Motiba's Tattoos

by Mira Kamdar

The daughter of an Indian father and Danish-American mother describes her journey back to a remote corner of India to trace the history of her father's family, following their odyssey from feudal India to Bombay to her father's arrival in the U.S. in the 1950s and their struggle to integrate their Indian legacy with modern American culture. Reprint.

Genres: India, Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Biography Memoir, Asia, History

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Born to a Gujarati father raised in Burma and India and a Danish-American mother raised on a farm in Oregon, Mira Kamdar has navigated between different localities and identities her whole life. As a four-year-old, she asked her mother: “Which way am I half? Up and down? Or sideways?” She is still trying to find the answer to this question.Educated at Reed College, the Johns Hopkins University, and the University of California at Berkeley, Mira Kamdar studied philosophy with Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard and Michel Foucault and wrote a doctoral dissertation on the politics of mimesis in Diderot under the direction of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. Unhappy teaching in America’s hinterland, she made her way to New York in the late 1980s where she began writing on current affairs and joined the World Policy Institute.




Mira Kamdar’s first book was a critically acclaimed memoir, Motiba’s Tattoos: A Granddaughter’s Journey from America into her Indian Family’s Past (Public Affairs 2000; Plume 2001). It was a 2000 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection and won the 2002 Washington Book Award.
Her latest book is Planet India: The Turbulent Rise of the World’s Largest Democracy and the Future of our World (Scribner 2008). The book has been translated and published in over a dozen foreign editions, including Hindi, Chinese, Arabic, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and French.
Mira Kamdar’s work has appeared in publications around the world, including Slate, The Washington Post, The Times of India, Daily News & Analysis, Outlook, The International Herald Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, World Policy Journal, Tehelka, Seminar, the Far Eastern Economic Review and YaleGlobal. She writes on issues that concern her deeply: globalization, climate change, agriculture and the food crisis, sustainability, consumption, violence, India, France and the United States.
Perfectly bilingual in French, she provides expert commentary to CNN International, Bloomberg TV, the BBC, MTV Iggy, National Public Radio, TV Ontario, Public Radio International, Radio France, TV 5 Monde and FR 3. A contributing editor to The Caravan magazine and a member of the editorial board of World Policy Journal, she writes the “Mot de l’Inde” column for Courrier International and blogs for Le Monde Diplomatique’s “Planète Asie” and the Huffington Post.



In 2010 – 2011, Mira Kamdar will be affiliated with the CEIAS (Centre des Etudes de l’Inde et l’Asie du Sud) at the EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) as a Fulbright Senior Scholar under the auspice of the Franco-American Commission for a project on Enlightenment images of India as they contributed to the construction of European identity.

Mira Kamdar is a Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute and an Associate Fellow at Asia Society in New York. She is a regular speaker on India and international affairs for university, business and community audiences and, circling back to her days as a budding academic, is teaching again in Montreal, New York and France. Her ambition is to continue to make a living as an essayist at large in the world, to bring philosophy back into her life and work, and to play jazz violin as brilliantly as Stephane Grappelli. She lives in Paris.

Reviews

[Shriya · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book the author describes her grandmother, a memoir on her motiba, dada, life in Gujarat, lifestyle, wealth, it has some form of history but not overload, explores Gandhi ji's movement, has Jain recipes, really nice read.

I would not say its too hard to understand but if you do not like history then I would avoid.

Mira scales everything up. Up to the first/middle section of book its all about villages, motibas childhood and her life as a married woman with an insight towards Miras parents love story.

[Denice · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great memoir and tribute to one's past.

[suzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

While reading this memoir about an American born Jain woman and her tracing the live of her grandmother, I'm not expecting anything Bollywood,(my hobby/obsession) but when describing her time spent in Mumbai as a kid Kamdar writes:

"The slum was still cloaked in darkness, but on the other side of the street, the mansions of stars were lit up here and there with the garish florescence of hundreds of high-voltage projector lights illuminating the last of the nightlong marathon of shooting. ‘Bollywood’ movie stars are rich people in a poor country. Their real-life homes provide ready-made back-drops for the improbable lives of the wealthy heroes, heroines, and villains they play in their films. We children would often go up to the rooftop terrace of our Jehu apartment building after dark and pick out the homes of the stars where scenes were being filmed. ‘Look! Over there. Tonight they are shooting at Amitabh Bachchan’s house over on Tenth Road. You know who is starring, Hema Malini.’ Star struck teenagers in the neighborhoods waited patiently outside the gates of these villas for hours hoping to capture a glimpse of a favorite actor. When shooting was going on late into the night at Meena Cottage, directly behind our apartment it was hard to sleep. The bright lights and the knowledge that just yards away from where we slumbered, on famous star or another was breathing, walking, sitting, or drinking tea was simply too enervating.” (p.150)

She also writes about a relative's romantic invlovement with actress Rehka on page 165:

http://books.google.com/books?id=kSvD...

I also like her description of Bombay: “Bombay has been called a whore, a temptress, a slut. The city is a woman, enticing, betraying, extricating great sacrifice, sucking one dry. Indian speakers of Marathi, Gujarati, and Hindi call the city ‘Mumbai’ after a local female deity, Mumbadevi, whose distinguishing characteristic is the lack of a mouth.” (p.131.) Of course I think of Hello Kitty, who also has no mouth.

Kudos to the author for not being afraid to include the unflattering aspects of her upbringing and family, particularly the things regarding her dad.

[Hannah Emery · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book as part of a focused research project into Gujarati/Indian-American life, and found it fairly serviceable in that respect; there are some great moments when the author explains how her family had to find a middle ground for doing things like taking their strict vegetarian grandmother to Denny's in the 1960s. Kamdar does a good job of balancing discussion of her own life (both in the US and India) with a historical account of her grandmother's experience growing up in rural India in the early 20th century, and then living in Burma during the colonial period. The settings are beautifully laid out, and characters whose cultures are more or less familiar to Western readers come equally to life in the pages.

[Mallee Stanley · Rating 3 out of 5]

A granddaughter takes a journey back into her grandmother, Motiba's past, filling us with memories and scenes of her early life. Starting in Gujarat, India, Mira's grandfather travels across India to Burma where he makes his fortune before all Indians are expelled and they property confiscated.
This is the most interesting part of the book, and I wished the author ended with, "Two years later, cancer claimed Motiba. . . . and we were set adrift upon the world." A perfect ending. Instead, the story ambled on for another chapter losing the beautiful story woven in the first three quarters.

[HadiDee · Rating 2 out of 5]

The section on Burma is fascinating, I had no idea of the history and expulsion of the Indian community. Rest was very dry and hard to get through.

[Donna · Rating 3 out of 5]

The memoirs and anecdotes in this story are touching and genuine, and descriptions of the author's journeys back to the homelands are vivid and interesting. But the narrative sometimes jumps around. For example, at one point we learn about Bapuji's death, but then there are more tales about him. Also, we never learn what Motiba's tattoos mean or when Motiba got them, and it's only hinted on page 252 that Mira's parents no longer live together.

Still, it is a lovely and loving tribute to a remarkable matriarch, and a sensitive and on the whole positive account of the lives of a large, connected, mixed-race, globally extended family.

[✨ B e t w e e n S h a d e s o f B o o k s ✨ · Rating 1 out of 5]

this book was not good. the author seems to be extremely detailed in her writing to the point of unbearable. i understand she wanted to make this book for the world to know about her family and her kids to learn more about themselves, as it is an autobiography. however, it was really boring and could have been more of a memoir with more personal writing than this.

[Wendy Rohm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely memoir that deserves expansion of certain chapters info film, and perhaps a different book. Can't wait to see what Mira does next.

[Mona]

I'm wondering (just a suggestion) if most of the details the author included before the story really started could have come later or in footnotes in order to capture the reader's enthusiasm more quickly. The book came alive on page 13 when the author and family decided to find Motiba's village. Asking directions along the way to find a village so small it appeared on no printed maps reminded me of a couple of brief adventures I'd had in India. To find the home where Motiba was born nearly a century earlier was a thrill. Going inside and finding out the family living there welcomed them and was living in much the same manner made the story compelling. Descriptions of how the family lived were so well written it was like I was there with them. Reading about cooking and eating swooped me back in my memory to my Indian driver/friend Rakesh's home where the roti was served hot, one at a time. As guest, I ate with the men on the large family bed covered with a newspaper "tablecloth". The three youngsters sat cross-legged on the tiny floor space of the one-room apartment eating with fingers from a common bowl after the guest and men had finished. Only when the children finished did Shikha, the wife who prepared the meal, sit down along side the bed at a side table, to eat alone. The village way of life remains in this modern family in Delhi. More and more details match what I learned and/or experienced in my trips to India. Some questions I'd forgotten I had were answered. An example: Why the Jains were the bankers and shopkeepers and jewelers. If you don't know, you'll need to read the book. That was mean. It's because they didn't want to harm or kill any living thing and farmers doing their jobs would certainly harm/kill in their tilling and harvesting. The book became more and more confusing with all the names and shifts in place and time. Much of it follows what I've read elsewhere about the exodus from Burma when the Japanese arrived during the war. Descriptions of the area of Rangoon where the Indians thrived before that time were interesting. Sorry, but the book bogged down in names and places again and I set it aside for another time, but it won't be soon. I did want to know about the title. (Details that endlessly delay the reader make good footnotes for those who like them.)

[Cicely · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great look at Indian culture.

[Marie Haines · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful and loving memoir of an Indian- american woman about her family both here and in India.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Explains a great deal about Pakistani-Indian cultural mores in story format.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

intensely interesting look at emigration from and life in India.