My father, Manmohan Singh Chadha, who has died aged 84, was a talented entrepreneur. He set up a series of successful companies, initially concerned with the wholesale food distribution of south-east Asian foods and latterly an investment company focused on industrial warehouse space.
Manmohan was born in Roopwal, British India, to Dropadi (nee Sethi) and Saradar Singh Chadha, and was a survivor of partition in 1947 along with his parents, six sisters and two brothers. Manmohan later put their escape down to being in the back of a lorry rather than taking a midnight train. His father had been a zamindar (landowner) prior to partition, and, post-partition, ran a grain and transport business. After a short period of refugee status in Phagwara, his father played a leading role in settling the model town that was built to the west of the Grand Trunk Road – a road that 50 years later Dad and I travelled north along to better understand the family’s flight.
