Destiny: A Family Saga

By Sukhjit S. Purewal

The Purewal family tree dates back hundreds of years, and the majority of the people in the village Shankar near the city of Jullundur in the state of Punjab, in India, bear the same last name. In Destiny, author Sukhjit S. Purewal shares his unique family saga beginning with his grandfather, Waryam Singh Purewal.

Born in 1891, Waryam was a subsistence farmer who traveled to the United States searching for a better life. He arrived in 1925 and stayed in California for twenty-eight years while his family remained in India. He initially worked as a farmhand and later owned a vineyard. At his sons urging, Waryam sold the vineyard in 1953 and returned to India, hoping to live a happy and prosperous retirement. But fate had other plans, and he died a poor and sad man at age eightyin the same old house in the village he had left almost fifty years earlier.

Waryams son, Gulzar, traveled extensively for business. His life story includes wining and dining with the rich and powerful in India, philandering, an illegitimate son in England, and escape from India to a self-imposed exile in Pakistan to avoid lawsuits and death threats.

Predictions made by a holy man in India more than 2,000 years earlierand found written in Sanskrit on four-hundred-year-old crumbling paperforecast Gulzars life. He died a lonely death in a foreign land and was buried in a grave far away from his family and friends.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: May 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781489704436

Sukhjit S. Purewal

Sukhjit S. Purewal was born and raised in India where he attended medical school and got his initial post-graduate training to become an orthopedic surgeon. He immigrated to the United States in 1968 and started his surgical practice. Retired from orthopedic surgery, he lives in Perrysburg, Ohio, with his wife Susan.

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ISBN: 978-1-4897-0442-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-0443-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015906656

LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 5/11/2015

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Epilogue

Preface

I am a physician who came to the United States from India in 1968. I am the third generation of my family who came to this country looking for a better life. Over the forty-seven years that I have been here, I’ve told the story of my family to many friends and relatives. The story entails the lives of my grandfather and my father, both of whom came to the United States and then went back to India.

The twists and turns of their lives and their deaths under sad and tragic circumstances always fascinated everyone who heard the story. I’ve been told many times over these years that it is an amazing story and that I should write a book about it. After years of telling the story—and repeated prodding by my wife Susan and many friends—I finally decided to write the Purewal family’s saga.

Introduction

My grandfather, who was a subsistence farmer in India, arrived in the United States in 1925 in search of a better life and stayed in California for twenty-eight years while his family remained in India. He initially worked as a farmhand and later owned a vineyard near Fresno. At the urging of his sons, he sold the vineyard in 1953 and went back to India, hoping to live a happy and prosperous retirement life with his family. But fate had other plans in store for him, and he died a poor and sad man at age eighty—in the same old house in the village that he had left behind almost fifty years earlier.

My father traveled extensively for business. He even acquired a bank in India that thrived for a few years and then went bankrupt. His life story includes wining and dining with the rich and powerful in India, philandering, an illegitimate son in England, and escape from India to a self-imposed exile in Pakistan to avoid lawsuits and death threats.

Predictions made by a holy man in India more than two thousand years earlier—and found written in Sanskrit on four-hundred-year-old crumbling paper—forecast my father’s life. As was predicted and written, he died a lonely death in a foreign land where he was buried in a grave far away from his family and friends.

Chapter 1

India used to be called The Jewel in the Crown of the British Empire. The British monarchy ruled over part or most of India for over two hundred years until its independence in 1947, when the country was divided into a secular but Hindu-dominated India and the Islamic country of Pakistan.

A stark dichotomy of life in British India was conveyed to the rest of the world in the images of the Maharajas and Mahatma Gandhi. The royal and the regal had their palaces, horses, and elephants, while the average Indian barely scraped a living out of a small farm in some remote village. Life was tough, and famine and disease were not uncommon.

My family