Threads of a Legacy
(2016) is a true story of Zaverchandbhai (Kaka) Mulji Shah, the fifth son of
six sons of Muljidada, and the generations of the Gada family that follow. It
covers four generations and about 115 years.
The memoir begins in
their simple ancestral village of Timbadi in Rajkot District of Gujarat State
in India ‘with no hustle-bustle, no hurrying, and no anxiety.’ Kaka was born in
1902 and bethrothed at a young age to first-born Rupa Ba, born in a nearby
village in 1908. Married when he was 18 and she was 12, their agricultural life
was ‘self-sufficient and content.’
For better work
prospects, Kaka moved to the coastal town of Salaya, booming with the sugar
import and garlic export trade. He opened a small shop, but it was not
sustainable. To repay his debts he sailed to Kenya in 1927, the land of
opportunity and abundance.
Settling in Kitale in
the fertile Kenyan highlands, Kaka was not one of the 31,983 indentured Indians
to work on the Kenya-Uganda railway for the British Empire. He was a
businessman that serviced the railway trade, supplying food, textiles, copper,
beads, spices, and bicycles. Ba joined him in 1930 with their two children. This
is where Kaka lived for the rest of his life, until his death in 1962, and the
tragic death of Ba in 1988. This is where the lives of the next generations of
the Gada family began.
Kaka is the author
Ranju’s father-in-law. Kaka and Ba had five children: Gulab, Babu, Bachu,
Batuk, and Amu. The author Ranju met Batuk in Nairobi during the summer
holidays of 1969 and married him in 1971.
From Kaka’s journal, Ranju
was able to trace the Gada family history and bring it to life: Sunday evening
films were projected on white bed linen; swinging on the door of the store
room; and playing marbles.
From agriculture to
business to textiles, the family started the Ken-Knit (Kenya) factory,
manufacturing sweaters, the first such factory in Kenya. They started with ten
machines and ten staff in ‘a small godown with a corrugated roof’ in Eldoret.
This knitwear company is the inspiration for the book’s title, Threads of a
Legacy – ‘three elder brothers of the family, with different views, ideas and
opinions had gone through so much, yet somehow they always seemed to pull
through in one synchronized harmony of a strong unit. Slowly, together they
threaded and knitted a strong value system.’
Just as threads are
spun into sweaters and blankets, the tale of the family’s and factory’s growth is
spun into a fine family yarn, enduring the collapse of the textile industry and
growing the business to about 1,400 employees.
This is more than a memoir
and the epic journey of one family from the seed of an idea to tragedies to
succession planning; it is about migration, commerce, the birth of a railway,
Kenya’s independence, racial tensions, exodus, and the growth of a country.
This is not a piece of
polished literature, but is is told with a gentle style and sincere warmth.
Liberally scattered with photographs straight from the family album, Rangu Shah
takes readers into her life and into her heart.
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international
aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different
in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament
(2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a
Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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