‘When the family is together, nothing is difficult.’
This is the underlying theme of Bollywood film journalist Bhawana Somaaya’s heart rending memoir ‘Farewell Karachi.’ I first came across this book through an Instagram post and I’m not embarrassed to admit that the blurbs on the front cover by Hrithik Roshan, Shobhaa De and Karan Johar caught my attention.
On examining my interest in this book further, I realized it was down to that curiosity that rose in me two decades ago when I moved to Canada from Pakistan and made friends with an Indian student in my dorms at university. I was absolutely floored to learn that she was a Sindhi, just like me. It turns out that you don’t need to partition a province (like in the case of Punjab or Bengal) to manufacture an exodus of its people, but you don’t learn that in a Pakistani history textbook unless you know how to look for it.
As I began reading ‘Farewell Karachi’, the latest escalations between India and Pakistan as a response to the horrific Pahalgam incident broke out. Just yesterday, reports of an Indian Navy attack on Karachi’s port were circulating online. My family, who live in Karachi, assured me that all was well in the city for now and that these were just rumours for the sake of increasing ‘TRPs’.
It is ironic that a memoir about Partition has acted as a welcome distraction whilst I sift through social media and Youtube channels for the truth. Instead of giving into my anxiety about two nuclear armed countries threatening each other as they move up the escalation ladder of war, Somaaya’s ‘Farewell Karachi’ allows me to take comfort in the story of her family’s resilience in the midst of conflict and their ability to rebuild.
Somaaya documents her grandparents’ lives in Karachi, referencing historic landmarks in the city which sparked joy as I recognized the names. (Bunder Road, Empress Market to name a couple). She then touches upon Partition and her family’s reluctance to leave their homeland, because at the time, Karachi had no history of violence’, something that as a child growing up in the conflict ridden Karachi of the 90s, I found absolutely fascinating.
Somaaya gives the events of Partition their due attention in the memoir, but her focus on her parents’ hard work after Independence as they tried to rebuild their own lives and secure their children’s futures is what kept me turning the pages of this book.
There is no resentment or hatred towards her neighbouring country in Somaaya’s description of her family’s struggle. She talks about how every conversation would inevitably turn towards Karachi whenever the family gathered together as a group, even years later. They were happy and safe in Bombay, and indeed she states ‘If there was any place that could make them forget Karachi, it was Bombay’ but their love for Karachi remained lurking in the shadows.
I am not sure if Somaaya’s parents or grandparents would agree with me, but I consider them lucky. In the context of the current conflict between India and Pakistan, if I was forced to bid farewell to Karachi, I would not be able to turn to Bombay for comfort.
