Cheti Chand

By SAROJ SHAHANI- PUNE

ACCORDING TO OUR SINDHI HINDU CALENDAR CHET IS THE MONTH WE SAY APRIL IT HAPPENS TO BE THE BIRTHDAY OF OUR LORD JHULELAL ON NEW MOON DAY FOR US WE SAY THIS DAY IS NEW YEAR AS IT IS FIRST MONTH IF OUR CALENDAR WE NOT ONLY PERFORM PUJA AT HOME BUT VISIT OCEAN OR SEA FOR OFFERINGS

OUR LORD JHULELAL IS KNOWN BY SEVRAL NAMES SOME CALL HIM DARYA SHAH SOME CALL HIM JHULAN SAI, LAAL SAI SOME EVEN CALL HIM AMAR SHAH ETC. HE SAW TO IT THAT WE SHOULD NOT BE FORCED TO CHANGE OUR RELIGION FORCIBLE CONVERSION OF RELIGION AND CRUELTY SHOULD NOT BE TOLERATED

WE SHOULD ALWAYS RESPECT OUR RELIGION AS IT IS ALSO PRESTIGIOUS ONE EVERY HUMAN BEING SHOULD BE GIVEN A CHOICE TO FOLLOW A RELIGION AS IT E ERY IS HUMAN BEING'S  RIGHT & WE  CAN  SAY JUSTICE WILL BE DONE AS ONE SHOULD NOT DISRESPECT ONE'S  OR  ANY BODY ELSE'S RELIGION

THIS DAY IS CONSIDERED AUSPICIOUS TO START ANY NEW BUSINESS OR WORK OUR LAAL SAI RESIDES IN OCEAN AND HIS WAHAN IS A BIG FISH WE CALL PALO THAT IS THE REASON WE PERFORM BEHRAANAS AND OFFER OFFERINGS TO OCEAN

Trying Out Something New

HOW ATUL KHATRI,

A TRADITIONAL SHIKARPURI BUSINESSMAN,

BECAME ONE OF INDIA’S FOREMOST STAND-UP COMICS

By Atul Khatri

Bombay was, and will always be, my home. Growing up, most of my neighbours were Sindhis. Khar has many shops which sell Sindhi sweetmeats like Tharu, Sindhi grocery stores like Ochiram Passari, and Sindhi hawkers from Kalyan and Ulhasnagar who set up stalls selling home-made papad, kheecha and pickles. I studied in St Theresa’s High School, which had a large population of Sindhis, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Catholics and others. We celebrated Ganesh Chaturthi and Eid and Diwali and Christmas and Holi – and we also celebrated Thadri and Teejri, ate koki and loli and seyal bread, and on Sundays it was kadhi, chawar, boondi and aloo took – only that and nothing else. I went with my mom to Siddhivinayak on Tuesday, St Michael’s Church on Wednesday and to Haji Ali Mosque on Friday (not every week though!) It was very mixed, and I never felt like an outsider or part of an immigrant community, even though we often heard Partition stories from our elders.

It wasn’t just me who was born in Bombay, my father was too – in 1926. My grandfather, Kewalram Khatri, had come to Bombay from Shikarpur as a young man, and set up our family’s hundi business in Thakurdwar. He travelled frequently for business, to Karachi and Shikarpur where he owned property and had a home, and to Iran for trade.

My father, Naraindas, went to a Sindhi school in Thakurdwar, and then to Jai Hind College, which was built by Sindhis immediately after Partition. He wanted to be an engineer, but his father did not allow him.

After Partition, the Sindhi population of Bombay increased, and my grandfather decided to move to Khar where a lot of Sindhis were settling. He purchased two plots and built a house for our family on one and on the other he built the Gurdwara Nij Thanw of Dada Chellaram, so that the children would grow up hearing the strains of Gurbani every morning. And we did: my sister Aruna, my brother Mahesh, my sister Anjali, and I.

Our father was forced to join the family business instead of fulfilling his aptitude for engineering and starting his own factory, as he had wanted to do, and he made sure that he educated us. My sister Dr Anjali Chhabria became a well-known psychiatrist. In the early 1980s, Mahesh joined Tata Unisys after a degree in software engineering and an MBA, and went to the US on a project. After a few years, he quit and started his own business, Kaytek Computer Services Pvt Ltd. I studied engineering and joined him. My brother handled our software division, and I was in charge of hardware and system integration.

As the Indian economy grew, our hundi business reduced. The traditional money-lending business relies on word-of-mouth lending instead of collateral, and high interest rates, and it is no longer viable. One of our big lines of business was funding movies – high returns but high risks. Commercial banking and venture capital funding for businesses have shut it down completely. But Kaytek has done very well. We have good clients and good-quality work.

Working in a small company means multiple roles. And the buck stops with you. Clients can call you any time. I was getting burnt out and even got diagnosed with high blood pressure. My wife Shaguna (she’s Punjabi – we had a ‘love marriage’) had also worked in our family business at first but after a few years she decided to follow her childhood ambition to be a hairdresser. She became an entrepreneur: learnt the skills, got some experience, opened a salon in an unused garage in our property, and did really well. And she kept encouraging me to try something new, get a new interest that would reduce my stress and BP.

I was forty-four when I signed up for a comedy open mic – a middle-aged Sindhi with a traditional background, living in a joint family, and working in the family business. And I was nervous. I had prepared a set and there was some comfort that my wife was in the audience, looking out for me. (We hadn’t told our kids in case they thought I’d lost it.) There were eight comedians that day and the audience voted me the funniest. So that was how I started, with a dopamine hit and the opportunity for a five-minute spot on another show.

My influences were Mad magazine, which I used to collect when I was a kid. I always loved satire. And then, the Comedy Store was a great training ground – started in 1979 and a great torchbearer of the eighty-year-old British comedy scene. In 2012, the stand-up comedy scene was coming into its own in India – a new art form, a much-needed alternative to cinema. Social media was emerging. And it was an evening activity, so I could continue working in my business. I started doing open mics regularly, and some private gigs for people in their homes. And my parents started worrying – where is our son going every evening? My dad sat down with Shaguna and cautioned her to keep an eye on me – her husband had got into some kind of Bollywood-type line, who knew where it would end? So when I won the CEO’s Got Talent competition in 2014, I invited my parents and they were there when I got a standing ovation. Famous people they recognized came and congratulated them for their son’s achievements. Till then they may have felt uncomfortable that I was making fun of communities, using foul language in public and talking about sex and drugs. Now they saw that people loved my humour, had a great time listening to me. And they felt as proud of me as if I’d been a doctor, almost.

By then I was in love with what I was doing – traveling to places I’d never been to before, experiencing new cultures and food, learning about the world, making people laugh. In Hong Kong, a Sindhi journalist who interviewed me told me about how our community settled there, entering as cloth merchants, then getting into the business of custom suit tailoring, then TVs and VCRs and very soon PCs, CCTVs, and all that. We were great at spotting opportunities and monetizing them, learning local languages and customs, easily shifting out of our comfort zone when we had to. It felt good to know, because that is exactly what I was doing.

A Sindhi businessman first and foremost, when I quit the family business in 2016, it was only after I had started earning enough money to know that I could send my daughters, Mishti and Diya, abroad to study when the time came, if they wanted.

These days I get calls from all around the world. Some Sindhi organizations feel offended when I refuse to perform in Sindhi. My logic is that it’s fine if we stick to English or local languages, because we are global citizens – among all the Indians you see in any country, we Sindhis were there first. In our home, my parents speak to each other only in Sindhi. My eldest brother and sister speak it well, while Dr Anjali and I don’t speak much Sindhi. All of us, including my wife and children, can understand it. We are all proud of being Sindhi.

I’m not saying we don’t have our weird side. Sindhi men have this reputation of being loud, wearing flashy, white clothes, white shoes, and shirts with the first four buttons open. Thankfully I don’t do any of the above! But actually I’m glad we stand out. You see that guy with a thick gold watch and thick gold chain, and a Sai Baba locket peeping out of his shirt along with some chest hair, and you know you can go and sit down next to him and ask, in Sindhi, “Hadi Om, bhau, how’s business?” And he’ll reply in Sindhi and maybe even buy you the next drink. And it has to be half water and half soda. Why do Sindhis drink their whisky with half water and half soda? Don’t ask me, but we do. And we also do things like, we will never, ever eat baingan bhartha at night. It’s ok at lunch. But dinner – no. And we can have rajma chawar for lunch, never at night. My wife finds it fascinating. And how we LOVE fried food and will fry everything. Everything – right from karela to potatoes to bhindi to baingan to egg and sheep’s brain! And we’re obsessed with Sindhi sharbats in summer – mogra, chandan and other thaadal. And we never throw away anything. We’re always recycling. If there’s a bit of leftover coconut – my mom, Kunti, will immediately make coconut barfi.

One time my wife and I went to a Bandra jeweller. We were looking at the diamonds and the guy asks, “You are Sindhis? Khatri? Ok, Shikarpur! Then I can’t show you this. I can’t show this to a Shikarpuri.” My wife had decided what she wanted to buy but he said, “No no no, your mother-in-law will reject it!” Apparently Shikarpuris can only get the best diamonds. I checked with my dad and he said yes, in the old days before buying, we would put the diamonds under the pillow before going to sleep at night. If you got bad dreams, you didn’t buy them. You had to wait for some time and then try again.

When I was a kid, people sometimes made fun of us – “Chindy Sindhi”, stuff like that. But now I think that stereotype has gone, and I definitely do my bit to end it. People need to know about the kind of philanthropy the Sindhis have done for their community and for India as a whole. And I have to say I love Sindhi audiences. We are fun and willing to laugh at ourselves always. We are a hardworking community, global citizens, prosperous, seen a lot of hardships in the initial years, and honestly nothing can shake us anymore. So keep laughing.

AS TOLD TO SAAZ AGGARWAL, IN INTERVIEWS BY ZOOM AND EMAIL, IN AUGUST 2020

Pyari Sindh Pyara Sindhi

By M K Malkani, President SJA, Kolkata 

Saturday, 22 January 2022 – A day spring into the fascination of Sindhiyat by the budding group Sindhyun Jo Aawaj (Voice of Sindhis) through a phenomenal launch of the spectacular documentary titled *‘Pyari Sindh Pyara Sindhi’.*

The group is a registered body, with founder Core Committee members including Shri Mahesh Kr. Malkani (President), Shri Shyam Sainani (Jt. President), Shri G. L. Bhojwani (VP), Shri Manohar Mamtani (VP), Shri Rajendra Khatuja (GS), Dr. Jiya Shahani (JGS), Ms. Madhvi Chainani (Art & Culture Head), Ms. Priyanka Bhojwani (Tech & Creative Head), Ms. Sangeeta Bapuli (Chairperson - Social, Welfare, Justice & Theatre activities), Shri Vishan Das Sharma (Executive Member), and Ms. Daya Das (Executive Member).

The project started with an encouraging proposal placed before the Core Committee by the Cultural Head Ms. Madhvi Chainani. The idea was developed with valuable inputs from esteemed Core Committee members. Behind this splendid output are the untiring efforts of Cultural Head Ms. Madhvi Chainani, as well as significant contributions of GS Shri Rajendra Khatuja and JGS Dr. Jiya Shahani.

The intention was to apprise Sindhi youngsters of our adventurous journey from Sindh to Hind, our advancement to current achievements, and to share the true flavours of Sindhiyat in a very interesting way.

Keeping this in view, an effort has been made to show them, why  are  we Sindhis,  what are/were our primary and eminent places, why we worship Jhulelal Sai etc... Since they have totally forgotten our festivals like "Thadri" , Lal Loi etc., an effort has been made to highlight it.

Present youngsters have seen the marriages of modern way of our  society, but we have tried to show them, the real rituals performed in our culture.

Coming to the visual presentation of the video, the most significant part is, the festivals, rituals of wedding etc. are not the extracts taken from any movie or video. They have  specially been performed including short black and white videos by the Sindhi enthusiasts from Ms. Madhvi’s contacts.

The song "Dal Chhola" also has been sung/ performed by the same group for this documentary specially.  All male members shown are respected ladies of our team, who are dressed as male.

Coming to the response, the documentary is immensely applauded, and got very good remarks from public.

The way it started with Ms Madhvi (Our Cultural Head), the discussion with Sojhro( our GS), the conversation all  of the characters Dr. Jiya,  (our Jt. GS), and Ms Seema ( Guest artist) has been appreciated by public at large. Overall, the documentary could fetch the favourable public opinion.

The name of the documentary *Pyari Sindh  Pyara  Sindhi* itself gives an impressive attraction and the main character is typical Sindhi name *Sojhro* which means light.  He has thrown the light on Sindhiyat.

All this could be possible with the leadership of our President Honourable Mahesh Malkani and the respected members of Core Committee. On behalf of the entire Core Committee, President expresses sincere thanks to following producers and participants of the documentary -

Rajendra Khatuja (Gandhidham)

Gl Bhojwani (Gwalior)

Manohar Mamtani (Bhopal)

Madhvi Chainani (Gandhidham)

Dr Jiya Shahani (Gandhidham)

Sangeeta Bapuli(Kolkata)

Seema Advani (Gandhidham)

Sai Dhiraj Lal Ji (Great-Grandson of Bhagat Kanvar Ram)

Heena Shadadpuri - Diler Sindhi (Ulhasnagar)

Sushma Ahuja (Bengaluru)

Mahima Chetnani and team (Gandhidham)

Rani Mirchandani (Dubai)

Veena Uttamchandani (Dubai)

Harshita Motiani (Dubai)

Deepika Mansukhani (Dubai)

Hema Gandhi (Dubai)

Jaya Mehtani (Dubai)

Kavita Rupani (Dubai)

Poonam Mirchandani (Dubai)

Soni (Dubai)

Barkha(Dubai)

Padma Rsimalani(Dubai)

Prerna Motiani(Dubai)

Roshni Advani (Dubai)

Rahul Chainani (Dubai)

Ratan Lakhmani (Kolkata)

Enjoy the documentary to its fullest on by clicking here

Vision, mission, objectives, and functioning of the group

You may share your valued feedback, contribution, and queries on our official emails: 

sindhyunjoaawaz@gmail.com 

voiceofsindhis@gmail.com

My Poem on our Beloved Dada

 By Harshita Thadhani 

 Oh enlightened one, you have risen stronger than before,

Touched every single persons heart galore.

Blessed are the ones who can visualize you in their hearts,

It brightens every day of our life, with a jump start.

Your mesmerizing smile brightens our day,

You reach out to all of us in your own sweet way.

Even through your ailment you touched so many lives,

Your care takers who would have missed your sound advise.

God blessed them by encountering with you Dada,

He did not want them to miss out on our selfless loving father.

We thank the Lord for your good health always,

We are in darkness Dada and pray to follow as you lead the way.

While the world reaches out and touches your hand,

I stay connected in my heart,

Since you had blessed me once

"Give me a place in your heart and I will never leave you" you said

That is where you belong our beloved Dada,

And I will never grow apart.

Always at your lotus feet,

Harshita Thadhani

A Sindhi man was being interviewed for a post of a Commando in the Army.....

Interviewer: We want a person with a suspicious mind, always alert, merciless, ready to attack, acute sense of hearing, detective ability and most importantly have a killer instinct.

So do you think you are eligible?

Sindhi: Sir, can my wife apply???? 

Launched with love for everything Sindhi, our newsletter, Sindhi Samachar, aims to be circulated amongst our Sindhi family and friends intended to forge unity and interaction within our community. We hope our brothers and sisters globally participate and contribute towards it with your views, Sindhi news, Sindhi jokes, or Sindhi recipes, which we will be happy to publish under your name.

Editorial Content

Raj Daswani

Umesh Daswani

Vini Melwani 

Geeta Raj

Disclaimer:The views and opinions expressed in Sindhi Samachar by our contributors are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the editorial team of Sindhi Samachar. Any content provided by our contributors, bloggers or authors are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything.