NRG author digs up Navsari roots, finds masterpiece

When Motiram Narsey, a Navsari weaver, gathered the courage to cross the seas and migrate to Fiji in 1909, he could not have imagined that his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren would be found settled in all the five continents a century later.

One of his great-granddaughters, San Francisco-based Minal Hajratwala, has just completed a book on the history of her extended family. Her book, ‘Leaving India: My Family’s Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents’, will be formally launched on March 18.

A second generation Gujarati-American, Hajratwala was born in San Francisco but brought up in New Zealand. She returned to the US and is currently a San Francisco-based writer, poet and performer.
During the seven years Hajratwala spent researching ‘Leaving India’, she discovered that she had 36 first cousins. She was also able to trace members of her extended family to nine countries in all the five countries.

Her search for the first migrant of her extended family took her to Fiji, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Canada, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand and India. She interviewed more than 75 members of this family in different countries and continents.

When she was in India in 2001 during her travels for the book, she discovered that some of her distant relatives still lived in areas around Navsari. “Even though we are spread all over the place, the community feeling and cultural connections are still very strong,” Hajratwala says. “We eat the same food, speak the same language and watch the same soap operas. I found there are more similarities than differences despite the fact that two generations have grown up away from the roots.”