Elevation

The images below are different views of the airline ticket for my dad's first journey - they show the front page, the flight details and then the flight details zoomed in so the dates are more visible. They are 9th April 1963. It details the connecting flights from Sylhet to Dacca to Karachi to London.

This was a journey being undertaken by a 32 year old (roughly) farm hand who had no real grasp of English at the time, no certainly about what job he would fall into, no experience of modern travel other than perhaps trains or buses from major cities (if at all) and for whom, this was worth leaving a young wife and two young children for in order to entertain the idea of a better life.

He had no concept of what England would be like - he'd never seen the pictures or watched television. His world view would have been created from newspapers, letters from individuals who had already braved this "odyssey". I say odyssey, because after all, this was an unknown land where streets may have been paved with gold and stars and creatures both beautiful and abominable may have lain waiting in their paths. I can only imagine the parting that would have taken place - it would have been at the village, as the expense of having a wife and children or other family entourage to be taken to the local airport would have cost a farming family a fortune. They weren't poor, but they weren't too comfortable either. There was no concept about whether he would ever be able to afford the trip back - it was just a dream he would. So, that goodbye, that was really goodbye for my mum and my elder brother and my sister. My brother would have been 8 years old and my sister would have been 11 months. Which leads me to an interesting, and amusing realisation about my sister' age. My mother insists that dad left for the UK when my sister was just under a year old (roughly 11 months), which would place her birth month at some point in May 1962. But documents place her as having been born September 1963. I suspect my dad wasn't the first and he certainly wasn't the last to contrive birth dates of their children to fit an agenda to be employed at some point in the future.

So, this ticket is telling me about how my father was setting out on his own, not just on one flight but three connecting flights to places he'd never been before, with the thought that he might never see his wife, his children or his mother and siblings ever again.

My esteem for him, from this point has elevated in recognition that he did this alone, for them, for me.