Farewell Karachi: Bhawana Somaaya's tribute to family and lost home

Business Standard

05-05-2025

FAREWELL KARACHI: A Partition Memoir
Author: Bhawana Somaaya
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Pages: 167
Price: ₹450
When Shabana Azmi met celebrity journalist and writer Bhawana Somaaya's siblings, she felt the family resembled an Ingmar Bergman film — complete with multiple characters, layers and complexities. Javed Akhtar further advised Somaaya to write a book about them, devoting a chapter to each sibling.
That was how Somaaya, who has been a film critic for more than four decades, decided to write her 20th book. Farewell Karachi is both an ode by the author to her family as well as the city that her parents called their motherland. The book, which spans five generations over a century, is the story of her big joint Gujarati family, which moved from Karachi to Kutch, and subsequently to Bombay, rebuilding a life for themselves.
Interestingly, Somaaya discovered through therapy sessions that her biggest fear in life was not having a roof over her head. She realised that the roots of this deep and acute feeling of displacement went back to the migration that her family had faced during Partition. For years, she yearned to travel to Karachi but that never happened. Instead, she travelled to Mandvi Port, where she visualised her parents aboard a ship along with the six children they had then, lugging multiple trunks to cross the border.
Over the course of the book, Somaaya meticulously charts the story of her family, recounting all the important events, such as births, deaths and marriages. She paints a vivid portrait of a bygone era, with detailed descriptions of her grandparents' mansion in Karachi as well as her ancestral homes in Kutch and Bombay (now Mumbai) — including the furniture, linen and artefacts — all of which powerfully bring the book alive.
Alongside, she also highlights all the turbulent changes that were taking place in the country — and how her family was affected by them. During the world wars, schools downed their shutters, and children were taught how to hide themselves under blankets during blackouts. 'Sorrow, conflict and insecurity were part of every story,' writes the author. She goes on to depict the horrors of Partition, when everyone locked their doors, and shopkeepers operated from half-open windows. 'Free-spirited Karachi, popular for its diversity, resembled a ghost town,' she writes.
The youngest of eight siblings, Somaaya used several sources in telling the tale, including the documentation of her siblings' personal stories and fond childhood memories during Partition. When they moved to Bhuj, her siblings found it eerie to sleep in a strange new space in an unfamiliar city. They disliked its congested streets, winding lanes, untarred roads and polluted air. 'Partition had numbed all emotions, and deception was a recurrent motif in all interactions,' she writes.
Several families — mine included — have a Partition story of their own, which is what makes the book so relatable. 'One of the side effects of migration was low self-worth because everyone was secretly fighting their demons,' writes Somaaya. According to her, every separation that the Partition caused was traumatic, and inflicted many wounds. While some people looked for lost family members, others mourned the departed. 'Large families lived together in small spaces and the absence of even one member imbalanced the family rhythm,' she writes.
For a long time after moving, Somaaya's father would wake up in a cold sweat, haunted by nightmares. Karachi was omnipresent in all her parents' conversations, and they would always get emotional when discussing it. 'Somehow, for them, everything associated with Karachi — the food, grains, flour, milk, people and even air — seemed better than the rest of the world,' she writes. So much so that even today Somaaya thinks of it more as a lost 'soul sister' rather than a city in a neighbouring country.
Somaaya also shares important snippets from history about the Lohana community, an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, also known as the Suryavanshi Kshatriya, which originated in Iran and Afghanistan. It is believed that more than a hundred years ago, Gujaratis from Saurashtra arrived in Karachi for better prospects. 'Apparently, seven generations of the Halai Lohana community lived in Sindh, Karachi, for more than a hundred years before they were forced to migrate post-Partition,' she informs.
Over the course of the book, she also notes a number of regressive customs and practices that existed during the time. For instance, one of the author's aunts would hallucinate about someone invisible. Since superstition ruled back then, these symptoms of schizophrenia were believed to be caused by an evil spirit that had possessed her. In general, women's health was mostly neglected in those days. Many of her ancestors were suffering from anemia, malnourishment and mental health illnesses — none of which was taken seriously, and rarely diagnosed or treated. 'Most of the love stories we watch on screen or read in books are about attraction and longing and seldom about the adjustments in marriage,' Somaaya rightly points out.
Later in the book, the author elaborates on her role and experiences as a film journalist — a career that she confesses happened purely by accident. In a sense, the book is an emotional tribute by the author to her family. The narrative is filled with interesting incidents and anecdotes set against the backdrop of important events taking place in the country during the time.