His parents had arranged him a marriage in keeping with the traditions of the Ghanchi caste in Vadnagar, which involved a three-step process that began with an engagement at age three or four, a religious ceremony (shaadi) by the age of 13, and cohabitation (gauna) around the age of 18 or 20, when the parents felt the time had come. Modi was engaged to a girl three years younger than him, Jashodaben Chimanlal, from the neighbouring town of Brahamanwada. They had completed shaadi when Modi was only 13, Sombhai told me. But at age 18, with a higher call beckoning him, Modi decided to set off and wander in the Himalayas, leaving his wife and two uncertain families behind.
The only source of information for Modi’s travels during this time is Modi himself: even his family had no idea of his whereabouts. “Mother and all of us were very worried for him,” Sombhai recalled. “We had no idea where he had disappeared to. Then, two years later, he just turned up one day. He told us he had decided to end his sanyas and would go to Ahmedabad and work at our uncle Babubhai’s canteen.”
“I remember,” one of the Modi family’s neighbours in Vadnagar told me, “before Narendra left again, his mother wanted to set him up with his wife, so they asked Jashodaben’s parents to send her here for gauna. On the day Jashodaben came for gauna, Modi fought with the family and left home again.”
