10th December, 2003 sound Sound Cassette English Abhijeet Joshi Oral Interview Interview 063 Priti Raithathe Female Tororo, Africa

Leicester U.K. EN Gujarati, English I would like to just start off the interview with, if you could tell me your family background, where were your parents born and brought up? My dad was born in India, last century sometimes, and my mom was born in Africa, and they got married in Africa because my dad traveled from India to Africa, in early last century. Okay, and did he travel over for work or what was, do you know why he traveled over? I believe he was a very young person when his family traveled. So, he was a part of the family when they traveled early last century as a very small child. All right, okay and where did they settle then, when they arrived in Africa? The main part of Africa, at that point was East Africa in Uganda, the out of the three, that they were in Uganda and I know, I was born in a village called Tororo and I believe that my father's business was flourishing in Tororo, in my early days. Okay, and, how much do you remember from, were you quite young when you left Uganda? No, I left Uganda when I was twelve, so I remember quite. Oh, so you have quite vivid memories then. Oh, yes, I have got quite a lot of memory of there, I mean, I can go there on my own and will not get lost. Oh, wow! Would you like to tell me a little bit about life in Uganda, both the good times and maybe some of the hard times leading up to when you were living? My father lost his parents at a very young age. I cannot recall whether he lost them in India or Africa but he stayed on with a, his father's family, his father's brothers and things like that, because we used to have long joint families and he became a part of that family who helped him out, supported him to grow up and obviously did not let him get educated but get involved in the business side of things and I believe he married my mom, when my mom was about fifteen and carried on living with the other family till had many-many children and I have got ten brothers and sisters. And I believe that a time must have come within the two families where they had their own children and my mom and dad had their own children and they had to split up. And obviously the business parts remained together and then my father probably saved enough money to open his own business while we were in Tororo and we moved from Tororo to the main city of Kampala. The memory I have as a child in Africa, especially in Tororo was fantastic. We could play outdoors all the time. We had servants. I remember my mom had a very-very good life as a young bride, though she had many children, it did not matter because they had helpers there, nannies and things like that. She never had to go and shop, things were brought home because the sellers used to come and sell at the door, the vegetables and it was just really different, I believe it was to do with the very-very nice weather, tropical weather, climbing trees, eating lot of wild fruits, running around with the friends, that is what I remember of Tororo. When we had to unfortunately, move to the main city because there were problems in Tororo, in terms of business and personal family problems and obviously education, my father moved into the main city with us and tried to build up his business in the main city. Though we struggled a lot and I could feel as a child, that we were struggling. What was his business? Shop owner, and the family he left, used to live with, he also had a cement factory, the main cement factory in Africa, in East Africa. He was a part of it at certain extent so he did transportation and on the side he did some shop work as well. And then I came here in 1972 because the president of that country wanted all the Asians to get out within what sixty days, I cannot recall but I remember us, going out every morning to get the tickets into long queues in this town center and we all had to go because we needed to signatures or photographs and it was very difficult to get a ticket to get out of Uganda. So that is my memory of the trouble that we had, I believe, it took us twenty rounds before we got the tickets to get out of East Africa. Do you actually remember the day that you left? You remember what that was like? Yeah, as I remember it was early hours of morning on 17th of October or sometime in October. So it was almost winter here, so it was not very nice, dark days and it was quite strange that everything was just night and you saw very little of the day and it was very difficult to get used to that. And did you fly in to London, yes? Yes, we flew into London. Did you have family here already or what happened? That is a very strange story. Because we had a brother here who was studying here, already in one of the Universities. We not, we did not know whether he got the message that we were coming on this particular day, because like I say, we went to get a pass out everyday and to get him, hold of him here was very difficult because the telephones were jammed pack and you know everything, is not as technology wise as it is now. So we did not know, whether when we got out of the airport, whether we would join something called a camp, they had prepared the camps in various areas in England, where they took people, families into these camps and if they had nobody in England they would give them a housing accordingly and we did not know whether anybody was out there for us. An Airport porter came to me and said, is your brother's name so and so and as a twelve year old year girl, frightened ran to my parents, well my mom, my dad stayed behind to pack up before he could join us, with my elder brother, I said, eventually said, yes and they said, 'well there is somebody who looks like you, that is out there', so instead of joining a line, we were in the camp line, you know, queuing up to go into the camps and we went into the green line because there was somebody waiting there, that is what I remember and my brother was out there waiting for us. Just the face, yeah. Just the resemblance of my brother's face, which was like me, and the porter must have seen it and he looked ethnic so that was a really good thing otherwise, I do not know where would have, we would have ended up. And had your brother made any of, I mean because he was just a students, he was quite young, had he made arrangements or? He was quite young and he was based in London but he did his homework that Leicester was the best place for Asians in early seventies. So he made facility for us to stay there and he could not find a separate house for us, so we had to stay with another family in their home and that was quite strange living with somebody else. Because I mean the, you said you and your mother came over with your. With two, with three other sisters. Three other sisters, so it was, a few of you. Five of us, my father thought well, he wanted all his young children to go, we were quite young and I remember that all Asian families used to have, owns a lot of gold, but enough gold for the, to life, to pass it on to the family and whatever my mother had we had to wear it when we traveled here, not pack it but wear it. So I had a thick chain on me, and all my sisters had thick chains on us, as part of our dressing up to come here because all our baggage's were checked by the African military, that were hanging around in the airports and they could just stop anybody, any family at the gun point and you could not do anything about it and people brought their jewelry in what I have for what I have heard in jars with food in it and they would not break the jars to find this, so instead of packing it in suitcases, whatever my mom had all four sister just wore little bit and my mom wore some so, we brought it here in that way. Oh, okay. What was it like then the areas in Leicester, I mean you went to school, did your family go to school? It was terrible. I personally, these are my personal views, I could not settle down. First it was cold and it was winter. It was very dark in the morning at eight o'clock, when you used to see sun out at four a.m. every morning and by eleven a.m. the midday sun was just, skewing through and before you go home it was dark again. So, you went out to school in dark and you came back in dark. So that, I could not settle down and the schooling was from approximately eight-thirty in the morning till four o'clock in the afternoon, whilst in Africa we had, there was school from eight till one, or from one-thirty to four, half day, we had half an hour lessons. We had five or six half an hour lessons in Africa, same thing here we had two hour lessons the same thing, lasting all day. So it was very difficult. Not you could not get out, specially in comparison to what I did, I feel that I was really, I felt really trapped and of course the medium in Africa that I went to was English so, it was not very difficult to get settled into the school in terms of language. But the pronunciation and the ascent we had was totally different to the British. What school did you go to? The only school they could find for me at my age was Sir Jonathan North, so I went way out onto Welford Road, a long way out, but my sisters went into nursery schools so they went around the corner. And what was it like for your mother then, you know buying groceries and things like that, was there, were Asian things available or? In Leicester yes, but very little, it was not impossible but very little, very few things were available. That is why my brother thought that if he brought us and put us in an area where the dominant caste would be Asians then it would be easier for us to cope and I think he did the very good thing because we were surrounded with lots of Asians, we had Asian theater, Asian news agents and couple of Asian groceries, so it was, that in that way, that was quite good. It was not very alienating there. And then how soon after then did your father come over? About six weeks. Yeah, and did you get a separate place then eventually or how did that work out? First we all ended up in this shared accommodation with this couple whose wife was disabled and they had one child and they only used the ground floor and for the whole of the day and the upstairs was rented out and they had another family in it, a couple in it already, and all of us in one big bedroom, four of us, and we had to have our tea in there, we had to eat in there and I believe we had restricted hours of using the bathroom and the kitchen and I believe that when my mom could not cope with finishing her cooking, there was a bit of a conflict within the landlord because his wife was disabled and she needed to get her stuff done, she was in a wheel chair. There was an Asian family, all our groceries were in there, all our clothes were in there, all our drying was in there. Getting up, finding space to have tea on the floor, it was all very strange you know, though there were good highlights and very funny moments. Nowhere to dry your clothes and my mom did not have to go shopping that much because me and my elder sister were let out do that you know, she was fourteen and I was twelve and then my elder sister who was married came and stayed with her husband and her baby so, there was about forty people living in one house, if you like. And that was horrendous. And yes, eventually we found a little terraced house to move into, which was a very pleasant, it was so cold, no carpets, manual fire, I used to prepare the fire everyday and make sure that the floor was wiped, cleaned because of the coal. And it was all quite difficult to adjust you know. And no, in terms of, I think in Africa we saw the religious part of things in atmosphere, something happening all the time around you, local temples and events everywhere and we did not see any of that here. We managed to find a Hindu temple, just two streets away after sometime, so that became very handy. Which temple was that? The Hindu temple. Okay. The first temple in Evington, the area of that we lived in, part of Highfields, though Highfields was not segregated at that point, everybody lived there. The Hindus and Muslims and it was just an Asian dominated area, at that point. That, the one on Cromford Street? Yes. So my mother could go there, though we were used to go to Sai Baba Bhajans, I am sure you have heard of Sai Baba, so we were looking desperately somewhere to go for Sai Baba Bhajans and we found out where it was. So that all started getting, started progressing from there. Okay so you, settling, finding place to worship, finding everything, okay. What, did your father, what did he start up a business here then when you arrived or? He could not do any business here. What did he do? Nothing, I think it was a big blow for fifty plus Asian elderly man who have basically not done much for themselves except be bosses. I think my dad's standard was nearly as a boss before we left Africa and to start something here from scratch was very difficult. It affected, it really affected him and though he tried to do businesses they did not work out. I believe he did not have this kind of support he was looking for because my elder brother who, my father strongly expected the support got married and started leading his own life so, he could not anything on his own, and the brother who got us here, out of the two brothers we had was studying in London. So, I believe that my father did not have the manpower, he was seeking, including buying the house we were living in, was denied to him and I believe that if we had bought that house and moved on from there, we all would have had a equal share of a very good living, but my father was denied. And the money he had in Africa, he did not have that much money here. And we kind of a change now questions, and moving to the more religious side, what was it like, you said you found the temple where you could do Sai Baba Bhajans and things like that, but what about other festivals like Diwali and things, would they celebrate here, did you go to the celebrations, what was it like? Yes, I went to the celebrations, when we found out about them. Obviously they were totally different, most of them were indoors. Well, in Africa we did it in outdoors, so that was a different part and there were restricted times, you had to be there by certain time and it would close down at certain time and that was all strange because Africa it used to open till early hours of the morning and people could go whenever they wanted to. The, all the festivals, most of the festivals, I would say took place at Granby Halls, the Navratri, the Diwali and everybody just went there. There was no, it was not based on caste wise, everybody just went there and it was enough to hold everyone in there, a huge-huge gathering where fancy dress took place, rangoli designs took place and similar to Africa but in a sort of different level. In Africa we went into places because it was so many Asians there, into your own community and did something there, while here everybody went together, so it was a big unity, big network which was fine. It is nice to know about other people's cultures and their behavior and their way of eating food is different to yours, even if you are Hindu. And then obviously, as time went by and people kept on coming here, there was no enough place in Granby Hall, so everybody started having community events, so that was the change that went, when it change from eighties, I would say. What community does your family belong to? We are Lohanas, I forgot the English version for it, not Kshatriyas but, I know that, from what I read we belong to the Rama, Lord Rama's caste. Okay, and you say that they started to divide up the communities earlier it just, do you think, because, I mean caste issues are always a thing you have to do with weddings and something that you know, you had, there used to be quite rigid systems and stuff, do you think that, that still stands or do you think even though the communities have kind of gathered in their, you know various places, do you think that there is still those issues around today, caste issues? Absolutely yes. The generation today, do not see that way, they have mixed friends and they want to marry into mix communities but as far as the older generation goes, their attitudes have not changed, they have come from an orthodox, conservative background and they still carry that here. So, it is difficult for the children to marry who they want because their parents are from an older generation, so the issue still stands very strongly. Do you think it might start to die out, as the younger generation will come over, do you think or? I think so. Do you think it is better if it does or do you think it is good to keep this separate community? I am not sure, I am quite mixed up about that. I am quite perplexed about that, I do not know if it is a good thing or a bad thing. I think myself, because I am married a different caste and I have had problems into settling down, or not being accepted, I think that will still continue. And if that is going to continue, even the younger generation who goes into different caste marriages, may face that because people still hold their values very strongly, even if they say they do not, I think as they grow older, they go back into their roots. They might face problems because every caste work differently, though I am married a Hindu Brahmin, I was not accepted. It took me a long time to realize that I have to quit, they want to quit but there was, I was left with no choice. For your peace of mind. Well, yeah, I became ill, could not cope. Yeah. And, what about just your own practices of Hinduism yourself, aside from communities and things like that? How do you, what makes you yourself a Hindu, I mean, you go to, you do go to the various festivals, I presume and things like that or you know, you pray, you told me you do the Bhajans and things, but if you would tell me a little bit more about that side of practices, but also inside what makes you, what are your personal beliefs? Excuse me, inside I believe in humanity. You can believe in a God, just call a name to it, what I am saying is you can say, I believe in Krishna, or I believe in Rama, I believe in Jesus, I believe in the Goddesses, I think that is very personal. If you are a not a, if you do not carry humanity within you, despite what you believe in, I believe that you are not following the religion the way it should be followed, because what I have learned and read and believed is that for example, the teachings of Rama are this that and the other, the teachings of somebody else are this, then, the other and you see the similarities. All the religions you will say, well, caste, creed, anger you should not have all those in you, all the religions. If you read them all, they all have got a same message, same message everywhere along the line and somebody says, 'well, I do not eat meat', back home they go and beat up their wives or their children. You might as well have a piece of chicken that is what I believe in. So, if you have got no humanity within you then whatever you preach is not, incorrect, that is what I believe in. So I believe in all the religions, I bow to, I think there is only one God with different names to it, I bow to everybody, I have all the forms of different Gods in my house, I have got my shrine upstairs and I have got every picture in there, every deity in there. I try and practice humanity if I can. I try to be help to others if I can and also practice, try to practice is a truth, if I cannot be true to myself, I do not expect to be true to other people and that is very difficult to practice in everyday life and also if I cannot do good to somebody, I should not do bad to them, these are my beliefs and that is what I try and practice, whether you call them religious or whatever I do not know. But when you give a name to something it is very personal. It is your personal, you can get married to somebody who is a total, totally against religion, but it should not come in the way, because it is your believe is your belief and it is a very personal thing. And you said Sai Baba is your family Guru, and what do you actually, what do you get from him, what does he teach you? He teaches us peace, non-violence, discipline, duty before anything else, again to help people those in need, people who are worst off than you and you know, along that line and because we believe in reincarnation, avatars, I believe very strongly that Sai Baba is an avatar, so I believe that, while I can believe in all the pictures and deities and Satya Sai Baba will be the one of them after he has taken his Samadhi, why not believe in him while he is alive and here. So that is, and he gives me light, he has given me signs and whatever I am today, is I think because of my Bhagwan that I believe in. No end of time he has stood by me, that I have not found a human being doing that, though I had believed I have done a lot for so many people. I have granted myself to an extent that right now I can just about manage my own duties and Bhagwan has saved me from so many problems, he has always been there. Have you ever met him in person? Yes. What was that experience like? Oh, there are no words to express that feeling, it is out of this world, it is heavenly bliss really. The minute you set a foot into the ashram, just one foot and your whole personality changes, you just start feeling peace within you and only I can say that because I have experienced it, and it just calms you down, you do not have to see him to feel that, you just start feeling that and the whole ashram is, it is massive, it is huge, it is, I think the biggest ashram in India I think. It is like a small village of its own, as you step inside the gates and you will have to go and sit in the Darshan to feel his power and the love he sends out. You feel it as soon as you step in. And people believe in Satya Sai Baba and people who have been there will say that. If you do manage to see him, do not think just take all the love that he is sending out, because that is all what he does, he sends so much love out and so much energy in that love that all your prayers are answered and you know you feel the signs of things that you have questioned come in different forms. So, you know I could take days into going into that, but that is a brief. You said you have a daughter. Yeah. Do you pass on all this knowledge and these feelings onto her then? I think pass on would be a wrong word, because she sees it happening here, automatically comes into her. Why I say that is that she has not rejected it. She will go to Bhajans with me, she will do things on her own that she has seen me do. So, it is automatically, I mean she likes Indian classical music because I play all the time. So I think, it is the way, she has been brought up, really in the surrounding that she has been brought up that first of all she is an Asian person and she is a Hindu and we believe that, if you are a Hindu you have been blessed, not disrespect to any other caste or religion. And first of all you have got to remember that, that what you are is a gift in its own way. And do you feel then in general that the youth of today, are they more or less religious than may be when you were younger? Less. Why do you think that? Because in my days, my childhood I used to go to the temple with my mother everyday and I used to see other children there. When I go into ordinary temples I see fewer children there and it is different to Sai Baba, we have all the ages there, we have children, we have youths, we have you know babies and you see what I was brought up like in when I go to the Satya Sai Baba organization. I do not see that in the local ordinary temples, you always see the elderly there. You will see a few youths. I am not saying that they are not religious. Probably they are religious, but they do not have to go and practice it, they do not have to do it ritualistically, they are probably more religious than I am. They do not believe in sitting down and putting, folding their hands or doing the rituals, or the Aarti, or whatever. And do you feel it is important for the youth to learn their mother tongue, are you a Gujarati or? I am a Gujarati. Yes I think it is, I think it is very important that you recognize your culture and be a part of it, rather than vanishing it completely because these things come handy when you have your own children. When you have grown up, the teenagers and the youths do not think as they would think forty years after they have passed the youth stage. And I would speak that from friends who were married to different caste, especially non Asian person, an English person, a German person, I have got friends who have come back and said that, yes, when we were teenagers and we studied in this country, who are now retired sixty-five plus who have left, and who have splitted from their wives and realized that their children do not come and see them, because they are westernized. They have gone to their mother, I am talking about men, because the man who has made the mistakes, I have not come, yeah I have come yet come across to a female who has married a white person. So, I am talking about the male gender, who are not with their families, the son will ring up their dad once a year, if that and say, 'Hi, dad how are you' and the phone down. We have different upbringing, we will stick around our parents when they are old, go and see them regularly and try and see what they need and make sure that we have regular contact with them. If the children of these day, do not start doing that with their parents or their ancestors when they grow up, they will not know any of their roots because the friends I am talking about say that they realize after the children, their children are about eight or nine years old but they only speak in English and their names are not Indian, that they realize that, 'oh, my God, I am English, all I have done for last forty years is I have spoken in English, had English food and my children are named David and Mark and James rather than Radha and Krishna and whatever and they are eating the food which suddenly I do not like.' They suddenly wake up and everything they have liked for forty years suddenly they do not like so they prefer to split up and live like an Asian person, they think it is not too late. I have met people like that, so I can only go onto stories like that and say that in fifty years time that is going to happen, that even the Asian persons, Asian child will be like this James Duttani or James Kumar, that is, it might as well be David Johnson, you know. So, that is what I am coming, that is where I am coming from, so yes, it is very important that the teenagers these day make sure who they are, where they come from and what their parents preach and try and give attention to what goes inside their house, rather than switching onto mobile phones and saying, 'mom mom I am going out, what food is there to eat, come home, they have had something from outside, quick food.' No, I do not think it will work. We are going to loose everything, I do not think we have got a bad culture, I think we have got a very good culture and it is worth hanging onto. And how do you identify yourself now a days, if people ask you, because you know you are from Indian background, born in Africa, lived in the U.K for such a long time, what if somebody was to ask you who you are, what would you say? I would say that I am a mixture of east and west, I have 80 percent eastern values and I have got 20 percent western values which I believe in because I do not believe everything our ancestors have said and preached. So I have taken very good things that I think are good things from the western culture and blended into the way I live and so I am a mix of east and west. And where would you say is your kind of home now then, where do you identify with most? Believe it or not, I have only been to India twice. The very first time I went to India, I am not going to talk about when I was a baby, when I was taken because I do not remember anything, I went to India in 1996 because I was quite unwell. I had trouble there so I could not enjoy the way I wanted to enjoy, but before that I always felt that India was my home. Just come back this year, after a four-week holiday in India and I know I belong there, something inside me tells me, my home is India. Okay, and finally then, as this interview may be listened to, who knows who is going to be listening to in the future, your future generations may be looking you up. Is there any final message then that you would like to give it to people who will listening in the future? Yes, I think you should always hang on to your culture. You do not know when it will become of use because there is a lot to offer in the Hindu culture, be it in terms of religion, be it in terms of its aesthetics, the rich heritage, something will come of use, if you recognize it, it will come into hand someday. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you.