Forgotten stories of Indo-chinese

TORONTO: As the population of the Indo-chinese community in India dwindles, a Canadian novelist has emerged as a chronicler of the stories of that vanishing section of society, from its recent history to its migration abroad, mainly to the North American nation.

Chee Fong Hsiung was born in Kolkata and immigrated to Canada in 1977, aged 18. An accountant by profession, this resident of the town of Markham in the Greater Toronto Area has published her second novel, New Land Same Sky, that once again has the Indo-chinese community, the Hakka immigrants, at its heart.

Her work is helping memorialise the Hakkas of India. “The community is almost extinct. I thought I could at least capture is experience in my books,” she said in an interview.

New Land Same Sky was published by Mawenzi House, founded by leading Indian origin author MG Vassanji. It also brought out her debut novel, Picture Bride. Both are rooted in the experience of the community’s immigration to Canada.

The first dealt with a young woman moving to Canada in an arranged marriage with a man who turns out to be gay and her return to India, only to be dis- owned by her conservative family. The latest also has a young woman as its protagonist, Maylei, from the tannery district of Tangra in Kolkata. As her husband immigrates to Canada, she joins him years later only to discover he has married a white Canadian and had a child with her. It’s also the story of her rediscovering an old lover, an Anglo-indian, who had earlier moved to Toronto.

While Hsiung didn’t at first start out with the idea of capturing the Hakka experience, she found that when she situated her characters in that environment, “the writing would just clip along.”

In the backdrop is the discrimination the Indo-chinese community faced following the Sino-indian war.

“There are reasons we had to immigrate,” Hsiung pointed out.