Living the Partition

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.

- NEHA KIRPAL

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.