Stumbling Upon My Roots in Agra

In 2014, my husband, Mohsin, was travelling to India for work. There was no way I would miss an opportunity to visit India, mainly for the love of Bollywood, Indian sarees, and the beautiful hand embroidered chikankari kurtas. After a long wait to get through all the formalities of paperwork, we finally landed in India for Mohsin’s work trip and our family holiday.

We visited Mumbai and Delhi, and I posted a few pictures of our trip on social media. One of my Mamu’s in Karachi messaged me and said if I planned to visit Agra, I should visit the mausoleum of my Nana’s great grandfather, Mir Zamin Ali. So, I was determined that the Taj Mahal was not the only mausoleum that I wanted to visit in Agra. With Mohsin’s work schedule, we could only manage a 24-hour trip to Agra. We obviously couldn’t leave India without seeing the Taj Mahal, and if I was going to Agra, I had to visit the place my family originated from. I was a girl on a mission! I had no address and only knew his name; Mir Zamin Ali Rizvi. Thanks to technology, we were able to locate his mausoleum on Google Maps. It wasn’t as easy as finding the Taj Mahal, but we found it. The cab driver thought I had lost my mind. He couldn’t understand where I was taking him, but I kept insisting.