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As HAPCAP prepares to buy the Sunset Motel, the family that owns it reflects on their life in Athens
By: Theo Peck-Suzuki | Report for America
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB/Report for America) — In 1997, Jigna Bhakta and her husband Minoj moved from California to the small college town of Athens in southeast Ohio to buy and operate the Sunset Motel.
Bhakta had left her village in Gujarat, India just a few years before to join Minoj in the United States. She spoke no English and knew nothing about the business she had just acquired. Still, it was what the two of them wanted: a place they could own, work and live all in one.
Almost three decades later, the Bhaktas are finally preparing to sell the motel to HAPCAP. The organization will convert the rooms into Athens County’s only emergency shelter for people experiencing homelessness. It’s an emotional topic for the family: The motel is where Bhakta raised her three children and has spent the majority of her life.
“Without it, we probably wouldn’t get to go to school, we wouldn’t go to grad school, we wouldn’t go to — like, that motel is everything to us,” said Bhakta’s daughter, Bhavi Bhakta.
The Bhaktas’ living room sits behind the main desk of the motel, where the businesslike surfaces of the front lobby give way to dark blue carpeting and cushioned seats. Diplomas and photos of the children in graduation gowns hang on the wall. There’s also a large kitchen — Bhakta is an enthusiastic cook who has prepared meals for as many as 200 people.
That includes guests who wander in and ask what smells so good.
Remarkably, Bhakta never took a formal English class. Everything she knows, she said she learned while running the business.
“When I start, I pick up the phone, I don’t know how to — I don’t understand what they are asking me, you know?” Bhakta said.
There were times, she added, when guests didn’t take kindly to her thick Gujarati accent.
“What they’re saying, you cannot listen sometimes,” Bhakta said. “Sometimes they’re rude, you know? … They say, ‘Go back to your own country.’”
But she said neither she nor her family ever felt unsafe.
“Sometimes they said this bad word or whatever,” Bhakta said. “We just tell them, we cannot go in office. Just, whatever they wanna say … we locked our office, whatever they wanna do outside, they can do.”
Bhavi said along with English, her parents taught themselves plumbing, flooring and electrical work. They acquired the Sunset with no knowledge of the hospitality industry.
“Our (grandparents), they are farmers. We are the first generation to run the business,” Bhakta said.
What they lacked in experience, they made up for in support from family and the local Indian community.
Once, when someone reported the family to Children Services, the Bhaktas’ pediatrician, who was also Indian, came over to speak with the caseworker. The case was closed shortly after.
Bhakta gave back when she could. Along with sharing food, the family would sometimes let guests pay for their rooms late if they knew they were struggling.
It was a 24-hour business. Bhavi said she remembers many occasions where her parents were woken up by a guest arriving at 3 a.m. in need of a place to sleep.
“I remember her — it would be like, wake up, get us ready for school, go do laundry, come back, make my grandfather tea at nine o’clock, make my dad tea at 10 o’clock, go back outside, do more laundry, people come check out at 11,” Bhavi recalled.
And that was just mornings.
Bhavi is the middle of three children. She and her younger brother were born and raised in Athens; her older sister arrived while the Bhaktas were still in California. Bhavi and her parents speak Gujarati with one another, and Bhavi occasionally steps in when they encounter a particularly complicated problem in English, though she said she didn’t have to do much translating growing up.
“Probably since we were in elementary school,” Bhavi said. “We would just go outside to just spend time with them, but then my mom would be like, ‘Okay, since you’re here: Here, here’s a trash bag, put it in the trash can.’ Or ‘Here, here’s a towel, do some dusting.’”
The kids were only allowed to clean in the non-smoking rooms, though. “If it was a smoking room, we’d stand outside,” Bhavi recalled.
This kept up until the kids graduated high school and left Athens. Bhavi herself is now in graduate school in Baton Rouge, where she is studying to become a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist.
Going to college, she said, was an eye-opening experience.
“I love our motel, and it’s brought a lot of — I mean, without it, I probably wouldn’t be the person I am today — but I think moving away from it was probably really nice because I was able to learn about myself, learn kind of a different world of having roommates that aren’t my siblings,” she said.
And yes, she added with a laugh: She still has to help out whenever she comes home to visit.
Still, as all-consuming as the motel could be, there’s no trace of resentment in Bhavi’s voice as she recollects her childhood.
“It was our home,” she said.
Her parents, for their part, were glad to see their children leave to further their education.
“They are on their own feet,” Bhakta said. “I’m proud of them, you know?”
“My mom and dad value education a lot, because they didn’t get the education that they wanted,” Bhavi said. “Like, my mom was very smart. I mean, she won’t tell, but she was like, in the top 10 when she was in India in her school, but she never got a chance to finish college.”
As for what else might come next, they’re still not sure.
Bhavi said when she heard about the sale, she was overwhelmed.
“Literally my dad and my mom told me and I started crying, because this is literally the best thing that could happen to them,” she said.
The Bhaktas were looking for the right buyer for the motel. Now they have.
“When you see your parents work so hard — we didn’t want to give it to just anyone,” Bhavi said. “The place you grew up in and lived in turns into something that will help other people — there’s nothing more I can ask for.”