Memoir charts family’s trauma across generations
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Ranbir Sidhu’s memoir details the experiences of his parents, beginning with their arranged marriage in London in 1963 after separate journeys from Kenya and India.
His father left Kenya shortly before its independence, having previously lived in the Punjab region of India, which was largely agricultural at the time. His mother travelled from a village near Amritsar in India to the UK for the wedding, a union arranged without the couple ever meeting beforehand.
The author’s paternal grandfather had established a life in Kenya decades earlier, and his father joined him to work with the British colonial administration. The family owned a small plot of land in India, which provided minimal income and was later offered as generosity rather than payment. Sidhu describes a pattern of displacement and loss beginning with his mother’s childhood during the Partition of India in 1947, when she was forced to migrate with her family from Pakistan to India.
This initial exile foreshadowed her later move to the UK and a marriage dictated by tradition. Before the wedding, she was instructed to unquestioningly obey her husband, a lesson that shaped a tumultuous marriage marked by conflict and ultimately, her silent acceptance of his dominance. Sidhu recalls finding a note as a child that he believed to be a suicide note, a secret that further illustrates the hidden struggles within his family and the lasting impact of generational trauma.
