The Indian Mate Volume 1
The stories of Partition in India in 1947 were an ingrained part of my childhood: the human endurance and triumph amongst the heart wrenching tragedies arising from the biggest migration in human history.
The first volume narrates how families like mine navigated this turbulent period. It then chronicles my own experience of growing up in extreme financial hardship in a middle-class family in modern India that was increasingly getting mired in the Eastern and Western cultural clashes and economic disparity and my efforts to move to Australia, a country with new possibilities for myself and my family.
The Indian Mate Volume 2
Volume 2 uncovers the unique Australian experience through the eyes of an NRI (Non-Resident Indian) who later became an Australian citizen. It chronicles my journey from being a student in Australia with crushing expectations, $1000 and a bag full of dreams with feelings of homesickness and isolation, who faced years of personal, professional and cultural challenges to be the person I am today.
It recounts the journey of self-discovery from a point in my life where I felt that I belonged neither to India nor to Australia to a realisation that in fact I have acquired a new identity forged from my experiences in these two countries.