Because of this, I thought Britain might be closer to being my motherland than India. I thought that if I were there, I would feel like I made sense. And if I felt like I made sense, I would be unstoppable.<\/p>\n
When I moved to Britain in 2019, I would excitedly tell Londoners where I was from, as if to exclaim, \u201cWe are from the same family!\u201d Not in a proud way. In a you can\u2019t choose your family way. <\/p>\n
But it wasn\u2019t common knowledge that Fiji was a former British colony, let alone that Britain shipped more than a million Indians to plantations across five continents, creating a lost diaspora. I felt guilty being in a room full of adoring people and still feeling unseen.<\/p>\n
India was made difficult to connect with. Besides the differences in language and customs, I didn\u2019t know my family tree beyond who was in Fiji. That\u2019s only four generations on my father\u2019s side and five generations on my mother\u2019s. Telling me to \u201cgo back to India\u201d was always pointless. I don\u2019t know where exactly in India my ancestors came from. Many descendants of Girmitiya \u2013 a name stemming from the English word \u201cagreement\u201d given to Indian indentured labourers \u2013 didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Baby Varsha and her father in Suva, Fiji.<\/p>\n
In 1879, 147 years ago today, Girmitiya arrived by boat in Fiji from India. Britain transported my ancestors to work on sugar plantations under the new system of unfree labour: indenture. Many of them died on the way. Some from illness. Some from suicide. My family is descended from the survivors.<\/p>\n
Many records were lost or poorly maintained by Britain, which had little, if any, incentive to preserve such history at the time. Much of what we knew was passed down orally through generations. Academic literature and in-depth teaching of Indo-Fijian history in Fiji\u2019s schools were significantly limited. <\/p>\n
Fiji\u2019s four military coups haven\u2019t helped. The first one on May 14, 1987, is why my family no longer felt they belonged to the only home they knew.<\/p>\n
Then-Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka\u2019s bloodless, anti-Indo-Fijian coup prompted a mass exodus of Indo-Fijians. His gang of soldiers put a gun to my father\u2019s and other journalists\u2019 heads inside the Fiji Sun office in Suva. Later, as rioters looted the capital, hands holding stones lunged at my father\u2019s Indo-Fijian face. That day was the first time my father saw his father cry.<\/p>\n
I still don\u2019t ask Dad about that coup much. He said it marks one forever. He said it was traumatising. He said it is what made him leave everything he knew \u2013 his home, family, friends, security \u2013 and start again with me, my sister and my mother years later in the unfamiliar lands of Aotearoa. <\/p>\n
One night in Auckland, I had a dream that I was a big cat sleeping by the heater. I felt innate comfort and strength. This is what I imagine belonging to look like. This is what I imagine the non-Kiwi white men I dated in New Zealand felt like. They didn\u2019t have to prove their Kiwiness off the bat. But I\u2019d get shop assistants talking slowly, carefully, as though I might not understand.<\/p>\n
In Aotearoa, I feel guilty. I love this country. I had a better future because of the brave risks my parents took in moving here. And I am so grateful. This is my home and this is where I will always be. But I still wail for belonging. There are pits of grief running throughout the body. My ancestors\u2019 ghosts are still looking for me.<\/p>\n
M\u0101ori helped me understand why I keep searching. Knowing your whakapapa means you know who you are. Knowing who you are makes you fearless. It makes you powerful. No one can take that away.<\/p>\n
Sometimes when I oil my hair as my ancestors have done for generations, I imagine my mother\u2019s hands on top of mine. On top of her hands are my grandmother\u2019s. On top of my grandmother\u2019s hands are my great-grandmother\u2019s, and so on, until the room is filled with ghosts in saris and bangles, together.<\/p>\n
Varsha Anjali is a journalist in the lifestyle team at the Herald. She was born in Fiji and immigrated to T\u0101maki Makaurau when she was 5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Because of this, I thought Britain might be closer to being my motherland than India. I thought that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[43755,28824,682,51245,181,307,4522,2566,219086,1866,219083,83475,42,78,219084,5501,219082,21080,194,66670,424,13840,1357,22638,3025,4977,43,69,1118,6744,219085,7811,6100,7235,1865,40,38,41,39,118974,43754,4576,377,1530,80],"class_list":["post-427136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-anjali","tag-arrived","tag-being","tag-belong","tag-details","tag-dont","tag-feel","tag-fiji","tag-fijiborn","tag-find","tag-girmitiya","tag-grew","tag-headlines","tag-in","tag-indentured","tag-indian","tag-indofijian","tag-ive","tag-kiwi","tag-labourers","tag-life","tag-like","tag-lived","tag-marks","tag-most","tag-my","tag-news","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-place","tag-plantations","tag-since","tag-still","tag-struggle","tag-today","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-transported","tag-varsha","tag-work","tag-world","tag-years","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}