DAD WANTED TO “TREAT” us. That was the premise of this family vacation. And when Dad’s “treating,” that means only one thing: savings will be had. It was Labor Day weekend (actually, it was the three-day weekend before Labor Day weekend, because Patel), and Dad had booked an all-inclusive Carnival cruise for the entire family. We were to board this giant vessel of economies of scale at a port in Long Beach, and on the drive down there—we were late, because Patel—my wife, Mahaley, asked me if I had brought our passports. “Why do we need passports for a cruise?” “What do you mean it goes to Mexico?”
Cut to my wife, Mahaley, and I sitting in the Carnival cruise lines holding area, a sad place for sad people who just found out the vacation they spent all year saving up for may not happen; it was like the opposite of a carnival. My wife was understandably mad at me—I guess she had told me to grab the passports when I was doing that thing where I don’t hear her talking. Probably worth mentioning about the last twelve months: we got married, bought and renovated a new home, got pregnant (during which time Mahaley vomited almost every day for nine months) just after I had visited three Zika-infested countries. Since we had our daughter, Amelie, I worked an average of twelve hours a day every day including weekends. We were out of the country most of that time because of acting work, meaning sleep training was not going well, meaning my wife was essentially a single mother to a constantly cranky baby without any of her close friends nearby. I guess you could say our marriage was under a lot of stress. I had gained twenty pounds. All in all, this just didn’t seem like the right time to share close quarters with a crying baby, overwhelmingly happy grandparents, and unlimited amounts of ice cream.
We had called our neighbors at home, telling them that if they could locate our birth certificates and email copies, that we could get on this boat. We had zero confidence that we even possessed these documents at home. I was secretly hoping we didn’t.
Dad must have called me twenty times to reiterate the urgency of getting on this cruise (as if somehow that was helping): this was the first family trip with Geeta’s new boyfriend and our new baby daughter, but more important, the tickets were nonrefundable; savings were at risk. Cheap travel was a great joy to him. Along with the giant Patel nose I inherited from him, it was a part of his legacy.
Fifty years ago, he had come to America for the first time.
He came here so he could “make it” for his family. He is a Patel, and that means something. With Indians, last names aren’t just familial, they are tribal. You can meet an Indian, ask their last name, and identify what part of India they are from, what language they speak, their religion, and (if you were born in India) a bunch of inappropriate stereotypes like:
2) Patels are adventurous and entrepreneurial.
3) Patels stick together.
Patel is one of the most common last names in India, and because of said stereotypes, one of the most successful communities worldwide. Patel is a Gujarati last name, meaning we descend from the state of Gujarat, and we speak the language of Gujarati (yes, it’s different from Hindi). To be a Patel is to be part of the biggest family in the world.
In 1945, my dad was born in Utraj, a small farming village in the state of Gujarat—the kind of village you see in National Geographic: no electricity, no shoes, small bungalows with patios made from dried cow dung. Water was retrieved daily from the village well, which was then boiled for consumption and bathing.
One of five brothers, he stood out academically right away. And the better he did, the farther he had to travel to attend a better school. By the sixth grade, he claims to have walked many, many miles each day along a dirt path, “often shoeless.” He loves talking about the time he got bit by a scorpion yet still went to school. What a student. What a Patel. High school sent him to the prestigious Vidyanagar School, which required a move to the dorms in the big city of Vadodara, a couple hours outside of his village (though today the roads are paved, and the drive takes less than half an hour). In that day and age, staying in school meant not making money for the family, so you only continued schooling if you did well. Two of Dad’s brothers had dropped out to work on the farm, and the other brothers worked toward professional jobs in the city after graduation. So the real pressure to ascend was laid entirely on Dad, and his father never ceased to let him know. If Dad could make it to the top high school in the state, and become one of the top students in that school, then maybe he could get accepted to a college in America, which meant eventually making more money in a week than the family made in an entire year.
When Dad got into an American college, he became famous, a local celebrity. Everyone wanted to shake his hand. They even threw a celebration for him, which included a giant feast, schoolchildren performing choreographed dances, and a puja to give him good fortune in America. The day he left, the entire village followed him in a procession led by a band. The village wept as their favorite son walked with his small suitcase down the lone dirt path leading to the village entrance, where a rickshaw awaited him. Usually, this would have been a bus ride, but today was special.
Dad’s dad had borrowed money from the entire village just to pay for his plane ticket and tuition. Make no mistake about it, this was a lot of money to the village, but they jumped at the chance to loan their life savings to him; this was an investment. His mission was clear: get to America, and you will change the lives of everyone around here. The minute he made enough money in America, he would send every extra penny back to repay the village. And then he would start bringing the village to America.
In the winter of 1967, a four-foot-eleven somewhat-chubby Dad landed at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. He claims that he and his friends—six other nerds who placed in the top 1 percent in the state—threw their bags into their small studio apartmentI and immediately walked down Lakeshore Drive looking for work. They worked three jobs while also attending college full-time. The math doesn’t really work out there, but these immigrant stories cannot be questioned.
Dad became a civil engineer (or is it civic?), eventually working for a company called Honeywell. In 1975, my sister, Geeta, was born, also a nerd. And in 1978, I was born in Freeport, Illinois, a couple hours outside of Chicago, not a nerd, but blessed with the ability to communicate with nerds. I was also blessed with Mom’s allergies and Dad’s nose (big, yet ironically bad sense of smell). At this point, Dad had built a house and married Mom, who had a similar story to his—in terms of being “the savior of a village.” However, she later told me that she used to sneak out of the house every night as a teenager and that she didn’t want to get married or fly to America to live with this “short and chubby guy” she had met only once during their (arranged) wedding ceremony. But the instructions Mom was given were very clear: get to America, and you will change the lives of everyone around here.
Another Patel truth: Patels do not like working for other people. So Mom and Dad somehow decided that buying a résumé and career-consulting business would be a good idea for people with accents. Of course, their business did well. And while they were doing that together, they started importing the rest of the Patels in the world. Growing up, my house was like a Patel immigration halfway house. It was not uncommon for me to wake up and hear that we had to go pick up another family from the airport. Another family who spoke little to no English who would be taking over my bedroom, my home. Another set of kids I would have to show a good time, despite having nothing in common with them. It was the same drill every time: Mom and Dad would not only loan them money to get their lives started, but they would also assist with their immigration paperwork, job interviews, driving lessons, and learning English. This was a full-service program. And I had to go along with it.
Actually, all the Patels in the world had to go along with it too. See, this was part of a larger business plan Patels had for world domination. Every other Patel who came to this country with my parents ran the same halfway house, and the relatives and villagers they brought over would eventually do the same. Here’s the tricky part: my parents’ generation was the cream of the crop, but the next generation they brought over was not necessarily the same. Many of them were not as educated or skilled in English. So how would they keep this Patel Ponzi scheme going?
The motel.
Dad’s generation said, “Look, we have the capital. We will loan you money to buy a run-down motel, your whole family will live in the first three units, and the whole family will work there as well. We will train you to run the business, and we will help you find ways to run the business even better. All you have to do is work hard and drive a Toyota Camry and you will be rich.” When Patels like something, they all do it, and the motel business became our thing. It became our front for Patel-laundering for the next thirty years. Guess what? Today, all these motel Patels are millionaires. . . . I sometimes regret that I did not go this route instead of trying to be an actor, especially all the times I wish I had more money, which is all the time.
In childhood, I visited extended family members at their motels, often staying weeks at a time in a Super 8 motel room owned by a family member. I was always put to work for people I’d often never even met and would never see again. When I got my driver’s license, I became much more valuable to the village. A typical (and actual) request from my mom I recall is being asked to pick up some guru from the airport and drop him off at some random auntie’s house. On the way home, I was to stop at a different auntie’s house to pick up some snacks for a dinner party our family friend was having. Mind you, Indian aunties don’t let you leave their house without eating a full meal and then some, so what I’m telling you is: that guru and I had two lunches together. Never saw him again. OMG, I just figured out why I was chubby.
Food is a big deal in my culture. The Indian dinner parties were part of the cheap, loud, stick-together adventure that was Patel life in America. Every weekend, some innocent Caucasian neighbors would be walking their dogs and come upon a scene of two dozen cars and five dozen Indians dressed up, carrying trays of strong-smelling food that wafted up the street, mingling with all the loud Indian kids playing outside. This happened every weekend, all weekend long.
In 1990, we moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, for warmer weather, where Mom and Dad would start what would eventually become Charlotte’s largest résumé and career-consulting company. By the time high school rolled around, I was a typical Southerner with a Southern accent. I played a ton of sports, loved drinking and stealing the car at night to go toilet-paper a friend’s house. I smoked weed and pursued my favorite hobby, which was finding new ways to break old rules—my friends described me as an Indian Ferris Bueller (why not just say Ferris Bueller? I’ll tell you why, because back then, white people couldn’t stop noticing that I was Indian). I also cheated on literally every test, and I was class president every year (except for my senior year, because of said cheating addiction). When I would spend time at my non-Indian friends’ houses, it was always shocking how much privacy and space those kids had from their own immediate families. Another thing I found weird about my American friends was when they would say things like “I don’t care, it’s my parents’ money, not mine.” I wondered what it would be like to have that kind of freedom and sense of individuality, and to spend your parents’ cash as if it were Monopoly money. Especially as a teenager or a struggling young adult, there are times when you just want to be left alone. There are times when you do not want the input or audience of your parents, or your aunties, or your parents’ friends, or your distant cousins. But Patels don’t ever leave you alone. This is why I didn’t want to get on that cruise.
College was more of the same. Despite being a terrible Patel (I was not into school at all), I was an incredible Patel in the sense that I could take any test and do well without ever having attended class. That’s how I double-majored in economics and international studies. That’s also how I got a job in investment banking after college (though I may have also faked my transcripts a bit).
I was a horrible investment banker. I was always late, couldn’t focus. Hated the work. And they hated me. A few months into the gig, my boss Mike called me into a conference room to show me something. The TV was on—the Twin Towers had been hit. A couple of months after that, I got the call that our firm had been bought and I was being laid off. They were giving me something called a severance, and it was more money than I had ever seen. What they didn’t know was that I was already planning on quitting: I had decided I needed to be doing something on my own. Around the same time, Geeta had quit her finance job in NYC—she was also a terrible employee—because she decided she wanted to become a screenwriter. So in the same twelve-month span that all brown people became the antagonist to terrorist-fearing conservatives, my parents discovered that they had raised two unmarriageable kids. And it was because in part we were more Patel than your average Patel: my family does not like bosses!
Within a couple of years, I had joined Geeta in Los Angeles. She was assisting a screenwriter, and I had begun my career as an entrepreneur, starting a poker magazine called All In Magazine. Soon thereafter, Geeta’s friend asked me to come audition for something, and a few months after that, I was a full-time actor and Geeta and I became roomies. A couple of loser Patels who had thrown their parents’ hard work away to become struggling artists. Of course, Mom was begging Geeta and me to just let her buy a motel for us in Los Angeles, not only because of the financial stability, but also because she felt being able to say “Ravi owns a motel” was way more marriageable than “Ravi was the other guy in the McRib commercial.”
Fast-forward to 2008. Geeta and I are now in our thirties, still poorish, still unmarried, and our parents were in Code Red: you-guys-need-to-get-married-now mode. After a family trip to India where relatives badgered us relentlessly to find spouses, I had an idea. What if Geeta and I made a documentary together featuring us and our parents about this crazy pressure in our family to get married the way our parents did? Geeta had zero interest. Documentaries take too long to make and nobody watches them. And also they make no money. But in the end, she said yes. Why? Because Patel. She cared more about me than herself.
For the next six years (yes, six years) that we were grinding away at making Meet the Patels, I regretted this decision. Geeta and I had entirely different sensibilities, and we were horrible at working together. What we were trying to do was fairly ambitious for people who didn’t have much experience—we wanted to make a romantic-comedy documentary, because it sounded like something sexy that people had never heard of, because we made it up. We would regularly spend many hours debating small ideas, and the debates would consistently devolve into passive-aggressive conversations or full-on shouting matches. Like many siblings, we had a lifetime of baggage. But like Mom and Dad’s arranged marriage, divorce was not an option. We couldn’t fire each other from our lives, and we had put too much into this film to let it crumble. We had no choice but to find a way to love each other, to find what was there instead of what was missing. It didn’t happen overnight, but by the time we finally finished the movie—six years later—Geeta and I were best friends.
We thought the movie was great. Nobody else did.
After being rejected by every major festival, Meet the Patels was finally premiering at a documentary festival called Hot Docs. Even though this meant that the film we just spent six years making was surely going to never be seen by anyone, and would bring zero return on our investment, Dad insisted on making a big deal about the premiere. He wanted to “treat” everyone.
The night before the premiere, there I lay in this motel room that I was sharing with Geeta. Dad had gotten a Patel discount on a gross spot in downtown Toronto. I was lying on top of the sheets because I wasn’t emotionally prepared to see the sheets. Geeta lay next to me in her bed two feet to my right—it was kind of a separate bed, and it kind of wasn’t. I was trying to sleep, but I had anxiety. Maybe it was that I was worried about my career. My life. Geeta had fallen asleep and started snoring. Mom and Dad had their own room across the hall but came over to do their usual party: Indian snacks, chai, and opinions. Mom was busy with what can only be described as an Indian-snack assembly line. At the end of this assembly line was Dad, who loves eating snacks (he loves saying that’s why he and Mom go well together, because she likes making food and he likes eating it). He was sipping on tea, sitting on my bed announcing all his Facebook notifications. He had decided to send messages to every Patel he could find in Toronto—this is literally tens of thousands of Patels—inviting them to our movie’s premiere the next day. I may have rolled my eyes or cringed, so he changed the subject.
“Ravi, guess how much I got this room for? You won’t believe it,” my dad said.
“I’ll believe it.”
“Thirty dollars! Downtown Toronto. Thirty dollars!”
“I believe it.”
But I didn’t believe what happened next.
On the ride over to the theater the next day, Dad told us about a few local Patels who had responded to his Facebook requests and planned on showing up to the movie; he had promised free tickets to some of them, because Patels will even do things they have no interest in if they get a good deal on it. His excitement was contagious, and I found myself feeling moved that he tried so hard to invite people to show up. I realized I wanted to say something and made a little speech in the car.
“Guys, how many families get to have an experience like this? Look how much closer it’s brought us. We got to make a movie—this was film school to me. I feel like I found my voice, and I’m actually excited to be an artist now, because I now know how art can impact my personal journey. This experience has made me a better person. A better brother and son. It’s been the most introspective journey of my life. Let’s be grateful. Whatever happens tonight doesn’t matter.”
It was the kind of speech a coach gives a team that’s about to lose.
As we approached the venue for the film festival, we saw what appeared to be one of the more successful movie screenings in the festival. There was a crowd of people lined up along the entire side of the building. We turned left after the building and the line continued around the block.
The car stopped next to this long line, and we got out.
“Hey, do you know where Meet the Patels is showing?”
“Right in here. I think the back of this line is on the other side of this building.”
That night, a packed theater of something like four hundred people gave us a five-minute standing ovation. People were going nuts. Mom was crying. We ended up winning the Audience Award at the festival. And then after winning more festival awards, the movie was released in real theaters, prompting Dad to Facebook the entire country. He basically set up a call center in his house to get the word out. He even made Meet the Patels yard signs that thousands of people displayed around the country to market our little movie. It ended up being one of the highest grossing documentaries and one of the most-watched films on Netflix that year. It was a true grassroots movement. It took a village, and fortunately for us, Mom and Dad know everyone in the village.
Making that film was one of the best experiences of my life. What nearly destroyed my relationship with my sister resulted in a movie that affirms our friendship and our love of family. We heard from people all around the country telling us it made them feel better about their own family relationships. And my family is still having fun because of it. People approach my parents constantly, and it’s always such a scene because they are as wonderful in person as they are in the film. They are kind of famous now because of Meet the Patels and they also kind of love it. They have both retired and gotten acting agents. They started a “club” with their retired Indian friends called the Life Is Great Club, which involves going on field trips around the world, playing a lot of golf and bridge, and consuming a lot of snacks and wine. After running their own business together for more than twenty years, they focus even more of their efforts into volunteer and charity work here in the United States and in India. Dad now talks about Meet the Patels as if he made it himself. His current obsession is funding a movie for us to make together. It’s so cool that this is even a thought in any of our minds.
Fast-forward to the Carnival cruise sad place. My phone rings: our friends found the passports. We had to go on this cruise. My first thought is that I had let my daughter down on the occasion of her first vacation. I remember thinking, I have to aim higher for my kids, to break this cycle of poverty-themed vacations.
As we walked onto the boat, the smells started almost immediately. It was as gross as expected. Maybe it was the Trump times I was living in, but watching people gorge themselves on buffets, alcohol, and hot tubs really bummed me out. Mahaley and I were both sleep-deprived, and the stress of almost not getting on the cruise (coupled with the stress of unfortunately getting on the cruise) had given her a terrible headache. When we arrived to our room, Mom and Dad came out of their room, adjacent to ours on the left, and then Geeta and her boyfriend popped out of their room, adjacent to ours on the right. They were all excited and ready to party. I had to deliver the bad news: I think the three of us need to relax for a few hours, but maybe we can just catch you guys for dinner. Dad said, “Tonight is the big opening-night gala! Seven p.m. Dress up!”
Great, a cruise gala, I’m sure it’s gonna be a hot event.
Dad continued, “It’s going to be a hot event!”
Cut to Mahaley and me, eyes barely open, seated at a large empty table. Just us and the baby monitor, which was transmitting the sounds of my daughter’s white noise machine from the bathroom of our cabin where she was sleeping. Geeta and her boyfriend showed up first. “Sorry we are late; we were partying in the hot tub.” Then Mom and Dad showed up. “Sorry we are late; people keep recognizing us from Meet the Patels. What can you do?”
It was a six-course meal of lackluster cruise food, and my dad loved every last bland filet of fish, every last soupy casserole, every soggy vegetable, every watery cocktail, every overly sweetened dessert. My mom on the other hand did that thing where she complains about how she could have cooked every single dish better. Mahaley loved laughing at Mom, and I loved seeing both of them laugh together. I couldn’t believe I had found Mahaley, this incredible woman who loves me back and was willing to enjoy the world’s least luxurious vacation with me. I watched her nervously eyeing the baby monitor, pushing away more plates than she ate, sweetly enduring this floating-Patel-motel experience. People love telling me that she’s way out of my league, which is totally true and offensive. Sure, this first year of our marriage and a new baby had not been easy. But it was getting better. It was clear to me how much I love being her husband. And how much I love being my daughter’s father. Geeta was drinking more wine than I’d ever witnessed her drinking, which was a good thing. She was completely relaxed, at peace, in love—I hadn’t ever seen her this happy. Next to her was her boyfriend, Sean, who would propose to her a couple of months after that. I remember everyone in tears laughing at so many points. I remember my mother toasting to the fact that none of us had had a boss in several years. We were all living life, making our own work, healthy, happy, and building things together. It was a very Patel ending to my hectic year.
By the time dessert showed up, Dad was on his second glass of merlot and seemed to be making a toast every five minutes. It seemed the older Dad got, the more sentimental he’d become, and the more he felt the need to constantly point out how lucky we all are to have one another. I had gotten used to it—we all found it adorable—but this time felt different. The only reason I can give you is that becoming a father had done all the things they say it does to a person. My perspective had changed in life, my priorities. I realized I don’t want to work so much anymore. I don’t even care as much about achievement and adventure. I still want to do cool things, but only if they give me a lifestyle that brings me closer to my wife, daughter, parents, and sister. A few months after that cruise would mark fifty years since Dad stepped foot in this country with the weight of an entire village on his shoulders. And now here he was with our new village. For the first time, I felt his pride—his achievement as a father. I thought to myself: I want my daughter to spend more time with her grandparents. I want her to have what I have. One day, I want her to want off this Carnival cruise as bad as I do.
Toward the end of dinner, a dance party started in the middle of the dining room—a lame cruise-ship kind of dance party. Everyone at the table got up to dance. My plan was to stay back—I was embarrassed. Then Dad came and grabbed me—he’s strong when he’s drunk. As we walked toward the dance floor, he put his arm around me and whispered in my ear—as if it were a secret—“You know, I’ve been waiting for this night my entire life.”
I. I recently filmed a piece for Sarah Silverman’s show I Love You, America, during which time we retraced Dad’s arrival to America fifty years later. We visited that apartment. Turns out it was huge (you can google the clip).