Motiba's Tattoos: A Grandaughter's Journey into Her Indian Family's Past by Mira Kamdar

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Mira Kamdar's memoir is a personal history of her ancestors' journey from rural India to her father's success as an American, and of her own mission to unearth and nurture her Indian heritage. She follows the history of the Indian diaspora-and the trail of her own family from their feudal village in India to Rangoon at the start of the twentieth century. When thrust out of Burma and stripped of their business and belongings by a new dictatorship in the 60s, they fled to bustling Bombay, where Kamdar's father got his first taste of America-in the movies.

"So it was that my father arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts with a suitcase full of clothes stitched…to the exact specifications of a Hollywood movie wardrobe: dinner jackets with white satin lapels, tweed suits. The rest of the students were wearing …jeans, plaid flannel shirts, argyle socks and saddle shoes. Too late, my father learned that Hollywood's America and the America of Cambridge…were two very different countries."

Educated in the U.S., Kamdar's father was one of the first Indian engineers to work for American companies in the "brain drain" from India. Married to an attractive Norwegian and the father of two girls, he left more than a country behind him. His mother, Motiba, would never emigrate. She continued to live in India until her death, bearing the marks of an earlier era-tattoos on her hands and face. Kamdar's story brought to light is not only fascinating reading, it's the cultural history of a people who have lost their land and their way of life, like so many others.

From the Publisher

When Motiba died a whole world disappeared with her. Motiba - "grandmother" in Gujarati - was marked with mysterious signs from a lost era: geometric tattoos on her face and forearms. What did these symbols mean? When had they been etched? Why?" "Haunted by the riddle of Motiba's tattoos, Mira Kamdar begins a journey down the hazy, twisting corridors of the past. The deeper she delves, the more she realizes that her family's story is part of a much larger saga. It is one version of the great story of the twentieth century - the story of leaving home, of severing roots, of losing one's tribe; the story of abandoning a rural life firmly anchored in traditions and rituals for the tantalizing prospects of urban existence in an increasingly global consumer culture." "With details of her relatives' many fascinating lives, Kamdar evokes the moods and atmospheres of lost times and places. She retraces pivotal historical moments - Satyagraha and India's independence movement, World War II, the "brain drain" years of a triumphant American military-industrial complex, the borderless, dot.com world of the Indian diaspora today - but never strays from the intimate experiences of her remarkable family.

Library Journal

In this story of her grandmother's life, Kamdar (senior fellow, World Policy Inst., New School) brilliantly captures the experiences of the Indian diaspora in the 20th century. Motiba, Kamdar's paternal grandmother, was born in a village in Kathiawar, in western India, in 1908. During the Twenties and Thirties, Motiba's family sought their fortune in Burma. The bombing of Rangoon by the Japanese during World War II and later General Ne Win's nationalist policies forced the family, along with the rest of the Indian community, to flee to India. In the Sixties, Motiba's son emigrated to the United States as a student and eventually married a Danish American. This account of Motiba's odyssey through the 20th century is effectively blended with the wider context of world events, Motiba's Jain religion and culture, Asian Indian immigration to the United States, and the author's own experience of growing up in two cultures. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries.--Ravi Shenoy, Naperville P.L., IL Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Booknews

In an extension of her academic work on economic and political transition in India, Kamdar (World Policy Institute, New York U.) traces the Indian diaspora through this fascinating memoir of her tattooed grandmother's world and her own bicultural upbringing in the US West and Bombay. Includes family photos, maps, recipes, a glossary of Gujarati and Hindi terms, and endnotes. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Ms. Magazine - Hema Nair

A saga of migration rootlessness, and uneasy assimilation...Enriched by photos, maps, and recipes, Motiba's Tatoos is a complex mosaic, and Motiba is the star.

Kirkus Reviews

A well researched but stylistically flat family memoir.

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