Susheel Gajwani’s book, Sunrise Over Valivade, opens with the milk queue in a refugee camp. Mothers and grandmothers have brought their little ones – a ragged, squalling lot, some naked – and are waiting in line as milk is doled out from a large, dirty, aluminium vessel. A man in a khaki uniform is pouring milk into dented and tarnished tumblers with mechanical precision, filling each glass swiftly and purposefully. The children grab their glasses and empty them hungrily. Another man stands beside them, snatching the empty glasses back and rinsing them in a bucket of water. Hundreds of glasses are “washed” in the same bucket. Susheel is waiting his turn.

What happens next you must read for yourself in the book, all I can reveal for now is that the words and the descriptions bring alive much more than the wretched, forlorn existence, the grime, the pushing and shoving, the language barrier, the unfamiliar geography, the helpless dependence on others’ goodwill and charity. Susheel’s dismay, his attachment to his grandmother, the way she responds – especially the way she responds, an iconic manifestation of the Sindhi identity – made me want to cry and ended up making me laugh. The first story in the manuscript Susheel sent me some months ago, it filled me with delight, and gave me the energy to put everything else aside and start preparing it for publication.

Kolhapur’s Gandhinagar Camp for Sindhi Partition refugees is largely unknown except to those associated with it. The most commonly referred list of Sindhi refugee camps in India at the end of 1948 is from Dr UT Thakur’s 1959 book Sindhi Culture (Sindhi Academy, New Delhi):

1. Ajmer Merwara at Deoli – 10,200

2. Bombay – 2,16,500

3. Baroda – 10,700

4. Bikaner State – 8,900

5. Jaipur State – 33,200

6. Jodhpur State – 11,800

7. Madhya Bharat – 3,400

8. Former Rajasthan – 15,800

9. Saurashtra Union – 45,500

10. Vindhya Pradesh – 15,400

11. Madhya Pradesh – 81,400

Total – 4,52,800

The Gandhinagar Camp is absent in this and other research about Sindhi refugees, as are many other locations of the scattered population. In time, it would grow – as did the other camps – into a community of solid citizens who contributed substantially to the economy of the region. And this is where Susheel Gajwani was born, in the barrack his family had been allotted, delivered by a daee from another refugee family.

Growing up in the camp, hearing the sounds of his mother tongue – and even the melodies of Master Chandur and other Sindhi singers – spoken around him was one thing; integrating into the wider world outside was another. This book covers interesting aspects of both.

Susheel’s family came from Shahdadkot in Sindh and, growing up, he heard the elders reminisce with nostalgia of the places they had left behind. I peered into maps of Sindh to locate the towns and villages Susheel named and found them all – except Korayoon. I asked around with no success and, finally, requested Nasir Aijaz. The award-winning Pakistan media personality and founder and director of the redoubtable Sindh Courier could find no trace of it.

“Seriously, Susheel? Korayoon?” I asked.

“Yes, Korayoon,” he replied firmly.

“Qambrani?”

“No.”

“Karira?”

“No!”

“Chakiyani?”

“Of course not, Saaz! Korayoon – that’s the name they spoke about. Often. Korayoon.”

Nasir reported back that village Korayoon was not even on the survey list of the Revenue Department. Perhaps, he said, the name had been changed. Yes – perhaps it had. Because, when the non-Muslims left Sindh, much changed. A new population arrived, making things difficult for those left behind, regardless of their religion. Sindhi culture was mocked, Sindhi people were colonized, their efforts derided.

As adults, Susheel and his brother Shashi became professionally associated with different formats of mass media. Discussing their childhood in a refugee community, the trauma of their people, and the courageous way in which it had been faced, they began asking round and reading up, and something they had always known came into focus. Their childhood home had in fact been built for Polish refugees of the Second World War, by the Maharaja of Kolhapur, one of the Indian princes who followed the lead of the Maharaja of Nawanagar, in giving shelter to the Polish women and children who had lost their families to the war.

Susheel’s family had arrived in Valivade completely devastated. Wrenched from lives of comfort, they were thrown into wretched living conditions, and forced to live on charity. But the Polish refugees had arrived in Valivade a decade before them, after even more intense ordeals in slave gulags.

In the 1990s, Susheel and Shashi made an effort to find local people from nearby villages who had been associated with Valivade camp, and came across Dadoba Lokhande, who introduced them to Maruti Dashrath Bhosale, Shiva Gawli, Bandu Hari Awale and others who had worked with the Polish refugees. They shared their memories, and these form a charming adjunct to this Sindhi story. Barbara Charuba kindly gave permission to use her photos; more can be seen here.

Occasionally, dates came into question. When exactly did the Gajwani family leave Sindh, when did they arrive at the Bombay docks, when were they herded into trains that took them to Valivade?

Clarifying dates is always a challenge while tracing the history of families from a beleaguered community whose focus was on surviving and moving on. Over hundreds of interviews, I’ve met people who did not want actual years to be known, sometimes for legal reasons, sometimes social appearances. Fudging years was an easy way out. Most commonly, as with Susheel’s family, overwhelmed by the demands of survival and daily existence, people simply did not kept track. We turned to archival accounts.

After the 6 January 1948 pogrom in Karachi, the Bombay docks became overrun with refugees who had fled their ancestral homeland and wished to live close to Bombay where they could earn for themselves rather than in faraway Ulhasnagar on government doles. According to a news report on 28 February 1948, more than 5000 were squatting on the quaysides of No 18 and No 19, Alexandra Dock. Crime was escalating, and the sanitation situation put the entire city’s health at risk. On 4 March 1948, the Directorate of Evacuation was preparing to receive 5000 refugees per day. There were 12,000 awaiting dispersal, and on average about 2000 were being removed daily. Do the figures quoted really add up? Either way, oral history interviews have shown that mass accommodation was being identified in other parts of India, and the railways were arranging refugee-special trains. It was a news report which indicated the month and year in which Susheel’s family – his parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and extended families – arrived at Valivade.

Very soon after Sunrise over Valivade went online a few days ago, I received a strongly opinionated email responding with authority to the excerpt on it. It lamented the incident as questionable and reflected the writer’s urge for self-aggrandisement. The Sindhis, the email went on, were greatly appreciated by other communities, and India as a whole! Not only that, but Sindh stands at the very centre of the Indian national anthem and even forms the stem of the words India and Hindu! The writer of the email himself, an important person, specified that, as a Sindhi, he had received nothing but affection and respect across the state even though he is not fluent in Marathi.

I will admit that I rolled my eyes a bit but phoned Susheel at once to check, “Was that the only time anyone hit you?”

He replied indignantly, “It was most certainly not. I was beaten up many times when I was in college!”

“Ok – were you the only Sindhi who faced that treatment, Susheel?”

“No, no, no, there were others who did.”

“Ok – did all the Sindhi youngsters get beaten up?”

“Of course not, Saaz! Most of them tried to stay out of trouble. But there were some of us who stood up for ourselves.”

This episode made me ponder (yet again) how very little I know about this fascinating community despite all the years of listening, thinking and trying to understand. Yes – by and large they wanted to be low-key and just get on with the job – but does that mean we should pretend that people who are poised to bite back when provoked do not exist? That we can’t make space for that mantra of our times, “diversity”?

It took me back to the time when Susheel, five or so years old, stood clutching his beloved Amma’s loose-flowing pajama as they waited in line. The spectre of this hungry child, craving for milk, the ultimate luxury, haunted me right through the process of working with him on the book. How had he survived? What traces of those years remained within?

Sunrise over Valivade: Growing Up in the Sindhi Refugee Camp in Kolhapur, Susheel Gajwani, Black and White Fountain.