Going to Mokama was exciting, but there was fear too: Jyoti Thottam

Jyoti Thottam’s book,  Sisters of Mokama: The Pioneering Women who Brought Hope and Healing to India, is more than just the extraordinary story of six nuns, belonging to the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in Nelson County Kentucky, who travelled by ship and railway in 1947 at a fraught time to set up Nazareth Hospital in the little-known town of Mokama in Bihar. It’s also the story of her mother who left her Kerala home when she was 15 years old to train as a nurse at the hospital. The book doubles up as a historical and social account of America and India right up to the 1960s, taking into its sweep Partition, and the communal riots and migrations that followed. Thottam, Senior Opinion Editor with  The New York Times and former South Asia bureau chief for  Time, spoke to Uday Balakrishnan in a zoom call. Excerpts:

“The book is a way of placing my family’s story in the larger American story,” says Jyoti Thottam.

Q: How did this book emerge in your mind?