For Sidhpur, a town of ornate merchant houses built with money earned overseas.
Houses built with money made elsewhere
Sidhpur has streets of extraordinary carved havelis, built by Bohra merchant families who made their money trading far from Gujarat - east Africa, Burma, the Gulf - and sent it home to build. Many of those houses are now quiet for much of the year.
That is the defining fact of the place: prosperity here was historically earned somewhere else and brought back. Leaving was not failure. Leaving was the plan.
What that produces now
An unusual relationship with departure. In most Gujarat towns, going away reads as abandoning something. Here the expectation frequently runs the other way, and the person who stays can be the one who feels they need to explain themselves.
Clients describe pressure to replicate an ancestor's migration story in an era when the specific opportunity that made it work no longer exists. The instruction was inherited; the conditions were not.
The work
Distinguishing a family template from a current decision. What worked in 1930 was a response to circumstances, not a law. Recognising that usually releases a decision that has been stuck for years - sometimes to go, often to stay deliberately rather than by default.
Sessions
Online, in Gujarati. Discretion matters in a community this closely connected, and it is treated accordingly.
Frequently asked questions
- Will anyone in the community know?
- No. No client is identified publicly, and nothing discussed leaves the session.
