" I was 19 years old, and my father died.
The people at the morgue said we had to buy a coffin. We didn‘t have much money, only the money that was given to us by the Indian government, like five rupees a month per person. So we got this plain wooden box.
My second brother and I buried my father in the cemetery just outside the camp, a cemetery with the graves of Japanese soldiers. The cemetery also had some German and Italian soldiers buried there. The ground in the cemetery had more stones than dirt. My brother and I tried to dig our father‘s grave. I was numb yet my palms hurt. The handle of the shovel dug into my palms. They were bloody when we finally lowered the wooden box with my father‘s body into the hole we had dug.
My family was released in June of 1965, the first or second group to leave. We wanted to take my father‘s bones back with us to Shillong. We wanted to bury him in the Chinese cemetery in the clan plot. When we dug him up, we saw there was still flesh on the bones and we could see hair as well. I guess it was so dry in Rajasthan the flesh just dried up on the bones. So we cremated my father‘s body. The next day we went and picked over the ashes. We selected bits of bones, the bigger pieces, and put them in a jar. We took the jar with us back to Shillong and buried it in a Chinese cemetery.10
10 Hakka mortuary custom: upon death, the deceased is buried in a temporary grave in the cemetery. After five to seven years, the body is exhumed; the skeleton is placed in a burial urn, arranged in a fetal position and sits upright. The urn is then buried in a permanent tomb. (Howard, 1991)
Two other families also had someone die while interned in Deoli. One of them was the sister of the person next door to us in Shillong, the Hous. When they heard what we did with my father‘s body, Mr. Hous also dug up and cremated his sister‘s body and took the bones back to Shillong. Two other Chinese families did the same.
When we returned to Shillong, we went to our shop right away. Like all the Chinese in India, we had our living quarters at the back of the shop. It wasn‘t our shop and our home any more. All our things were gone—the shoes, the shoe making equipment, all gone. The landlord had leased the shop out to someone else, an Indian. The Indian told us to go away. It was now his shop.
My mother said, ―I want to look inside. Just to take a look. Then we will go away.
The Indian reluctantly let us inside the shop. My mother had hidden money in cracks on the walls and in little holes here and there. You know what? Someone had gone through all the cracks and holes in the shop. All the cracks and holes were gone.
So there we were back in Shillong—no money, no home, and staying with relatives. I needed to start making and selling shoes again. I needed to make some money to rent somewhere for us to stay. I needed money to buy food to feed my mother, brothers and sisters.
The landlord came and talked to us.
The landlord said, ―I put all the stuff in the shop in a godam (warehouse) for safekeeping. You owe me 2,000 rupees for rent on the storage.
I told him, ―The shoes in storage aren‘t worth even half of that. The shoes are over three years out of style. We probably can‘t sell them at all.
I needed the shoe making tools in the godam. I could have gone to Calcutta to get the new tools for much less than 2,000 rupees, but the Indian government had new laws that said that we couldn‘t leave Shillong. We needed 2,000 rupees, but we only had 700 rupees, and I didn‘t know what to do. I had just turned 20, but I was the head of the household with my mother and five younger brothers and sisters to look after. It was a good thing that a relative lent us the money. So we got our stuff back.
When I checked over the things in storage, I found many pairs of used Wellington boots and shoes, all scuffed up and worn. People must have sneaked into the godam, tried on the shoes and walked out with the new shoes that fit, leaving their worn ones behind. Anyway, we got our tools back.
Then I looked for a shop. One guy told me he had a site for rent in a part of Shillong I didn‘t know that well and he would build a shop there for me. I went to look at the site. You wouldn‘t believe it! The landlord must have rented the site out as a garbage dump. Garbage spilled out onto the street. The smell told me that the garbage had been there for a long time. The landlord said, ―I will get rid of the stuff and rent it to you for 500 rupees a month.‖
We didn‘t have much money, and the rent was cheap. The location was good, too. A couple of Chinese had opened their shoe shops nearby. So I signed the lease. The truck rented by the landlord had to make four or five trips to get rid of the garbage. Then he sent carpenters to build the shop. He must have sent dwarves because when I took over the door was so low I bumped my head on it every time I entered. The doorway was less than five feet tall. The customers had to duck their heads to enter the shop. It‘s funny thinking about it now.
The whole family worked hard at the shop, especially my mother. She did the cutting of the thick leather for the bottoms of shoes. She cut the uppers, and she sewed the pieces together. She worked really hard. We all worked really hard.
When we returned to Shillong, the Indian government had a new law. The law said the Chinese had to report to the police station every day. We didn‘t have to on Saturdays and Sundays because the police closed the station on weekends.
So you can imagine me, trying to get my business going, and I had to go to the police station every day, in all weather, to report to the police. During the monsoon I squished into the police station dripping wet from the chest down. Umbrellas can‘t protect you from the downpour during the monsoon.
A Chinese man got fed up going to the police station every day. He told the police, ―I am not coming in to report to you every day. Put me back in Deoli. There I had food, I don‘t have to lift a finger, I don‘t have to report to anybody, and I don‘t have to make a living. Just put me back in Deoli.
The police didn‘t do anything to this man. They just let him be. But if you wanted to go into business, then the police could create a lot of trouble for you. So I kept on reporting to the police for, oh, quite a while.
Many of my friends immigrated to Canada from 1969 to the 1980s. My mother visited Toronto in 1975 or ‘76. She came back and told me, ―Life in Canada is not that good. The people there work so hard, and you couldn‘t get together with friends so easily. Better stay here, bring up your children. Maybe later.
I got married. I had three daughters and two sons. My mother passed away a couple of years ago. I and my family immigrated to Canada in 1991. Four of my children are in Canada and two of them finished university. My eldest daughter lives with her husband and two children in Nagaland, northeastern India. Life is much easier here. I am retired now and financially secure. I miss the life in India. You know, in India you just opened the Chinese newspaper and you could read whose sons or daughters were getting married, who died, and who had a son or daughter. Here in Canada, you don‘t know what‘s happening to your friends.
In India, we had connections with other Chinese. No matter where you were, we knew what our friends were doing. If something happened to a Chinese in Bombay, his friend in Calcutta would know. The connection was strong and always there. In Canada, we don‘t have this connection. Maybe because we don‘t need the connection to survive in Canada, but you need it in India.
Here in Canada, I don‘t have to be afraid that a policeman will come to the door to throw me out of the country. So I guess I am happy, sort of. "
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