Shirin's Story

In my family history meanderings, I sometimes forget that the living have stories too. None of us are getting any younger - none of us ever gets younger. We should gather these stories now.

 

My mother-in-law Shirin Dastur Patel turned 90 this year, can no longer walk, and recently moved to an assisted living facility. It was a hard year. She even stopped reading, her lifetime joy. During one of my trips to pack her things, I suggested we get her story on paper, so her grandchildren would have a written account of her life. I was resolute, and although at first I had to pry information from her and she showed no interest in my notes, on my last visit she carefully reviewed my draft and made changes.

I have known Shirin for more than thirty years. I knew she lived through a remarkable time in history, but as I looked over my notes and spent time doing a bit of internet research, I realized how little I still know about the India of her youth. Her personal story made that history more alive to me, and I look forward to learning more.



Life in India (click here) 



Shirin was born on the western coast of India 21 Oct 1926. She is a "Parsee", part of the large group of people of the Zoroastrian faith that migrated from Persia (now Iran) to India a thousand years ago. During Shirin's lifetime in India she witnessed British colonial rule, the Second World War, and the Partition of India. She was educated in India and at Oxford.

Shirin and her husband Jal Kaikhashru Patel (1 Mar 1927 - 31 May 1986) left India for America in 1967 so they could better educate their sons. The Indian government allowed them to take $100 each, and a Greyhound Bus pass. They rebuilt their lives as immigrants. They educated their sons well. And now those sons are married and have children of their own.

Today, Shirin is happier with her new home. She is reading again, primarily newly published histories of India. Shirin's written story will be a Christmas gift to each of her grandchildren, which they will cherish and pass down through future generations.

To read about Shirin's life in India, click here.

 

Post script - My "Time With My Ancestors" blog began as a story of my family history, and strictly American. But when I married an immigrant Parsee, and especially after we had a child, his family's story became my story too. Yet more history for me to relearn. Or, in this case, learn for the first time. As to my American family tree, when I first began working on it, Shirin said "oh you Americans" -- she thinks of America as a young country. My husband's cousins in Canada call us a "noble experiment in democracy." Shirin can trace her family back a thousand years, to the time the Parsees left Iran for India. My husband says he will be impressed when I can trace my family back to Julius Caesar. I am still working on that....