Ganga Ravji

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Our mother had a very hard life growing up. She was born on 6 June 1916 in the village of Bulia Fallia in the state of Gujarat. Her mother passed away when she was around fourteen years old, and as the eldest daughter she had to help her father bring up her four siblings, brothers Naran, Hira and Ranchhod and sister Ratan, the youngest. Ratan was only about four years old when their mother passed and thought that Ganga was her mother for a very long time.

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Our father and mother were betrothed to each other at five years of age. Apparently this was done to safeguard little girls from being kidnapped, which used to happen in those days but not if a girl was spoken for. Our mother was eighteen when she went to live with her husband and the extended family in Dhalla Fallia. There was a lot of poverty in the villages, and the people were always looking further afield for a better life. So our father was taken by his father to New Zealand to earn money to send back to India, basically to put food on the table for us. Our father made several trips back and forth to India during the 1930s; his first trip back from New Zealand was in 1935 and he left again in 1938 but was not there for the birth in September of Laxmi, the eldest daughter.

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Our father only stayed for short periods when he returned to India and mostly it was our mother bringing us up on her own. Dad was on one of his visits in 1941 and in 1942 their second daughter Damyanti was born. He ended up staying longer because the war had halted all the shipping. While he was here he got involved in the fight for India’s independence. He would go away from home for many months and we would have no idea where he was. Several times our mother was visited by the Indian police who were working for the British. They would interrogate her about our father’s whereabouts. Of course she did not know where he was but still she was beaten in order to frighten her. She was terrified by these nightly visits as she lived alone and had a three-year-old and a baby to look after. When her father found out about these visits he decided to take Laxmi to live in his household as there were many aunts and uncles (they all lived together) who would look after her. Mum was very concerned about Laxmi having to witness such behaviour at her tender age and the scar it might leave on her in the future. 

It wasn’t too long before Dad was caught and spent ten months in the Sabarmati jail. As the jail was some distance from where we lived, it was very difficult and arduous for Mum to see him. On one visit she took her best friend for support. When they reached the jail at visiting time all the men would have to line up behind bars in an area a few metres away where they could be viewed by their relatives and friends from a grassy area. Considerable time had passed since Mum’s last visit and by now Dad was sporting quite a beard, so it was Mum’s friend who spotted him first. In 1945 their third daughter Bhanu was born.

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Mum made sure all our needs were met when we were growing up in the village and she put her enterprising skills to good use. She bought a buffalo which provided milk for us, and with the milk that was left over she would make yoghurt and ghee and sell it to buy fodder for the buffalo. The buffalo’s waste product would be dried in the sun and used for fuel to cook food and any surplus would be sold. She would also tend to our family plots of land where they grew millet which when dried would be milled into flour to make rotli (flat bread) for our consumption. Despite her workload Mum would sometimes take us to Navsari (a town about 11 kilometres away) to treat us with ice cream and falooda (milkshake) and to do some shopping. Mum was very protective of us and would always put everyone else before herself. In the village she was very well respected as she was very thoughtful about the needs of others around her.

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When our father was released he returned to New Zealand in 1948 and set about earning enough money to pay for tickets for me, my sisters Laxmi and Damyanti and our mother to emigrate to New Zealand. It was extremely hard for Mum to say goodbye to her father and her youngest brother, not knowing when she would see them again. Her other siblings had got married by now and were living in Kenya. My paternal grandmother and my aunt accompanied us to Mumbai where we said our goodbyes and boarded our ship in 1953.

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On our voyage on the Strathmore we were confronted with many new and different things: seeing white people for the first time (there were no white people living in the vicinity of our villages), hearing them speak in another language and their different way of dressing. The food and drinks were also foreign to us so whenever we approached the dining area for meals the smell of cooked food would make us want to throw up. We immediately escaped to the sanctuary of our cabins where we would instead dine on teekhi (spiced) puris and chivda (mixed bhuja) which Mum had made back home and brought on the ship. We also stockpiled the cabin crackers, which were left with room service each day, to keep the hunger pangs at bay—it was good to eat something new for a change!

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Another barrier we faced was the English language. Some of the Indian families on board were making a return trip to New Zealand and so were already fluent in English. They were able to guide us on how to use the toilets and the bathrooms—in the village we only had the long drop if we were lucky, otherwise it was a long walk to the outskirts of the village. Our father had made sure we wouldn’t travel alone and we were accompanied by friends who looked after us on our journey. The children we played with gave us chewing gum, telling us it was lollies, and would laugh at us when we swallowed it.

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The Strathmore made a stop at Ceylon where Mum bought some elephant ornaments, which she still has to this day. After twenty-three days at sea we arrived in Sydney and after an overnight stay we boarded the Wanganella which was to bring us to Wellington. After four very rough days at sea, when my sister Laxmi was so seasick she couldn’t leave the cabin, we arrived in our new country. As the boat docked in Wellington everyone was up on deck to look for and wave to friends and relatives who had come to pick them up. I had only been a couple of years old when Dad made his last visit to India to see us, and I had no recollection of him. I was really excited to see what he looked like and urged my Mum to point him out to me. Seeing my father for what felt like the first time at the age of eight was very hard to comprehend, and because of this for many years I was very shy in his presence. Although I didn’t recognise him when Mum pointed him out to me I felt some love for him—just knowing that he was my father and realising that now we would be a complete family and not alone any more. My mother knew that we would be shy around our dad at first and that this was something that would take time because he had not been in our lives for many years.

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When we reached our home in Wanganui the first thing our father did was to teach us how to switch the light on and how to turn the tap on so we could use the water—back home we had got our water from the village well. Our mother had to learn to light the gas so she could cook our meals. It took us a while to figure out how to do things around the house and I can remember one day Mum telling my sister Damyanti and me to cut the grass with a sickle like we used to do back in India. When our father came home from our fruit and vegetable shop that day, he informed us that here you use a machine to cut grass, and that was how it was to be cut from now on.

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Another thing my sister and I found very strange was seeing our neighbours—a young newly married couple—kissing on their porch. You see, we had never seen anyone kissing back home in the village and we were quite intrigued. So we hid and watched and giggled.

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As children we adapted very quickly to our new home and once we started school we immediately learnt to speak English. Our Mum did not get a chance to learn English because she was at home tending to our family of five, plus two of Dad’s half-brothers and his nephew who were teenagers. Before long, three more children were born, all just a year apart, so Mum’s workload was huge. From looking after three children and herself in India, her family had now increased to eleven. Her days were very busy from the time she woke till she went to sleep at night.

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At the time there were around seven or eight Indian families living in Wanganui but the three that we spent the most time interacting with were the Parag family, the Narsai family and the Bhana family. In particular Chaggan Parag was dad’s best friend and the two families did everything together. On some Saturday nights Dad and his friend would go to the movies and the wives and children would spend time together at our home. Most weekends we would get together and find solace in each other’s company; in time our families became like a one big happy family. We made intermittent trips together to view Indian movies that were shown in a place called Inglewood near New Plymouth. On the way we would visit Indian families in Stratford, Hawera, Patea and Waverly so this also helped to form bonds for parents and children alike.

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Spices in small towns were non-existent so a trip had to be made every two months to Wellington to purchase them from a general store owned by an Indian family. Again the Parag family and ours would travel together and much visiting would be done. We would always have lunch with Ranchhod, another of Dad’s good friends, in Lower Hutt. His wife Rami would cook chicken and rice and dhal and we girls would make the salad when we arrived, then do all the dishes and clean up for her as she didn’t have any daughters—only three sons. Another family we always visited was the Makan family in Petone who were our neighbours from our village back in India. Sometimes we would visit the Parbhu family who made the voyage with us on the Strathmore and several other of Dad’s and Chaggan’s friends if time permitted. During these trips happy times were had by us all—especially, I think, our mother.

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Indian vegetables were also non-existent and you either grew your own from seed or had to adapt to using cauliflower, cabbage, silverbeet or beans and peas in curries. Our parents also had to grow their own chillies and garlic, which weren’t commercially cultivated in those days in New Zealand. There were also no places where Indian women could buy saris so they had to rely on friends or relatives to bring some back if anyone was lucky enough to be able to afford a trip back home to India.

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Life was a real challenge for our mothers in many ways. Mum sometimes felt she could not cope. She felt isolated and because she was not able to go out much she said she felt very lonely at times and became very very homesick. Because she couldn’t speak English it was hard for her to converse with the neighbours who were very friendly and willing to help when it was required. As children we weren’t aware of her feelings; she only told us when we grew older. Hearing this made us very sad, and we wished we could have done more to ease her pain in some way. There was an Indian woman called Kuver (we used to call her Kuver Momai as children) who Mum would pour her heart out to. Kuver, who was older than Mum, would comfort her, telling her that in time things would get better and she would feel less homesick.

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Our mother was not able to get back to India to see her father before he passed away, which was very sad and upsetting for her. Our mother was and still is a loving and endearing person who always put others before herself. The sacrifices our parents made were huge but the strong will and desire to give our family a better life led them to work extremely hard in their new adopted country, and to prosper. Many of us have been highly educated because of the sacrifices made by our parents. We are eternally grateful to have been given this chance. Our parents both turned ninety-nine in May and June in 2015 and we hope to celebrate their hundredth birthdays in five and six months’ time in 2016—we feel very blessed.

 

By Bhanu Daji