After my parents fled in 1960, they settled eventually in Kollegal, in the state of Karnataka in southern India — one of the refugee settlements the Government of India gave us. I grew up there. I left for America in 1985, but I have returned often, almost every year.

These photographs are from those returns. They are made mostly in Dharamshala, Bylakuppe, Mundgod, and the other places where my people rebuilt something. Life there is not what our grandparents’ life was. But it is a life, and it is ours.