CHAPTER 1
MY BEGININGS
"The land of India is unlike any other in the world, for it bears in it a spirit that has changed human hearts for thousands of years.
Rudyard Kipling
Like many Americans, I am an immigrant. However, being an immigrant from India, I bear a unique connection to America's roots because America's own native peoples, the Indians, were inadvertently named after my own people by the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus in 1492. Having convinced Queen Isabella of Spain he had figured out a cheap and quick way to get to India's precious silks and spices, Columbus was financially backed by the Spanish monarch, and the rest is, as they say, history.
Perhaps it is ironic that my journey to get to America runs in opposition to Columbus in his effort to get to India. Columbus died believing himself a failure for never reaching my country because he did not see the "vision" of what he had discovered. And though the people he mistakenly called "Indians" of the "West Indies" did not particularly share in the wealth of the later nation, these misnamed natives are perhaps a karmic connection to the successes myself and many Indians have enjoyed in recent decades in this "Land of Opportunity."
As you will see, Indians, whether they were natives of the Western Hemisphere or from the East, were originally never really welcomed by the dominant Anglo-European culture of America. But then neither were the Irish, nor the Italians, nor the Africans, nor the Mexicans, nor even the Jews. And yet if you remove this mosaic of world peoples from the cultural heritage of the United States, you would find a very bland and empty land.
To begin with, I am a Gujarati. I come from a region in India in the northwest, bordered by Rajasthan in the northeast, Pakistan in the northwest, Maharashtra in the south, and the Arabian Sea in the west. It is a beautiful land of contrasts with simple villages and several large city centers. Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel, both Gujaratis, were sons of this soil. Current Prime Minister Narendra Modi and several of the richest businessmen of India are also sons of this soil. It is a region that characteristically has harbored a variety of communities and sects. Hindus, Muslims, Jains, Parsees, and Christians have all mingled in Gujarat or declined to mingle. The diversity of religious cultures is historic to the region.
Gujaratis are known mostly for being merchants. For centuries they have been acknowledged as hard working and industrious. They were some of the first expatriates from India to seek their fortunes in other lands like Africa, Asia, and Europe to better their lot in life. This movement to a new location is something in our blood. It is a theme that I have seen in my own life and in many of my fellow Gujarati countrymen; that is, a change of home may often bring a change of life. Even Gandhi lived this philosophy when one looks at the various locations to which his life took him, whether it was Gujarat, England, South Africa, and his several homes in India.
When I was born, the British still controlled India. India had become a prize for the Empire as a source of cloth, spices, soldiers, tea, and diamonds. Diamonds, for example, were first discovered in India in 400 BC, and sold all over the world for thousands of years. By the Middle Ages, diamond-cutting centers were established in Amsterdam and other locations of Europe due to a thriving trade that often involved Jews. These "jewelers," because of Christian Europe's anti-Semitism, were unable to own land. They therefore dabbled in precious stones and moneylending as a way of financial security.
By the 18th Century, when India was firmly entrenched as the "jewel" of the British crown, London had become the diamond-cutting center of the world. British cloth made from and by Indian craftsmen was the choice of the world. The saffron, pepper and teas enjoyed by people from the American colonies to Madrid were controlled by the British colonial occupation of India. They were also exporters of Afghan opium to China. It was this exceptional economic advantage of having India as a part of the British Empire that made Britain so resistant to India's later struggle for independence.
Gujarat, like other areas of India, had been divided up by the British into regions controlled by either the British Raj or the Princely States. Most of Gujarat was Hindu and composed of four divisions or castes: the Brahmins (priests or scholars), the Kshatriyas (nobles or warriors), the Vaisyas (merchants or farmers), and the Sudras (workers). From my earliest recollections, my family used to say that the Doshis were originally of the Kshatriyas or Rajput caste from Rajasthan. The family tree shows that one, Kasidas Doshi, some eighteen generations ago, migrated southwest to Gujarat (around 500 years or so ago). Rajputs are known as warriors who often took on the Moguls and Muslims when they invaded the subcontinent.
A group of Rajputs, probably our close cousins, who were defeated by the invaders left India, migrating toward the Middle East and Central Europe. Before they left, these Kshatriyas (warriors) made a vow that they would return when they were strong to retake the lands the Muslims took from them. However, the Rajputs, now known as gypsies, never returned to India. Instead they traveled throughout Europe, settling in Spain, Hungary, and then moving or relocating to various regions of Europe, from Rome and Naples to Vienna and Sarajevo. This migration is characteristic of the spirit of the Rajputs, a spirit that has mingled with many of the Gujarati Vaisyas who were Rajputs before conversion. It is a spirit found in my own family.
Kasidas and his fellow migrants became Vaisyas, also known as Vahanyas, based on economic needs. It is interesting to note that the name "banyan" came from the writer's caste "Bania," derived from the Gujarati name "va(ha)nias," meaning boat businessmen (vahan in Gujarati means sailboats), travelling as far as Java and Sumatra. Among Gujaratis, baniya or vanias implies they are grocers or merchants by profession. The last name Doshi comes from the word "dosh" in Gujarati, meaning a sin or serious offense. There is a popular Gujarati story recited by a Gujarati poet, Narsinh Mehta, claiming that Lord Krishna, one of the avatars of the Divine Being, appears as a doshi vanio (from vanias) wandering from village to village to sell cheap rough cloth.
The Portuguese picked up the word "banya" to refer specifically to Hindu merchants and passed it along to the English as early as 1599 with the same meaning. By 1634, English writers began to tell of the banyan tree (vad in Gujarati), a tree under which Hindu merchants (banias) would conduct their business. The tree provided a shaded place for a village meeting or for merchants to sell their goods. Eventually, banyan came to mean the tree itself. Even today children are schooled under the banyan tree in some tribal areas. The Times of India, one of the largest newspapers in India, has a column on spiritualism with the heading, "Under the Banyan Tree."
West Gujarat was also a business center that featured Kharvas. Kharvas, meaning sailors, sailed off to lands like Java, Sumatra and Burma in the 15th and 16th Centuries. Because Gujarat borders Rajasthan, many of the Rajputs migrated to this area of Gujarat and became part of the business community. Among Gujaratis, even today, on auspicious occasions, Brahmins recite stories, known as Satnarayan Katha, about merchants sailing to Java and Sumatra and avoiding sea storms or potential problems by performing Shree Satya Narayana Pooja and chanting God's name, not only during bad times, but also during good times. An overseas business of export and import was conducted by people from India during the first millennium; the spread of Hinduism and Buddhism in East Asia was one of the outcomes. However, Muslims took over the business of export and import from Indians during the second millennium.
However, Gujaraties never stopped travelling and even settling faraway places to these days to become more prosperous. They have formed prominent and prosperous communities, certainly in English speaking countries like America, England, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. They are true believer of free enterprise economic system; business, indeed is the principal business of Gujaraties. This book is indeed a story of one Gujarati.
My ancestors were Shaivites from northwest Gujarat near a small town called Ghogha, around twenty kilometers from a major city called Bhavnagar where my mother was born. Ghogha in ancient times was a known port for the spice and textile trade. I recall my maternal uncle, Vadimama, affectionately calling me "Ghogha No Kharvo," meaning a sailor from Ghogha. We used to memorize the names of our forefathers; I still remember their names up to the sixth generation; the names start with my name, Navinchandra Harilal, Harilal Mohanlal, Mohanlal Panachand, Panachand Narsidas, and the last, Narsidas Jagjivandas. Note that the second name in the Gujarati tradition is always the father's name. Apparently my father and grandfather's names were popular in the Gujarati community, since they were also the names of Mahatma Gandhi and his first son.
People usually married among their castes or groups. Jains, a group of people that, like many Hindus, staunchly believe in nonviolence and respect for all living things, often married Hindus. Rarely did Hindus marry a person from any other religion. I recall a family where the father was Hindu and the mother was Christian. They were very unhappy because of the vast cultural and religious differences in their marriage. Most of my community, wanting to avoid similar disenchantment, married among their own kind.
The Rajputs left India for the northwest, while my forefathers migrated from Rajasthan to the Ghogha/ Bhavnagar area of Saurashtra. My parents and grandparents were raised there. I was born in Bhavnagar in Gujarat, my mother's town, but was raised mostly in Bombay. Throughout my childhood I visited Ghogha, usually for family gatherings such as weddings. I recall traveling in the area by bullock cart, a primitive wooden carriage drawn by bulls. Though these carriages were bovine-powered, they could race as fast as if they were horse-drawn.
My grandfather, Mohanlal, was not happy in Ghogha. In the early 1900s, he migrated to the town of Bharuch. He did not leave on good terms with his family, so he received probably little or no financial support. My grandma, Muliba, used to say he survived in Bharuch on puffed rice, peanuts, and chana masala. Bharuch was a center for British tax collection.
My grandfather was a textile merchant and he, like other businessmen, profited in Bharuch, thanks to the World War One economy. Making money in textiles during the war has been the common theme for three generations; I happened to be the last one. Figure 1–1 shows the partial family my grandfather supported due to his success in the business. There was a time when he supported thirty-five members of his family, which included members of his own family and members of his brothers and sister in a large rented house shown in the background of the photograph. He was indeed magnanimous and a devout Shaivite who fasted every Monday of the week.
In the late '30s, my father, Harilal Doshi, moved to Mumbai. He was not happy working for his father in Bharuch. In the true "businessman Vaishia" spirit he wanted to be an independent businessman, where there was greater economic growth and opportunity. I was three to four years old when we moved to Mumbai, but my elder brothers, Jitubhai who was around seven, and Jasvantbhai who was around ten, stayed with my grandparents at their insistence. The word "bhai" is placed after a brother's name to show respect.
My mother's name was Kanchan and I was to keep her company in Mumbai, while my father prospered with the new WWII economic opportunities. With some help from my mother's cousins, my father hooked up with the Maffatlal Group as a textilemerchant. Once our family was doing better, my two brothers, I believe in '41, joined us in Mumbai. My maternal grandfather had passed away before I was born. My mother and I would visit my maternal grandmother, Rambhaba, in Bhavnagar; she passed away at the age of sixty-one, when I was around seven. Rambhaba lived in a "khadki," a three-story house with floors covered with dry mud and no electricity or running water.
My mother and Rambhaba made sure that I never jumped on the floor to avoid any damage to the floor. They would warn me that if I jumped high enough, I could go through the floor and go down to the bottom level hurting myself. She was a devout Rama and Krishna devotee who would ask me to recite God's name whenever we could remember, even when sitting on a toilet. Rambhaba looked and spoke like old Katherine Hepburn with a shaky voice. She would make sure that she had yogurt even if she had to get it from a local kandoy, a dairy retailer, because she knew that I was very fond of sweet yogurt with my lunch, the main meal of the day. Often Rambhaba would give a card to buy yogurt that looked like the cards in a monopoly game. I remember prominent merchants would issue their own cards in small denominations to be used as money because there was a shortage of coins. For example, if I gave a two rupees note to buy one rupee worth of yogurt, the merchant would give me a card denominated as one rupee. The card could have been issued by any of the prominent merchants.
There was another three story mud-house right across her house, where a couple and their twelve year old son were residing. I would watch husband and wife quarreling loudly with each other using abusive language. Rambhaba would explain to us that the wife was angry because the husband was lazy and stayed home. He did not want to work and expected their twelve year old son to support the family by working.
It was always fun for me to go to Bhavnagar, my birthplace, since my cousins and I would have a wonderful time going places; in fact I had learned to ride a bicycle in Bhavnagar. I even remember that my cousin Kanti would hold first and then push the bicycle for me to go forward. Then when I was on my own bicycling away, without my knowledge he would run behind me and jump on the back of the bicycle. Luckily I would not lose my balance. Our other activities included playing with a wooden spinning top, going to movies, and eating jalebi and gathya, a Bhavnagar specialty.
There is a Gujarati saying, "Chantar Tyaa Vantar," which translated means, "The birds weave their nests where there is bird feed." As we all know, the strength of the economy is proportional to the flow or the velocity of money. The money flow in turn depends on the availability of goods and services, following one of the few extremely important laws, Adam Smith's Law of Supply and Demand. For a healthy economy, the flow of money is crucial, as is the blood flow in a human body. A strong economy with a strong flow of money also generates opportunities for the go-getters. I suppose my family, with their constant relocation, understood this law, and truly lived the saying. My father used to say to my mother, "All I need is 100,000 rupees and a small bungalow and I'll take it easy." Well, he exceeded that and carried on further to acquire and achieve more. Today, 100,000 rupees, after so many years of inflation, have very little value.
My family and Gandhiji were visiting Punchgini and Mahabaleshwar, hill stations near Poona, at about the same time so we had a chance to meet Mahatma Gandhi. I was about nine years old. I vividly recall running alongside a gaunt man in a white loincloth with a walking stick. He had his hand on a young woman's shoulder as he strode, eyes always forward, never really looking at the people he was conversing with, and yet deeply listening to their every word. Gandhi spoke very little as a Parsi woman walking with him spoke continuously, questioning him. There must have been twenty to thirty people walking with him. After the walk there was a prayer. My father gave me five rupees to give to Gandhiji. As I strode up to him and handed him the money, he smiled and turned to a woman next to him who kept track of everything. "Write it down," he said to her. "Five rupees and his father's name." The woman immediately marked a ledger indicating who gave him what and what amount they gave. Gandhiji was revered by all the people I knew. As I witnessed, he was also very meticulous.
