An Inspiring true story of abandonment, exile, inner strength and belonging
Diverse Wisdom Initiative
This book came into being due to the Diverse Wisdom Initiative at Hay House, a proactive measure inspired by the work of Jessica Huie to find writers from outside the typical mould of who their published authors have tended to be. It doesn’t require me to describe what that looked like, being a well-known universal problem in many publishing houses.
Authors like Kyle Gray, Rebecca Campbell and others were given a group of potential authors to mentor from those who applied to the initiative.
Perseverance
Bharti Dhir was a late applicant, encouraged by her niece to submit, she resisted until the last minute of the last day, one finger typing her submission. Tentatively accepted she became a mentee of Kyle Gray, however when all the draft manuscripts were submitted, and they were told which had been accepted, hers wasn’t there. Kyle Gray sent a one word reply. Devastated. And then did what an empowered, loyal supporter he is, would do, not give up until they’d changed their mind!
And what a wonderful book she has co-written as a result.
Review
As a baby, Bharti Dhir was abandoned in a fruit box on the side of the road in the Uganda countryside. To this day she doesn’t know who her birth mother was, though rumours created a version of the story, and the imagination of the author and reader contribute to what might have happened. Fortunately, she was found safe and taken to a nearby hospital.
Meanwhile, her future adoptive mother, seven months pregnant with her first child had a kind of vision or strong premonition, in association with the Hindu Goddess Lakshimi, that there a baby girl coming to her, and insisted it wasn’t the baby she was carrying.
Suffice to say, there is a wonderful narrative built around how she came to be the first daughter of this family and how they overcome a lot of negative feeling, prejudice and racism about their decision as a Punjabi-Sikh family to adopt an Asian-African baby of unknown heritage.
At times she begged family members for details about what they knew of her background, however everyone was tight-lipped, those that knew anything having promised never to speak of it.
Left with no other choice, given no one would speak to me, I resolved to live with my imagination.
Overcoming Adversity
Throughout her childhood there are numerous events, situations, heath problems and challenges that Bharti and her family live through, address and overcome, some of which contribute (at the time) to diminishing her sense of self-worth. With each situation, she shares how she is able to look back with compassion and forgiveness and describe how she was able to turn all that around.
It was these daydreams that helped to build my sense of worth, making me believe that I’d get there one day.
Author Bharti Dhir
The situations are often tense and frightening, the heath problems she endures and the witch doctor remedies they seek out, having exhausted all conventional options are alarming and torturous to read of.
However, this is no misery memoir, here is an empowered woman, writing her early life story for her own daughter, acknowledging that there will be times in one’s life when all seems to be against you, that every situation is temporary, that finding and nurturing that core of self belief will carry you through even the worst situations.
Curses and witchcraft were the given explanation for so many ills in Uganda – from businesses failing to sickness, and from childlessness to death. In Uganda, you couldn’t pretend that the belief in magic didn’t exist. It was soaked into the fabric of our lives. To survive in society, you needed to both fear and respect it.
Her father both took her to witch doctors and tried to take a stand against superstition by promoting education, including paying for the education of many who came to work in his garage and ensuring that all his daughters received an education.
Empowering Girls
Understanding why for example girls were treated as ‘less than’ boys, and how a society judges those of mixed race, or different religions, or a multitude of differences, enabled her to either become a victim, turn to anger, resentment, bitterness, self-hatred, or to choose another way.
Girls were given lectures on many occasions as to how they could and couldn’t behave and I felt a real sense of injustice about these rules as a child. This was my sense of worth rising to the surface. It comes with anger, and it comes from injustice. As girls, that was another thing we weren’t supposed to show, either: anger. But I felt it nonetheless and came to recognise it as my worth letting me know when a situation wasn’t right. That feeling of worth always began with an emotion, not a thought. I’d feel it first in the pit of my stomach and then it would rise into my heart.
A New Beginning
When the Ugandan President Idi Amin in 1972 decreed that all Asians must leave Uganda, everyone in their town had already had their cars confiscated, sue to their proximity to the border. Escaping, wasn’t easy, finding a car to take them and getting through roadblocks, where any small reason could result in trigger happy soldiers punishing defiance. One of the most tense moments in the books happens when Bharti’s mother is confronted over her mixed race daughter.
In England, they would encounter fresh challenges, in school, in the neighbourhood, another country where they were perceived as unwelcome foreigners. At 15, Bharti announced she intended to change her name, having had enough of the teasing. Her mother explained the cultural significance of her name and she earned another truth.
I realise now, it was because I felt the need to project a certain image, or to say or do things, just to fit in or not lose friends. But when we do that, we’re accepting others’ definition of our value, rather than our own.
People who know your worth accept you just as you are. If you have to change anything about yourself to get others to love you, then you’re denying your sense of worth, thereby crushing the strength that comes from self-belief and self-love.
Her reflections on compassion and empathy are enlightening and model a nurturing way to embrace our humanity and practice them as acts of self-care.
Being able to see from the forgiveness perspective creates distance between you – you become the observer rather than the victim. When you’re stuck in a place of anger, hatred and rejection, I believe your self-esteem cannot grow.
By the end of the book, her life will have come full circle as she too becomes a mother and a protector of children in her role as a social worker and shares 15 affirmation to boost self-worth.
It’s so refreshing to begin to read uplifting books like this coming from cross cultural life experiences and being shared through the more traditional publishing platforms. Highly Recommended.
Further Reading
The First Woman by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi – excellent novel by another Ugandan author now living in the UK
Raise Your Vibration by Kyle Gray
Word by Word 