My Mody-Modi Family Reunion, India Edition: How Storytelling Helps Preserve History
It’s January 5th, 2016, and as I am typing, the house just lost wifi, lights and water. Enter, darkness.
My grandma continues chatting and putting food away and says,
“It’s Tuesday, right?”
“Ah, yes it is,” I say back. Oh, well. At least we’ve laid out snacks and our chai is still hot.
Every Tuesday, the electricity goes out anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours in the afternoon. So it’s imperative to take a shower before shut down to avoid an ice-cold bath. The shower is a small bucket used to scoop water out of a larger bucket being filled underneath a faucet. Surprisingly, you feel pretty clean (and green!) after.
You may be wondering, “Were you really at Burning Man with your grandma?”
I guess, kind of. We were in a village in the region of Gujarat, India where mom and her three siblings grew up.
On December 30th, 2015, all of us came to Godhra for a 300+, 4-generational family reunion, dating down from my great great grandfather, Maganlal Mody, who had 5 children, one of whom was my great grandfather Sakerlal Mody.
During the reunion, 25 of us stayed in my grandparents’ home. This meant waiting 2 hours in line each morning to take a shower, sleeping seven to a bed and folding each other’s underwear. Like any other giant family at Burning Man.
We spent 5 days together sharing stories about the well where all my mom’s cousins used to bathe, drinking masala chai for breakfast and donating food, blankets and educational resources to the surrounding village. As I dread the day I will be forced to reveal my Instagram feed to my children, I am grateful to be part of a story bigger than myself.
Where We Come From
Sakerlal Mody, my great grandfather, had 11 children. My grandpa, Surendra Mody, was the eldest son. He became a chartered accountant and started the first accounting firm in Godhra in 1954, allowing him to send many of his 10 younger siblings to the States and pay for their education. Because he chose to stay back, an entire generation of people migrated to the US, educated themselves and forever changed the course of the Mody family’s history.
My grandpa’s sacrifice for the greater good had a reverberating impact on future generations.
My mom, his daughter, migrated to the US at 22. Soon after, she got an arranged marriage to my dad and went on to raise me and my brother in Troy, Michigan. Luckily, I grew up in a “Gujarati-speaking” household and had lots of Indian-American friends, so I found it enjoyable — if not always easy — to traverse an amalgam of two distinct cultures.
Since I moved away from home, I have lived in Wisconsin, Boston and for the past few years, New York City. Despite being away from my family and the motherland, I still speak fluent Gujarati, celebrate holidays when I can and go to India every couple of years. Am I American? Yes. But I pride myself on staying consciously connected to my Indian roots.
So on December 25th, 2015, when I boarded the plane to attend the reunion, I thought I knew what to expect. I had been to several Indian weddings and family events in Michigan. But the trip changed my life in a way that other trips to India had not. Perhaps it was because United Airlines gave me VIP seating. #ballerstatus
Preparing for the Reunion
I felt giddy, excited to reconnect with close family members and meet more distant ones from all over the world. A few of my uncles (special thanks to Sharmil and Pathik Modi) hustled for 16 months to convince nearly 300 people from multiple countries to cram into small houses and hotel rooms to attend.
Most of the events took place at a house built by my great grandfather. Back then, this house that housed multiple generations was seen as a palace.
Fun fact: 36 births occurred inside this home; approximately 27 survived. Often times, mothers and daughters went into labor around the same time. Take a quick tour of the room where the magic happened.
For the reunion, our uncles hired workers to build a giant “compound” in front of the home, hired caterers to provide “non-diarrhea-food” and provided new bed sheets, towels and blankets for 50 local hotel rooms we were occupying, all of which were donated to the village after we left.
The reunion events included a family talent show, Maganlal’s New Year’s Bash and an educational healthcare fair for the surrounding village.
Telling the Story to Future Generations
People from 4 different generations gathered in the place where it all began. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to capture oral stories from our massive tribe to pass on to future generations. My cousin and I laid the groundwork for a video-documentary in which we interview the members of a multi-generational family that remains strongly tied to its roots in many ways, yet significantly disconnected in others.
Accompanied by a video crew in India, we spent days asking family members how they navigated dating, arranged marriage, migration, raising children and more. Taking place in our India-h0me amongst the people with whom we grew up, the conversations that took place were authentic and intimate.
Similarities and differences between and within generational viewpoints materialized, based largely on when people were born, which line they were born into and whether they had grown up in London, Godhra, Detroit or elsewhere. Again, I thought I knew what to expect, but many of the nuances I stumbled upon surprised me. It should come as no shock that my second generation Indian cousins used to ask “Are we really Indian?”, nor that my cousins who still live in India are going to get arranged marriages. But I was still surprised at how quickly perspectives change. I realize now, how millions of micro and macro- decisions made before my time impact how my life is turning out, what life will look like for my future children, how indian or non-indian they will feel. My story and my successes are not my own, but a continuation of a story that began generations before mine.
I wondered, what will I pass on to future generations? I can barely put on a sari and the last time I tried to cook lentils my pressure cooker tried to kill me. (Sorry, mom!).
Our great, great grandfather Maganlal Modi may have lived and died a poor man, but we have been incredibly blessed to lead a wonderful, fulfilling life in his wake. By capturing and sharing this story through honest moments, we hope to give back to our family, encourage other families to stay connected and push our legacy forward.
Below is a recap of the event. The documentary is still in the works. Stay tuned!
