On March 3, 2023, I drove down to Morgan Hill to photograph Raj Oza, a writer, organizational change consultant, and frequent contributor to India Currents. You can read that interview here.
What I did not expect was to meet Raj’s parents, his mother, Vijayalaxmi C. Oza, now 86, and his father, Chhaganlal M. Oza, now 96. Their immigration story is complex, unique, and fascinating. They agreed to be part of the We Belong portrait project. We only had about thirty minutes for portraits and a few questions, but the snippets they shared were layered, even in their brevity.
We Belong is a visual series highlighting different experiences of South Asian and Indian identity. This series was produced by India Currents in collaboration with CatchLight as part of the CatchLight Local CA Visual Desk. Photographs and interviews by CatchLight Fellow Sree Sripathy.
Portraits and interviews took place in Morgan Hill, Calif., on March 3, 2023. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Chhaganlal M. Oza and Vijayalaxmi C. Oza, who are from Rajasthan, arrived in California from Mumbai, after first stopping in Canada and Chicago.
Although she didn’t have to, Vijayalaxmi-ji wanted to work. She took a three-year sewing course but could not complete the final exam, because she had just delivered her son Raj. “Before I conceived him, I started going to classes. I learned sewing because that was my hobby from childhood.”
Those sewing skills that Vijayalaxmi-ji picked up as a hobby “proved to be a lifeline for our family when we moved to Canada, to Chicago,” says their son, Raj Oza. It eventually became her profession.
“From the earliest days in Chicago,” says Raj Oza, “Mom and Papa were entrepreneurial. First, they had a catering business making savory snacks for Indian college students who missed home-made food. The whole family worked together to make batata wadas, chutney, and sev that would be sold during intermissions of Bollywood movies on Chicago’s IIT campus.
Then Papa and Mom decided to leverage Mom’s sewing skills by founding their own little sewing shop inside their house. They would bring clothes from dry cleaners and do small and big tailoring.
Papa would use a small knife to open hems, and Mom would use specialized machines to sew. The first machine was a Singer. Eventually, there were industrial Juki machines from Japan that took up an entire room in our house.”
Chhaganlal-ji sailed to Karachi before landing in Canada in 1965, where his wife and children would later join him. He wanted to see what was out there in the world. “The reason we came to Canada was because getting a visa to the United States was not possible,” he said.
Vijayalaxmi-ji had a natural flair for languages. She grew up speaking Marwari. After marriage and a move to Mumbai, she picked up Hindi, Gujarati, and Marathi. She also learned Kutchi, a language closely related to Sindhi.
The family moved to Chicago in 1969. “When I came to Canada, I didn’t speak English at all,” she says. “When we came to Chicago I spoke English, some Italian, and some German.” Vijayalaxmi-ji picked up Italian because one of the family’s neighbors was Italian and also from working with many Italians in her job as a seamstress.
“She was good,” says Chhaganlal-ji. “Her boss would come and ask her for advice!”
Chhaganlal-ji and Vijayalaxmi-ji eventually settled in Morgan Hill, Calif., in the 1980s. She worked as head seamstress for major Bay Area department stores, and along the way, picked up other languages like Vietnamese and Tagalog.
Eventually, Vijayalaxmi-ji returned to knitting, which she learned as a small child in Nana, Rajasthan. She used to sit with the Rani of her kingdom, while her father and grandfather met with the Raja. The Rani taught her how to knit.
“I have arthritis and I cannot hold the fine needle in my hand anymore,” she says. “I can do the knitting, slowly, but not much like I used to. My vest – I made it. But not anymore. My hands don’t work the same way anymore.”
Vijayalaxmi-ji recognized that the gray knit cap I wore when I visited was handmade. Her hands may not work as they used to, but her eyes and her ability to adapt to any situation are as sharp as ever.
A call for portrait volunteers was promoted in the India Currents newsletter and on social media for this series. Do you have a story to share?
This series was produced by India Currents in collaboration with CatchLight as part of the CatchLight Local CA Visual Desk. Contributors include Vandana Kumar, Meera Kymal, Mabel Jimenez, and Jenny Jacklin-Stratton. Learn more about CatchLight Local’s collaborative model for local visual journalism at https://www.catchlight.io/local
This series was made possible in part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the California State Library in partnership with the California Department of Social Services and the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs as part of the Stop the Hate program.
