Shantokben Gordhandas Gokani (née Karia)

Known also as Ba, Nanima.

Born: 15 March 1924, Jamnagar, Gujarat, India
Died: 2 November 2009, Leicester, England
Partner: Gordhandas Mathuradas Gokani
Children: Shantaben Gokaldas Amlani (née Gokani), Anil Gordhandas Gokani, Hiraben Dhirajlal Lakhani (née Gokani)

Photographs of Shantokben

Wedding day, age 28. Late by the standards of the time.

Outside the Belgrave Road house, first winter in England.

With four of the grandchildren. She made everyone tea.

Listen to stories about Shantokben

On leaving Jamnagar in 1968

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Shantokben was the centre of gravity. Not the loudest person in any room, but the one whose absence reorganised it.

She married Gordhandas in 1952 when she was 28, which her own mother had quietly worried about. They moved to Leicester in 1968 with two suitcases and the youngest two children. The older three followed within the year.

She kept a household of seven on a single income for twelve years before she started taking in piecework sewing. Nobody asked her to stop. She did it until 1989.

The audio recordings here were made in her last year, by her daughter Shantaben, on a small cassette recorder. They have been digitised and lightly cleaned. Her voice is exactly as I remember it.