ABSTRACT
On my nephew Raoul's seventh birthday, in February 2010, his mother, my chhoti bahan (younger sister), told him how when she was seven years old she experienced the 'big move'. In October 197 4, the whole family departed by plane from tropical Suriname, and arrived, after a fourteen-hour flight, in autumnal Netherlands. It was exciting; she got a warm overcoat and new shoes and marvelled at the streetcars zooming by. She also told her son how her grandmother, Raoul's great-grandmother, had made a 'big move' at seven years of age as well. Dadi (paternal grandmother) had left India together with her parents and brother. In 1912, after a sea passage lasting months, they had set foot on Suriname's shores.
