A publisher recounts her experience of working on a memoir about the Sindhi Refugee Camp in Valivade

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…

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