The landing will be good
September 15, 2026
My mother runs a homestay with 8 furnished rooms. Because it is a homestay, we get glimpses of a section of humanity, both foreigners and Indians. This week, my visit coincided with the arrival of two guests from the US of Indian descent, born in East Africa, and living in the US since their teenage years with their parents and nine siblings. The only unmarried sibling is the eldest male child in the family, who is seventy-six, and according to his brother, who is 4 years younger, a great prospect for a woman wanting a rich inheritance, not too many years from now. I’m afraid that’s all the information I am allowed to divulge.
Theirs is an interesting journey. It began in Kutch, Gujarat, where the grandfather had significant land holdings. Their father left for East Africa, recruited by the British in India to build railway infrastructure there. Before Independence, we were all British citizens. If we applied for a passport, we would be issued a British passport. Britain ceased issuing these passports in East Africa once mass migrations to the West began, provoked by dictators like Idi Amin of Uganda, who seized the properties of the well-to-do (Kutch) Indians and forced them to disperse.
The railways were the conduit the British used to move the loot plundered in the country. The railways in India were not a gift of the English. But an efficient means of ravaging our natural resources. Cotton, for instance, was shipped to Britain and cloth manufactured in Manchester was sold as finished goods in India, devastating our homegrown Khadi industry.
For the family from Kutch, Idi Amin, the Ugandan dictator, did them a favour, perhaps not in the most favourable way. The British passport provided the Kutch family a gateway to the West, albeit without their hard-won assets. They had done well in East Africa through trading, opening stores and restaurants, and therefore became the targets of dictators like Idi Amin.
The business acumen picked up on East African soil served them well in the West. When they arrived, they could hit the road running with stores, motels, every possible convenience offering, and competitively priced goods to outmatch and outcompete incumbent local business owners, who they eventually bought out to expand their businesses.
No different today under Trump for Indians in the West, who are hardworking, inventive and innovative, and understand business, money, and bootstrapping. India, a growing economy with a superior rate of growth, is in a position to lure the expats facing acrimony in the US back to India. Good for India. A loss for the USA - a country built on the work ethos of immigrants.
When the father of our guests at the home chose not to return to India, the grandparents distributed their landholdings among the tillers of the land and joined the son in East Africa. They did not sell it to the highest bidder. A trait of generosity that runs large in the family. A large household, a new country, rebuilding from the ground up, short on resources, but never short on sharing what little they had when a guest dropped in for dinner on the family of eleven.
The younger brother (the one intent on hooking up his elder brother with a lady companion in his sunset years) relates how guests dropping in was anathema to him. As the youngest, he already got the least portion of the chicken pieces carved to serve the eleven. When guests arrived, he got an even tinier portion. In response to his complaint about the guests, his mother told him that the next time guests came, to watch her plate. He did. He found that his mother had no meat on her plate – just enough food to get through the evening. Since then, he says the idea of sharing was carved into his heart.
While visiting the Athirappilly Falls at Chalakudy, Trichur District, Kerala, the brothers met a flock of nuns. They started talking. The nuns said their ministry is to take care of destitute children, some of whom were disabled and abandoned by their parents, as they could not provide for their upkeep. Our guest, moved to tears, was reminded of his own hard beginnings in the US, making do. Out sprang a bundle of notes firmly planted in Mother Superior’s palms. Mother Superior, who had come to enjoy the Falls, returned to shower the kids with a special meal.
Today, as we celebrate the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows. The Church recognises seven sorrows of the Holy Mother as described in the Gospels.
One: the prophecy of Simeon when Mary and Joseph went to the temple to present Jesus according to Jewish tradition. Then Simeon prophesied that a sword would pierce the heart of the mother. Two: the flight to Egypt. A long journey Mary and Joseph had to take to protect the life of Jesus. Three: the ‘finding of Jesus in the temple’. Four: Mary followed Jesus on the way to Calvary. Five: Mary’s presence at the foot of the cross. Six: Mary was holding the dead body of her beloved son in her own hands when his body was taken down from the cross. And seven: the burial of Jesus. Mary suffered with Christ and for Christ. She could see God’s plan behind it. She was not simply suffering it as a fate, but she was facing all these sorrows, believing that all these are according to the plan of God.
The travels and travails of the migrant Kutch family, and the sacrifices the mother made for her children, give us hope that God had a plan for their prosperity. When God steers us, it is often over a rough, gritty road before He moves us to the paved highway. When the going is tough, take it that God is steering us to His Way, which is always the better way.
- Mathew Anthony
P.P.S. This is a follow-up to the last reflection of September 10, 2026: ‘Have You Settled for the Next Best’ https://mathewanthony.substack.com/publish/post/215018818
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