A 70-Year Journey Through Passports

 Dreams of Distant Lands

After my father’s passing, I found his passports in a neat pile in his bedside drawer. These 15 innocuous booklets captured 70 years of one man’s adventures around the world, from 1946 to 2016. The last time I had spoken to him, he’d said he needed to apply for visas because he wanted to go on a cruise. His passion to see the world never subsided – even in his 90s.

His passports are lived history, experiences from a world that is so different today. When I asked him why he didn’t apply for a passport of another country to make it easier to travel. His reply was: “I was born Indian, I will die Indian!”

When I leaf through the pages, riddled with entry-exit permits, visas, and notations by immigration officers, I am overcome by emotion combined with a mixture of pride, awe and respect for a man who lived a life that was full and fearless. If he had been born in the 13th century, he would have the gumption of someone like Christopher Columbus, an explorer who sailed to the far horizons in search of new lands.

My father was born in Hyderabad, Sindh (now in Pakistan) when it was still part of India. His year of birth was 1927, but he wasn’t sure about the month. Based on the Hindu calendar, he calculated it to be 28th September, and ever since then, we would celebrate his birthday on that day.

 

 

      Re-starting Life                                             

In my father’s youth, travel was considered a luxury, something you might do once in your life, if you were lucky. But Dad saw things differently. He was a seeker. He took the courageous step of leaving his home and mother, Gyanibai Nagrani, at the age of 18 to work for a well-known trading company – Kishinchand Chellaram. He didn’t just move to another part of India, but to West Africa – Nigeria. He worked hard and even became fluent in Hausa, the local language.

Two years later, while Dad was still in Kano, the Partition of India took place. His mother, with her sisters and family had no choice but to flee Sindh with as much as they could carry. Women’s safety was not guaranteed during the mass migration, but they managed to cross safely by train across the newly drawn border into India.

Dad was deeply affected when he heard that the family had lost their ancestral homes. They did not know when – or how – they would be able to return to collect the rest of their belongings. They had lost everything overnight. This made Dad even more determined to work hard and make enough money to help his family back home.

The ambitions of youth also fueled a passion to start his own business. Eventually, he became an import-export businessman. He started his company, Mukhi Trading Company, at 1/3 Fagge Takudu, Kano, Nigeria. His business thrived in the early 1960s. From Kano, he would travel to many cities in Asia to buy anything he considered worth selling. Everything from toys and clothes to canned food and household items would crowd the shelves of his shop that sold “sundry items”. At that time, I was a small child. For me, the best part was when he let me pick whatever I wanted from his shop.
My father was a born salesman. He had great instincts when it came to selling his products. When he chatted with his customers, who came from the interiors of Nigeria, he would share his life story with them, and they would build a rapport based on common human experiences. The sale was inevitable.

His love to share stories was at times embarrassing, and I would whisper, “Dad, that’s enough”. He ignored my plea, and would continue his expressive rant about politics, society or religion. It didn’t matter if the person was a fellow passenger on a flight, a customer, a supplier or even a vendor at the vegetable market, he chatted with them like they had a bond.

He lived life on his own terms – some loved him, and some didn’t. I respected him for what he taught me about life: Be bold and brave. Ignore the naysayers, there will be many. Be true to yourself.

              Uprooting and Re-routingAlthough my father created a good life for our family in Kano – complete with a pet Grey African parrot called Uckoo, I loved – we eventually had to leave. From 1974, when I was 9, we moved many times, migrating to a new city every 2-3 years. Whenever Dad felt the urge to move, we moved. Mum was a silent advocate of Dad’s decisions.

By the time I was 20, I had lived in 5 different cities across 3 continents. There were times I wished that we had built roots in a single city, and my education would have been from one school and one university. It wasn’t easy to journey through so many changes during my formative years. Yet I was also blessed to experience so many cultures, cuisines, and communication styles at such a young age. I grew up to be an author, and my books are rich with the impressions and memories of those many places that I called home.

Of course, the travelling didn’t stop once we moved. Once a decade, Dad would have an idea – to go on a world tour. He would sit with the travel agent, planning the itinerary of a 3-month round-the-world trip while I listened curiously. These moments filled me with a sense of adventure. So, my mother bought me cute little notebooks to write about the places we visited. Like some people always bring a camera on their travels, I carried notebooks.

Recently, looking back at my old scribbles, I read about the time I met a shepherd in Holland. The time I sat in a boat on the river Seine. The misty gush of the Niagara Falls. The shiver I felt as I touched the Berlin Wall. Even though it was the height of the Cold War, we even visited Moscow for a couple of days, and visited the Kremlin. Then, we would return to our base – Bombay.

In 1982, we moved to Antwerp, Belgium. While I studied at the European University, on weekends, we would take road trips to Brussels, Leuven, Brugge, Amsterdam and even Paris. Whenever he got to travel, by plane, train or sea, my father radiated a sense of joy and achievement.

As age took over and he couldn’t travel much, he finally settled in Pune, India. Whenever I visited, he would reminisce about the good old days in Sindh, and the different cities and homes he had lived in.
A simple pile of 15 passports. So many memories and life-affirming experiences. And yet, a part of me had to wonder… was my father searching for new roots? A sense of home and belonging? Or was it something else that fueled his constant need to travel and to set up new homes in different countries?

I looked up to Dad in many ways. He was a sharp businessman with a bold and courageous personality. He was fearless in expressing his thoughts. He was a deep thinker, and often he would share practical philosophies about life. From the way I connect with people, to my curiosity about the world, I have learned so much from Dad – and it makes me who I am today.