StoryCorps is a great idea ... a documentation of peoples' stories told by their children. And when they launched Kahanimovement.com, I thought it was a great idea. so, two hours before the deadline, I started making phone calls, frantic ones at that, and wrote to all those who I knew on facebook. Finally, people responded. An edited version of the article appeared in Indian Express on April 21, 2009.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, April 21, 2009
At every family gathering, Amit Kumar would tell stories of how he
made it big in United States. With only $100, he landed in New York in
the 1990s hoping to buy a BMW car and a house in the suburbs. And he
did it finally. But not before he went through the grind.
He remembers how his wife pushed the pram in the snowstorms in
Michigan in their early days to buy milk. They didn’t have a car then.
They worked multiple jobs, saved up enough and then moved to their own
house. And that’s the story he wants his children to know, and
remember.
With Kahanimovement.com, a project launched by the famous Indian
American brothers Sanjay Gupta of CNN, and Suneel Gupta of Mozilla,
and similar to journalist David Isay’s StoryCorps.com, that dream may
just begin to take shape.
The project is aimed at encouraging cross-generational conversation
that are relevant to immigrants to help them connect with their
history through shared stories of parents, grandparents and uncles and
aunts that immigrated to United States from India like Kumar or like
Gupta’s mother Damyanti Gupta.
The Kahani Movement, a non-profit project, was launched at the Seventh
Annual Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles on April 21.
The project takes a Hollywood 2.0 approach and is asking young Indian
Americans to interview their parents, and other family members, record
it and then post it on the website for everyone to see. Its platform
allows on to browse through stories, and post their own in the form of
video, audio, photos, and of course writings.
Suneel Gupta, who has been working on it for more than one-and-a-half
years said this is a way to preserve those stories that are fast
evaporating, and for those who may never have the benefit of real
conversations with their ancestors.
“These are amazing stories,” he said. “Everyone can be a filmmaker,
everyone can tell stories.”
When his brother Sanjay’s child was born, the brothers wanted her to
know about everything in their family history, the way her
grandparents came to United States, their struggles, and their
successes, in fact everything.
While the Web site feature several stories already, Suneel will be
posting his own very soon.
And it is about his mother Damyanti Gupta who was the first female
engineer to work at Ford Motor Company in Troy, Michigan.
It was 1963 and Damyanti Gupta was looking for a job. Without
hesitation, she walked into an all-male company, the Ford Motor
Company. When the manager leaned over and told her they had no female
staff on board, she said “If you don’t begin with me, then you may
never have than benefit.”
That story stands out among numerous others, Gupta said.
Kahani Movement, it is also a way to honor family members. When you
have their stories and share them with others and hand it down to
generations after you, you preserve your history, he said.
“Take the time to sit down with the parents, grandparents and get
their stories. These are powerful, amazing stories.”
For Professor Sree Sreenivasan, dean of student affairs at Columbia
University, this is a great opportunity.
“This is a different kind of thing. This is a connection within
families. I wish I had done with my grandparents,” he said.
When his parents come over, he would want his children to interview
them and post the footage, he said.
Another Indian American, Roopa Singh, who lives in New York, said the
project is a fabulous idea.
“I am a 1-1.5 generation Indian American.Passing down narratives was
always core to our culture(s). Now that the passing down has been
interrupted by the sheer scale of adjusting to new homes, new
languages, new children it is crucial that we have a portal to gather
our narratives. I'm always asking my parents for stories, so i'm
definitely interested in participating,” she said.
The stories that are currently featured on the website, including
Leena Rao’s narration of how her parents got married in Baltimore when
her mother found a tecahing job in the city and everyone started
looking for a suitable Indian boy for her, have been collected over
the past year. After President Kennedy lowered the immigration
barriers for Indians in the 1960s, many traveled to America. And most
stories have an underlying theme of struggle, hope and sacrifice.
And while many appreciate the idea to document stories that may other
fall through the gaps because nobody ever asked for those, a few think
otherwise.
Journalist Tejinder Singh, who is based in Europe, said such projects
are not able to sustain themselves and lose the enthusiasm over time.
“Most migrant groups … the communities are together. Such sites are
helpful for finding brides and bridegrooms. They tap into those
connections through it. This is stay in a cocoon,” he said.
But then, for immigrants like Amit Kumar, who wants his daughter Aushi
to sit with him one day and talk to him about what he went through to
give her the best education possible, about those moments when he felt
utterly hopeless and wanted to go back home, when he was laid-off and
washed dishes in a local restaurant but never gave up, there’s hope in
Kahani Movement.
“Yes, one day I want her to tell the whole wide world how I survived
the crash,” he said. “And this is just the beginning.”
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