From
the early 20th century, Satpanth Ismaili family homes spanned the African
geography - the forests, grasslands, highlands, the Great
Rift Valley, plateaux and deserts. Often their homes had a
courtyard behind the family store and often the home-store had a small room
furnished as a jamat khana. Often their home-store was on the only street and
they were the only Asian African family in the area.
In
the stores on the savannah, the Bais worked sorting and stringing ethnic beads.
Many Satpanth Ismailis started their businesses in East
Africa selling beads like my great grandfather, Rajan Nanji
Pachani. Every morning he used to line fist size heaps of beads on a grass
mat, sit crossed legged under a tree at the market in Mombasa and wait for the ethnic people to
view and hopefully purchase some of his beads. That was around the turn of the
19th century when Rajan Lalji’s bead shop (established in 1905, in Nairobi’s boisterous Jugu
Bazaar) supplied the stock to the rural bead merchants. Fatma Bai, the wife of Rajan Lalji would have been among the first Bead Bais of East Africa. So huge was the trade
in beads that the bazaar behind the stone jamat khana was called Moti Bazaar.
Two of the well known Bais of the bead bazaar were known as Chak Bai and Puri Bai (surnames?). Moti in Gujarati and Kutchi, the native languages of Satpanth Khoja, means a
bead. So many Satpanth Khoja merchants traded in African ethnic beads that the
bazaar was also known as Khoja Bazaar.
Often
it was the Bais who put the beads on display panels and racks in the stores
where they would sit and chat with indigenous women and men who came to admire their
colourful stock. They also prepared meals three times a day. In time, the Bais
sewed dresses to sell and hemmed kanga and shuka sheets as they turned the hand
wheels on Singer sewing machines while sitting on the veranda of the store.
They also did assorted shop tasks when the men rested in the afternoon and they
embroidered pillows and bedcovers, and mended clothes. The Bais had many
children, from six to sixteen, and even more, but not all survived in the
African hinterland. They taught the children the sacred songs of guru-pirs and
told faith stories. They made the Satpanth family home in Africa
at the equator.
The
character of Moti Bai in the book is inspired by the lives of the Bead Bais I
had met though not specifically about any one of them.
This
book of fiction is about voyaging, losing India, coming to the new land, old
worship styles, imagining, politics and life in the old shantytown of Indian
Nairobi. I have brought together these layered stories I heard growing up and
again when curating exhibitions about the coming of the Satpanthis to East Africa (Ma aging gracefully, 1994) and then the
Asian African Heritage Exhibition (2000 -2005). The material culture in the
book is about women’s historical memories. That is to say, events and stories
are built around articles of embroidery and beadwork, stitching and cooking;
the stone hand mill, the bandhani, pictures and pieces of jewellery like
bangles and the nose siri, body décor we call
saangar.We grew up with stories told around artefacts.
