The will to survive in the face of unrelenting racism and human cruelty underpins this ultimately uplifting debut novel from short-story writer and essayist Janika Oza. Meticulously researched, the story follows three generations of one family, originally from Gujarat, as they are forced from one continent to another by some of the most terrifying events of the last century. Pirbhai’s peregrination from Gujurat to Uganda in 1898 starts the family’s odyssey.
Unknowingly press-ganged into slaving for the British on the Kenyan railway, Pirbhai is transported to Mombasa in appalling conditions and set to work. Ordered to burn down a native settlement to make way for the tracks, Pirbhai escapes and takes refuge with a shopowner and his family in Kisumu. It’s a lucky step: Pirbhai marries the shopowner’s daughter, Sonal, and the couple move to Kampala to help a cousin with his pharmacy.
Once in Uganda, the family’s fortunes improve. Pirbhai wins employment with the transport department of the British administration while their son Vinod is successful at tea and coffee trading. A wife is sought for him: Rajni from Karachi, whose wealthy family is desperate to remove her from the horrific violence spawned by Partition. The couple go on to have three daughters: Latika, Mayuri and Kiya. The eldest, Latika, studies journalism and marries Arun, a student activist, before giving birth to a son, Harilal. As the British administration withdraws and Idi Amin gains power, the political situation becomes hostile and Arun is imprisoned. When the expulsion order for Asians is given, the family must once again flee, this time to Canada and London, where their safety is by no means assured.

After such oppression, it is inevitable that family members carry many emotional scars. Author Oza excels in showing that less tangible wounds can run as deep as bereavement for the death of loved ones. The cost of exile is great. Oza’s characters suffer from the loss of belonging and community, a sense of rootedness in the landscape, financial status and even the future one assumed one would live. Vinod understands this about his new wife Rajni as she struggles to adjust to life in Uganda. Oza writes:
… he supposed that the trials of life were easier to endure when you were surrounded by your people. He had wondered then if Rajni’s detachment was not about the privilege she carried from her old life but the anchor she had lost upon entering this new one.
Much of the blame for the family’s hardship is laid at the feet of British colonialism and ongoing racist attitudes of the time. However, Oza is insightful enough to shed light on the complications. When Vinod loses his job due to Africanization and is told to go back to the Queen, he understands that the move is anti-European rather than anti-Asian. Similarly, when Arun wonders why fury against the British is manifesting in Asians and Arabs getting murdered, he realises “it was always the minorities who were attacked when the masses grow frustrated with their lot.”
Although its title and premise suggest unbearable tragedy, the novel is actually a celebration of resilience. Despite internal disagreements, the family sticks together through the challenges, giving each member the support to continue. The female characters are portrayed as particularly strong. At one point, when Kiya faints as her boyfriend departs, her sisters hold her upright by “bearing her weight”. Likewise, it becomes obvious who is really in charge when Sonal is ill for several weeks. Vinod, unable to resolve his issues by himself, realises that “his mother was sick and he, like his father, could not think what to do without her direction.”
More important than mutual support, however, is the family’s superpower, an inherited characteristic to which the novel’s title refers and might be summed up as “a fire in the belly”. It could also be construed as hope. This kind of burning is presented in several guises, such as Pirbhai’s desire for better, Vinod’s faith that what has been lost can be rebuilt and Latika’s belief that freedom can be gained. By the final chapter, set in 1992, it seems Harilal will continue to bear the torch. He sees Vinod and Rajni survived by being silent but his path will be different. Oza’s message is clear: if you want change, speak up.
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