ‘‘As part of a research project I went through a lot of material on the Indians who had come to Guyana as indentured labour,’’ she says.
The research soon became a personal quest. Shazeda’s grandfather Mohamed Amzad had migrated to New York from Guyana. ‘‘I searched for all the information that was on the Internet, I made a trip to the Embassy of Guyana, went to the National Archives and even saw films and read books on the subject. And then I learnt that the Guyanese authorities had with them the emigration passes that were issued by the British when they recruited labour from India.’’
Shazeda sent an email on January 15, 2007, and the same day received by mail copies of not one but four emigration passes. The passes that were issued to her great-great grandfather Amir, his wife and two sons when they boarded the ship Brenda in 1889. The pass also bore another stamp of identity: the name of the village Parsa and the district Basti.

AT Parsa Surat it’s time for introductions and reunions. At 61, Shaukat is the patriarch of the family. The outsiders are told to clear out and the family gathers in the courtyard. Of Mohammed Siddiq’s sons, Shaukat is the eldest among four brothers and two sisters. In the family there are now 22 children.
The families come together but the language barrier is still to be breached. The smattering of Hindi that the New Yorkers speak has been culled from the occasional Hindi film they have watched. The family at Basti is proficient in Bhojpuri but strangers to English. This is where Chandra Shekhar Tiwari steps in and translates.
‘‘Baba, hum aye rahe tumre gaon (We have come to your village),’’ he tells the Parsa family.
‘‘Haiyya,’’ replies Shaukat. The girls giggle.
‘‘Sun liyo, oye ladki (Listen, you girl),’’ Tiwari is quick to admonish them.
It’s the turn of the amused New Yorkers to giggle.
‘‘Aap Nazreen, aap Shirin, aap Azeem. Beginning from the 74-year-old Mohamed to the 3-year-old Nasira Usma Ahmed, Tiwari introduces them all. ‘‘So four generations of this family, your cousins are here from New York,’’ he says in Bhojpuri.
Tiwari was instrumental in getting the family to Basti.
A year ago after Shazeda got her ancestors’ emigration passes, finding her roots still seemed a distant dream. For in all the maps that she checked, she could not find any place named Basti in the whole of Punjab. ‘‘My grandfather Rasul was only seven when he came to Guyana with his father Amir who died early. My grandfather remembered almost nothing about the place of his birth. All he told us was that he had come from Punjab and there was a huge tamarind tree in the village,’’ says Shazeda’s grandfather Amzad.
Unable to locate Parsa and Basti, Shazeda continued her search. After phone calls to the Ministry of Overseas Indians Abroad she came in contact with Chandra Shekhar Tiwari. A doctorate from the Delhi University, Tiwari had been a part of a project that traced the family of the former Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago Basudeo Panday to a village in UP’s Azamgarh district. From then tracing roots has become Tiwari’s profession. In over a decade, his Indiroots has helped several families from countries like Trindad, Fiji, Guyana and Surinam find their villages of origin in India.
In May 2007, Shazeda contacted Tiwari who took no time in figuring out that the Basti mentioned in the emigration passes was the one in Uttar Pradesh. Basti in UP has, according to estimates, contributed almost 8.7 percent of migrants to Guyana. But even for a seasoned finder like Tiwari, a formidable problem remained. There were 13 villages in the district that were called Parsa.
‘‘To reach the right family I had to visit all the thirteen Parsas. In fact there is a saying in this area that goes, ‘‘tereh Parsa, teen Majhauya, uske beech ek Saltauya. (situated between the thirteen Parsas and three Majhauyas is the village of Saltauya) says Tiwari. While some villages by the name Parsa could straight away be struck off the list as having no Muslim families, in the others Tiwari spent hours with the elders of the village, trying to glean from their failing memories any details of a relative who had left for abroad to work in the plantations. And, of course, the memory that had been passed down generations of a tamarind tree would eventually be of help. ‘‘You have to be very careful as sometimes people can imagine things. At other times the prospect of a relative appearing and asking for a share in the ancestral land scares them,’’ says Tiwari.
After several weeks, he heard from Shaukat’s father Mohammed, who mentioned that one of their ancestors had left the village due to the oppression of the zamindari system. In the course of the conversation Tiwari also learnt that there had been a tamarind tree in the village that had been the biggest tree in the area. ‘‘I crosschecked with the land records of the office. Land records in the area for the 19th century exist in Urdu and translators are available for a fee,’’ says Tiwari.
Documents at the land record office showed that what Mohammed of Parsa Surat had told Tiwari was reliable. The records led back to Amir who had left for Guyana in August 1888.

THE same records have led the family back to Basti. But what’s a reunion without a feast? ‘‘Can we help?’’ asks Bebe Khan as she and her daughter Saforah follow the women to the chulha and Tiwari rattles off the menu.
‘‘Chawal, chicken, dal, matar, sewaiyan.’’
‘‘We have Indian food even at home in New York,’’ chips in Shazeda who has traded her western dress for a salwar-kameez for the trip.
The women bond around the chulha. Kaisar, the more confident among them, asks the guests about their life in New York.
Bebe Khan tells them that in New York she doesn’t drive a car but her daughters do. Kaisar then goes on to grumble over the strict discipline that Shaukat imposes on everyone in the family. ‘‘I know, he reminds me of an uncle back home. He is as strict,’’ consoles Bebe Khan.
The table is laid out. Shaukat had gone to Basti the day before to get mineral water for the guests. The menu had been carefully decided. The guests sit down to eat.
‘‘The food is spicy,’’ someone says. Tiwari translates. ‘‘I had told these people to use less of the red chillies,’’ Shaukat exclaims.
‘‘We don’t eat food as spicy but it tastes good,’’ explains Mohamed, ‘‘In New York, we eat food only once in a day. We were offered snacks when we reached and now it’s lunch. It’s already a lot of eating,’’ he smiles.
The dessert arrives: sewaiyan topped with dry fruits. The New Yorkers make a note to ask the women for the recipe.
The talk then shifts to the tamarind tree that has lived on the shifting territory of migration and memory. ‘‘It was cut down around 25 years ago. I’ll take you to where it once stood,’’ Shaukat tells the visitors.
They all troop to the house that stands where once stood the tamarind tree. ‘‘The tales of our past were like one big puzzle. Now things are falling in place,’’ says another granddaughter Shirin, who works as an assistant manager in a New York store.
From the house they walk on to the fields. Shaukat and his three brothers have six bigha between them. Several villagers follow them on their walk. After a while, they all head back home.
At home the guests take measurements of all the boys so that they can send them clothes from New York and hand over the gifts they have brought along. There is something for everyone: shawls, medicines, a sphygmomanometer, clothes and candy.
The one-day, one-night pilgrimage draws to an end. As they prepare for their journey back to New York, Mohamed Amzad says,
‘‘I might not get a chance to come here again but I think some of the children will come again.’’