Pravinbhai Mehta (1924–1999) married Hansaben in 1947 and left for Nairobi alone in 1950 to work in a cousin's cloth shop. He sent for her when he could afford a room with a window. In Leicester he ran a newsagent's for twenty-two years and opened it at five every morning, Diwali included.
Work
Cloth in Nairobi, newspapers in Leicester, and in both places the same ledger habit: every sale written down in Gujarati in a narrow book, which is how the family knows the price of a bolt of cotton in 1955.
Family
Four children. He is remembered for the fireworks at Diwali, 1971, which he maintained were fine.
Stories about them
“He would read the whole paper before he sold it. If you bought the Mercury after nine, it had been read.” — his son Nikhil