On the Stories History Left Out- Notes on reading For Whose Dear Sake Our Fathers Died by Priya Hajela
I kept thinking about Beant Kaur after I finished For Whose Dear Sake Our Fathers Died by Priya Hajela (Speaking Tiger, 2026) . She is sitting in her comfortable chair, her shawl wrapped tightly around her on winter nights, telling the family stories of those who came before her. There is something so familiar about the image that I could almost see her. Every family seems to have someone who remembers. Someone who knows which grandfather did what, who married whom, who left home, who came back, who did not. Someone who can take a name and turn it into a story, and a story into a piece of the family itself. But what stayed with me was not about how Beant remembers. It was what she was trying to understand through those memories.