Gujaratis in America

Taken from Chapter 4

My grandfather didn’t accept my uncle, Devkaran Bapa’s migration to the United States until he experienced the prestige and value of the American dollar which was equivalent to six rupees at the time. His acceptance wasn’t until he came to visit when my uncle had finished pharmacy school, was settled in a Chicago suburb, and had a stable, high paying job as a pharmacist. My grandfather wanted his sons to stay in India, to find work outside of the village in cities like Mumbai, Surat, or Baroda. He was adamant for his sons to go to work, although employment rates were sky high and finding a well paying job in India was difficult at the time. 

Devkaran Bapa went to pharmacy school and followed the lead of his older classmates, all who were applying for positions to go to America. His program gave him free tuition if he agreed to work for the government for at least 5 years. He broke his contract within a year, paid all the tuition back, and left to go to the United States in 1976. Inspired by the Civil Rights movement, the 1965 Immigration Act catalyzed a large migration flow from India to the United States, one which my uncle was part of. The 1965 Immigration Act abolished discriminatory national origin quotas that had regulated immigration since the early 1920’s. My uncle arrived in the late 70’s, during a wave of Indian immigrants that were also admitted to the United States because of their special skills either in the math or sciences. 

My uncle and dad stayed with Devkaranbapa for three months and then left to live in their own apartment with two other brothers, Mahesh and Bhupendra, an engineer and doctor also from Gujarat. The two brothers were living in a three-bedroom apartment and had one room vacant. My father and uncle shared one room, sleeping on the floor with two mattresses on either end of the room. On the days they had some free time, they made pots of fruit salad and shaak, cooked vegetables, for the entire week. 

My uncle had a Master of Science from India and was working in his first job drawing and testing samples of blood for an Indian owned lab company. It was the 80’s and there was widespread fear of HIV/AIDS. With the uncertainty behind how it was passed on from person to person, my uncle quit his job and found another one. My dad went about looking for a job immediately although he was unable to speak English. On his job search or while walking around town, he’d overhear conversations in English, write phrases down on pieces of paper, and once he arrived home, he asked his elder brother the meaning of that particular word or phrase. 

Much like my dad’s journey to learn English, he’d master skills on his own through talking to people, reading books, or attending training. Although he always placed in the top of his class in his village school, he graduated with an 11th grade education and decided not to go on to college. With an 11th grade education from his village school, he decided to go straight to work. He’d seen the older boys of the village finish their degrees and return to the village, often socializing or taking part in senseless village politics. India’s unemployment rates were extremely high and unable to find work or decide to continue farming their family land, many young men returned to the village. 

My dad’s plan had always been to learn a skill, then start a business in it. Eventually this is what he thought was the only way to climb out of poverty. While growing up, my dad often asked my sisters why American kids lacked such common sense when we were given an education. “You don’t need a college education to be successful in this country and if we were able to do this much without resources, education, or support, your life should be even better than ours”, he would tell my sisters and I. He was frustrated by the thought of how many Americans fell into debt because of tuition costs. He was a supporter of apprenticeships, learning trades, or other skills that could be marketable without a college education. 

Early on, my father gave me the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad and also the book, Who Moved My Cheese? He was my first teacher who taught me that a formal education doesn’t necessary make one smarter or mean financial freedom, especially if it means spending the rest of your life working for someone else, under the hours and salary they determine for you. 

In Gujarati there is a saying my dad has frequently told me, “Utham (highest) kethi (farming), Madhyam (middle) vepar (business), kaneesht (lowest) nokri (job)”. Highest is farming, middle is business, lowest is job. He would go on to say, having a job was the lowest you could go. Location, location, location, he would tell me. The location of your business is what matters most and land ownership is the most important whether you are owning a home or a business. Never rent. It went against the beliefs of his generation and the ways in which he and my uncle built their businesses.

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In 1989 when my uncle and dad began aggressively searching for businesses, they spent every moment between their multiple jobs they had outside of work to check out properties. In 1990, they found a Dunkin Donuts from an Italian man in Phoenixville, PA. He had not been paying attention to the franchise fees and business, so Dunkin Donuts corporate forced him to put it on the market and sell it. 

My dad and uncle knew other Gujarati business owners who owned Dunkin Donuts and used those connections to gain information on operating a Dunkin Donuts. There was another property they were looking at in Virginia Beach, but decided to invest in the Phoenixville property. Even then, my father believed the location was ideal. Just 45 minutes away from Philadelphia, sandwiched between Washington DC and New York City, they knew they were in an ideal location. The other Dunkin Donuts they bought was in Spring City, PA, in a shopping center. 

Both of the properties were financed by GE Capital, costing them $300,000. In just four and a half years after immigrating to the United States, my father with just $20 had bought two properties with my uncle.

The success of Gujarati business owners was also due to their ability to mobilize capital and labor from their interpersonal networks. My dad had borrowed $7,000 from Devo Bapa to buy a car when he had first arrived to the United States. While my dad and uncle had saved to buy their businesses, they were able to hire other Gujaratis in the beginning days of their businesses. I remember Mahendra uncle and his daughters, Kamini and Trusha who worked in the back of the Dunkin Donuts. Some weekends, we’d go to their apartment. The uncles always stood in a circle outside in the parking lot and I’d spin in circles next to them. The moms would be inside, cooking dinner or gossiping. 

My dad and uncle learned business by watching other Gujarati immigrants who had also bought Dunkin Donuts which later influenced their decision to buy a Best Western motel years later. Ninety-five percent of the community my family is from, the Leuva Patidar caste, owns motels across the United States, spanning from rural areas on the side of major highways, much like the Days Inn my dad and uncle own in rural Pennsylvania, to Tennessee, Mississippi, Iowa, Michigan, Kentucky, Alabama, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The Asian American Hotel Owners Association, despite its broader Asian name, consists mostly of Patidar, or “Patel” Gujaratis. 

Indians were able to live so cheaply, so they would undercut the white competition. It always made sense, how so many Gujarati immigrants owned motels. 

I spent my summers growing up visiting my uncle and dad’s motel in rural Breezewood, PA. I remember swimming in the pool that started at 3 feet and then went deeper and deeper. The 3 hour drive was made worth it by the days I spent in the pool or by the buffet in the Family House Restaurant, the diner my uncle and dad owned that shared the same property as the Best Western. 

In the summer, when we’d take long trips to Chicago, my cousin Dhaval and I would religiously pile mashed potatoes and corn onto our plates and fill our clear plastic cups with Coca-Cola. Nine of us sat in the van, two in the driver’s seat, the rest of us in the back on the ground sleeping on top of blankets. Sometimes it would just be the backseat that was taken out, so my mom, Dhaval and I would sleep in the back while my sisters and Dhara took the seat in the front. My dad and uncle took turns taking these trips depending on which dad was working at the Motel that weekend. 

During our visits to central Pennsylvania and across the Midwest, we would visit family members who had motels off the highway in the middle of nowhere. They’d all live in a home that was attached to the motel, and hear a buzz when someone came through the drive through to check in. 

Minal Hajratwala, in her book Leaving India, traced her family across five continents, beginning from India. She writes about the first Gujaratis, “who began to penetrate the motel game starting out in San Francisco in the 1950s. By 1963, a social scientist studying the phenomenon found twenty-two families owning dozens of the city’s skid-row motels in the area between Third and Sixth streets just south of Market”. All of these families were Patels, "who would eventually come to dominate the industry to such an extent that today you can buy T-shirts celebrating the Patel-motel connection”.

Like my family members, she writes that owning a motel was much more than just owning a business. “For the first Patels, the motels were not only a way of making a living; they were also community hubs, a place for new immigrants to stay while they got their footing…”. 

The motel industry, much like convenience stores and Dunkin Donuts, is like a gateway for many Gujarati Patels to find their footing. It was a place to stay while they got their footing, and according to Leaving India, “...what really made the trend take off nationwide was an unlikely combination of government investment in interstate highways, the oil crisis of the 1970s, Walt Disney World”. 

When family members, mainly those of my parent’s generation, who have been living in the United States for a few decades, come to visit their children in these motels, I realize, after hearing them talk, that they actually don't know where they are in the country. To them, Chicago is a state and Wisconsin is just another place a few hours away.

Just as laundromats and nail salons were bought by the Koreans and Vietnamese, so were motels, 711's, and Dunkin Donuts bought by Indians, especially Gujaratis. Once one member of the community has established a business, they will help another member of the community either through hiring or partnering with them. 

Some of the most distinct memories growing up, for children of immigrants, may be ones similar to mine. Such memories of my dad in the summer, manually changing the door knobs of the royal blue doors of each room at the motel. Mita’s memory of opening 7-Eleven's doors because my dad’s arms hurt too much after late night doughnut delivery runs. My memory of my mom sitting in the back of the Dunkin Donuts, operating the machine that rolled out the dough and cut it into its round shape for doughnuts. My mom’s stories of my dad, coming home after working long days, only to spend the three or four hours he’d have to sleep, play with me or take me to the park. 

In one of her tweets a few years ago, start-up advisor and angel investor, Bo Ren wrote, “My parents were tasked with the job of survival and I with self-actualization. The immigrant generational gap is real. What a luxury it is to search for purpose, meaning, and fulfillment”. 

This question of self-actualization for our generation and survival for our parent’s generation is one I have struggled with. In my mom and my dad’s life, meaning was not found in their work. It was not found through grappling with existential crises, much like those I find myself sitting with as a young woman living in Brooklyn in her late 20’s. Meaning for me is found in my work, in the process of knowing myself and what I want, while meaning for them was found in the fulfillment and service of their children and spouses. The process of knowing oneself, only began for my parents once my sisters and I were in our late teens or went to college. 

Just as the “relational phenomena '' which Poros writes about, is what led to social and economic success for Gujarati Indians in America, it is also where my parent’s generation of immigrants found their meaning. It was in the ties of community, much like those found in the villages they had once left.