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family :

Grandma (Baa)

growing up in Kenya, marrying in India, moving to the UK then travelling the world.

Dad

Band & DJ

India and epilepsy

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gunda

dick johnson is dead

notes on blindness

what the psychic saw

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Band & DJ / india/ epilepsy

look into how he started out/ why he got into it and how the industry has changed

look into how the band was formed

tell the story of how my dad was 'cursed' with epilepsy and black magic in India

how religion and faith got him out of it as well as how the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong or how it developed.

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her immigration story

marriage

life after marriage: having freedom and travelling the world

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Baa on the left with my other grandma

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Voice recordings of Baa talking about her life

old photos of her, if possible of where she grew up

video recordings of her home now to try and compare

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part 1:

life in kenya (childhood)

part 2:

marriage and coming to england

and struggles she faced in marriage and well as migration

having children

part 3:

travelling the world

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city where she grew up

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where she went to marry

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where she lives now

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name, age and where you were born.

what was it like growing up in Kenya?

what was your family like?

what did you most enjoy about living in Kenya?

how did you feel when they told you you were going to India?

what was the journey like to India? Were you scared or excited?

How did you feel when you first met grandad?

what was the marriage like and what was the story of you then coming to the UK?

how did you adapt to the UK, what were the challenges?

when did you decide you wanted to travel the world?

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MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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They came across the ocean to build railways and work as traders. They settled as merchants, farmers, and government workers, and have stayed for generations. It's a familiar immigration story, but in this case it concerns a largely unfamiliar group: the Indians of Kenya, who the novelist Shiva Naipaul once described as having "an odd kind of invisibility."

Traders from present-day India - as well as parts of South Asia that are now in Pakistan - had been sailing across the Indian Ocean to East Africa for centuries. But after Britain took control of Kenya in 1895, many more Indians, already subjects of the British Empire, began migrating there. By 1963, about 35 percent of the population of Nairobi was of Indian heritage.

"It's this hidden history that has not been uncovered," says Sana Aiyar, an assistant professor of history at MIT. "Yes, there's an imprint of South Asia and Indians in Nairobi, but you don't think of Kenya as an Indian country."

It is a fraught history as well, since Kenya's Indian immigrants existed for years in a kind of political and social limbo: They were generally more upwardly mobile than other Kenyans, but lacked the opportunity for full political participation under British rule. At times, Indians benefitted from British rule, but at other moments, such as during the Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s, many Indians sided with Kenyans against the British.

Now Aiyar has written a book about this saga - " Indians in Kenya: The Politics of Diaspora," being published this month by Harvard University Press - which illuminates these social tensions and political changes.

"I think what makes the Indians in Kenya a very interesting case study is that people think about colonialism as having a clear-cut colonizer and colonized," Aiyar says. "But the Indians really complicate that notion."
Network effect
Perhaps the first thing to realize about the unlikely success of Kenya's Indian immigrants is that many of them - about 30,000 - came across the ocean as indentured laborers who had to work their way to freedom. About two-thirds of indentured laborers eventually returned to India. But many of those who stayed became skilled workers on the railways, while others who migrated to Kenya as traders became successful entrepreneurs, often as importers, exporters, or shopkeepers.

"Because there was this pre-existing network of traders, there was no hindrance to them setting up shop," Aiyar explains. "Within five years they could go from being someone who's just exploring what the options are, to setting up these big firms. They were very successful, very quickly."

Among the most successful was Alibhai Mulla Jeevanjee, an Indian trader who entered Kenya around 1890 and became rich, in part, through the construction of a railway linking Kenya with Uganda. Jevanjee became a leading voice for Indian rights in Africa - and straddled the line between colonizer and colonized. As Aiyar writes, Jeevanjee's claims were in the language of an "imperialist discourse that characterized Africa as an uncivilized and savage land" - one that Indians were taming through commerce.

Yet the British continually resisted the claims to greater political power by Jeevanjee and other Kenyan Indians. That helped the empire retain its immediate hold on the country, but alienated Indians in the long run.

"It was a strategic miscalculation," Aiyar says. "[The British] got very aggressive about saying, 'Let's not let Indians into the legislative process.'"
Caught in between
By the time of Kenya's Mau Mau rebellion, which lasted through most of the 1950s, the political sympathies of Kenya's Indian community had fractured, largely along generational lines. Some prominent older Indians in Kenya opposed the rebels; many younger, educated Kenyans of Indian heritage opposed the British response.

Afterward, liberation politics again threatened the Indian community's sense of belonging; some visions of independence in Kenya, emphasizing ethnic nationalism, also left little room for Indians. In response, many Indian arguments for participation in an independent Kenya, Aiyar notes, cited economic necessity, claiming that "Indian capital was needed for the state to be viable."

Kenyan independence in 1963 was followed by a tense decade for the country's Indians: Many emigrated to Britain, but roughly 100,000 stayed, remaining relatively prosperous.

Aiyar's account of the Indian trajectory in Kenya has been lauded by other scholars. The book "expands the scale of colonial history and decolonization, reconfiguring East Africa, South Asia, and the Indian Ocean world in a wonderful instance of transnational history," writes Isabel Hofmeyr, a professor of African literature at the University of the Witswatersrand in South Africa.

Aiyar says that for all the emphasis by Kenya's Indians regarding their economic utility to the state, her research underscores their deep feeling of belonging in Kenya - mixed with a strong notion of Indian heritage.

"There is this sense in which the diaspora really feels it belongs to Kenya," Aiyar observes. "Kenya has been their territorial homeland. There is a civilizational homeland of India, but their desire to stay in Kenya is much more than just a strategic move."

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"Indians in Kenya," a new book by MIT historian Sana Aiyar, details how Kenya's Indian immigrants established a foothold in a foreign land.

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'Swan' explores the true story of Hansa (swan) Vegamwala and her immigration from Kenya with a troubled marriage and a new life in England. The poetic documentary uses archival imagery to guide the viewer through her journey as well as modern footage to help set the tone and match the voice over.

The filmmaker attempts to explore how immigration and arranged marriage can limit a person and then looks into the transformation process when a person has freedom.

‘Swan’ is split into three clear sections: part one looks into her childhood in Kenya when she was surrounded by friends, the film then looks into her marriage in India turning to her lowest points in life by part three she then has the ability to travel the world closing her journey.

‘Swan’ reflects the emotional distress that was inflicted on Hansa, through music, by moving from her childhood life which was quickly ended by getting married and moving from Kenya to India then finally to England.

The film uses audio and visual techniques to express the same feelings Hansa was experiencing; the use of close-up shots conveyed the idea of isolation and hopelessness to the viewer to bring a connection to Hansa and her own feelings.

Watching this film is to understand the idea of the need for freedom, watching the subject live her better years in fear and isolation to only then start her life after her husband passed.

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A documentary about my mom, my dad, and a psychic.

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similar to this documentary I had my grandma talk through the phone as I wasn't able to meet her in person. I do think it adds a different texture to the voice and highlights the idea of communication.

both my documentary and this one use archival imagery to help illustrate people and timings.

they both also explore the idea of a loss of a husband

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use of archival imagery setting the time and tone for the documentary

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when watching Gunda i appreciated the use of close-up shots and how that creates a connection with the audience and allows the film to feel more vulnerable.

Because of this I also consciously decided to include the use of close-up imagery.

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use of close-up shot of the eye looking at the camera gives a more direct approach to the viewer, drawing the feeling of vulnerability.

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I did enjoy the elements of investigation when making the documentary; talking to my grandma and listening back on it and trying to fit things together. I did think that having the recording done over the phone wasn't going to work effectively but I do think now that it does add a different tone for the film. I had previously met with my grandma in person and did my interview then but my digital recorder didn't record properly therefore I had to do it again but over the phone as she is quite far. This did cause problems as she didn't repeat everything she did the first time around which I did already film for.