The Bhatias: Indian expat family has been in the UAE for 100 years

Gulf News

When it comes to long-time residents of the UAE, any number of expats would lay claim to being early settlers here. More often than not, their chronicling would date back to 40-50 years, good enough for them to be acknowledged as veterans. But away from the spotlight, one Dubai-based Indian family is silently marking a milestone on completing a momentous 100 years in the UAE.  Read the full story here: https://bit.ly/3sZf2aH  See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km  Subscribe to Gulf News on YouTube and watch more of our videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/GulfNewsTV  See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km  #UAEnews #Dubai #Indian

Transcript

00:00My name is Deepak Bhatia and I'm going to take you down the memory lane.

00:09The story of the Uttamchand Bhatia family in Dubai began a hundred years ago.

00:15Uttamchand's grandson Deepak Bhatia, who has painstakingly retraced his family roots,

00:20talks of how his grandfather, like his Tatai ancestors, had made the Arabian Gulf their

00:25second home. An orphan who became the wealthiest merchant of his times in Dubai, Uttamchand lived

00:32in the upscale Shindigarh area in Bur Dubai. Gulf News visited the house with special

00:38permission from the authorities to provide a glimpse into how life was back then.

00:43This is the house. This is the house where my grandparents used to live once upon a time

00:53and getting into this house is something like, you know, a dream to a reality.

01:00Me or my son, for us like these were all bedtime stories when our grandparents used to narrate

01:07about this house and today it is a moment of emotion, I can say, a moment of pride

01:15to see the actual house the way it has been restored. It's exactly the same

01:20and we just went back into the, you know, down the line where whatever she used to say has just

01:25become very fresh when we get into this house. There was no power and hardly any drinking water

01:31so merchants would get wells dug up for one rupee and the supply would last them for a month. When

01:36the well would dry up, they would just dig another one. Uttamchand's house in Shindigarh was located

01:42close to the palace. His wife would talk of a big plate that would be placed on a windowsill of her

01:47mud house. Thanks to the royals, the plate would get filled with different kinds of dates which

01:51were soaked for 10 to 12 days to make date syrup. The syrup would then be used for making traditional

01:57Indian sweets like laddus and badam halwa, which the royalty relished too. Uttamchand's shop was

02:03located in the bustling Souk el Banyan, now known as Souk el Kabir or the textile souk in Burj Dubai.

02:09Earlier, it had six to eight gates of entry. The shops, each set apart by only a distance of four

02:15feet, were located on the ground floor while the merchants, including Uttamchand, resided on the

02:20gurfa on top. The trademark wind tower or badzgir provided much needed cooling during the hot

02:26summers. This souk basically has a lot of attachments with the family, a lot of history, a lot of sweet

02:33memories of our family. So this was the shop which he started in the 1920s and on the top what you

02:40see is the house where he lived. So we still have the windows to what my grandmother used to,

02:45you know, I just, if I recall, my grandmother used to tell me that this is the shop was down,

02:50the house was on the top and on the other side what you see that is the place which he took later

02:56as a majlis.

Category

Transcript

Recommended