Doing Time With Nehru: Life before the India-China Border War of 1962, events that led up to it, and life with my family at an internment camp.

The midnight knock on the door and the disappearance of a loved one into the hands of authorities is a 20th-century horror story familiar to many destined to "live in interesting times." Yet, some stories remain untold. Such is the account of the internment of ethnic Chinese who had settled for many years in northern India. When the Sino-Indian Border War of 1962 broke out, over 2,000 Chinese-Indians were rounded up, placed in local jails, then transported over a thousand miles away to the Deoli internment camp in the Rajasthan Desert. Born in Calcutta, India in 1949, and raised in Darjeeling, Yin Marsh was only 13 when, first her father was arrested, and then Yin, her aged grand-mother, and eight-year-old brother were all taken to the Darjeeling jail, then sent on to Deoli. Ironically, Prime Minister Nehru, who authorized the mass arrests, had once "done time" in Deoli during the India's rebellion against British rule. Yin and her family were assigned to the very same bungalow where Nehru had also been imprisoned. Eventually released, Marsh emigrated to America with her mother and brother, attended college, married and raised her own family, even as the emotional trauma remained buried. When her own college-age daughter began to ask questions and when a friend's wedding would require a return to her homeland, Yin was finally ready to face what had happened to her family.