Everything about Balwant Naik is correct; he is correctly dressed for a British public appearance and behaves politely and with great deference like a born British gentleman.
The 75-year-old Balwant is a gentleman but not a born British. The rise to power of Idi Amin in Uganda made him flee to Britain from Kampala where he was heading a multi-racial school of repute, with children of politicians and bureaucrats attending.
All this would not set Balwant apart from thousands of people of Gujarati origin who have migrated in search of an El Dorado. Balwant is a man of letters, who is prolific in Gujarati and proficient in English too.
He writes in both languages and one of his books, a novel set in Uganda and the United Kingdom, has just been released in India in the two languages. Sir Edward Heath, a former British Prime Minister, is slated to release in Britain the English version, Passage From Uganda, sometime in February.
Balwant was in town–"This is is my first-ever visit to Ahmedabad"–to attend the function to release the Gujarati version of the novel, Ne Dharatine Khole Narak Verayun, as also its Enlgih version.A third volume, comemorating Balwant's 75 years of life, too was published.
Advance copies of the novel have already brought in critical acclaim for Balwant. Dereck Humprey of The Sunday Times, London, felt that the story said much for the spirit of the Asian community and Uganda and its self-resilience. Of the 27,000 who fled to Britain, the British government had to pay air fare for only two.
For his 75 years, Balwant retains a great deal of zest for life and is bubbling with enthusiasm, characteristics that make him look at least a decade younger. Born on April 13,1921, at Vapi in south Gujarat, Balwant experienced the sheltering benefits of a composite family, from Day One of his life. His father had passed away even before Balwant's birth. "But, my mother and her brothers ensured that I never felt my father's absence", he says.
Balwant went to MTB College in Surat and Wilson College in Bombay, where he took his M.A. in literature, before setting sail for Kampala to join a school in 1953.He wielded a facile pen in Gujarati and kept writing in a host of journals in India. "These were folk tales of Africa, love stories, stories of life and death." Balwant's creative eye sensitively saw and relished the throbbing life in the natural setting, people, their way of life and their struggles, deeply impressed. He was prolific in putting all this on to paper.
Balwant rose to become principal of Shimoni school, then a Uagandan counterpart of our Doon school. The writing took a back seat,but his mind kept registering images, situations and dialogue. A jolt came in 1972 when Iddi Amin took over the reins of power in Uganda, triggering an exodus of Gujaratis. Balwant,whose family spent a night huddled together, listening to ominous firing by Amin's soldiers, too came to Britain. Hetook the family to London.
A Passage From Uganda was written against this backdrop, a moving human drama of the period when disaster struck Asians after generations of peaceful and prosperous existence. It is at once a saga of deeply-felt nostalgia, a cry of longing and displacement. But if the past lingers on in the present, it is not a defeatist story; it looks to future with shining eyes and high expectations.
The central character of the novel is a Gujarati woman, Asmita, who had seen happy days in Uganda, witnessed the life crumbling all around her as Asians fled, and valiantly tried to reconstruct the happy days once again in Britain. " It is a celebration of the family values in Indian tradition", says Balwant, modestly. The story also weaves in its narrative fictionalised characters of noteworthy Indians who made a great contribution to the development Uganda, people like Manubhai Madhwani and Nanji Kalidas Mehta.
Balwant who retired from working in the field of education in 1985, has no plans to quit writing. What he is doing is important in two ways: Gujaratis carry a stigma of never being able assimilate in the mainstream of cultures where they settle and live for a life time, and even if they do, they never put their experiences on to paper. Balwant has , and is planning, to do both.
