While reading the Book of Ezra I was much affected by the thought of people movements due to various reasons. When I think of our family lives our grandparents were regarded with much respect by their neighbours and even with awe.

On my father’s side there was a passion for prayers and holiness.
On my mother’s side was an arrogance based on a perceived notion through living out a unique lifestyle and an attempt to keep away from the general public eye to maintain that exclusivity.

Both sides devoted themselves to Education in one form or the other.
My paternal grandfather was regarded by other Mukherjees in Patna to be poor. But in my eyes my grandfather had a dignity which was felt by me even as a child. Visiting the ancestral property was a great journey. We had a separate building which was our library. There was a long veranda running along the back of the house which also housed hundreds of books in glass covered almirahs. The veranda had been covered to make it a long skinny room. I was always filled with awe when I paid my grandparents a visit with my father.  There were stacks of books in glass covered shelves all along the walls. Then there was a separate outhouse which was known as the library/reading room. There were a flight of stairs to go into that room though it was on the ground floor.

Our luxury was the space, the learning and enjoying the vastness of the Ganges river.  The great river which is known for holiness to this day flowed literally less than a kilometre from my grandfather’s house. There are fond memories even to this day the sense of joy with which surrounded us every time we visited our grandparents conglomerating from different parts of India in which our uncles and aunts had moved to make a living.

The Ganges river flowed near by – the holy Ganges. When young uncles and aunts  would  take holy bath every morning in the rippling currents as the boats sailed by. The garden was filled with fruit trees which served as a haven for my childhood imaginations and games that were conjured as only children can even to this day. There was a pomegranate tree, several banana trees, guavas, jackfruits and many others. There were beautiful flowers that were plucked early in the morning each day for the daily offerings to the idols. Flowers like Hibiscus, Jasmine to name a few. Some were of rare variety and some everyday types most lovingly planted by my grandfather. Growing vegetable and fruit was the enjoyment of the whole family. They were certainly nature lovers, down to earth and loved living in the country. Even living in fast emerging urban settings didn’t change them.

My maternal grandfather came from landlord roots and though Brahmins, were given a title by the British – Majumdar which is a landed title. This was highly regarded at that time and it was not uncommon to take up these titles and use it in place of family names.

My maternal grandfather  became a city bred young man due to his own father-in- law’s influence. My great grandfather – my mother’s maternal grandfather was a Sanskrit scholar several generations city bred and founder of a girls’ school and later college. They were openly arrogant as I look back and try to remember how they carried themselves in the society. They were all educated including the women going back four generations and spoke English – they emulated the English babu and could be classified under the upstart Bengali Bhadralok. They lived in a time of great confusion and uncertainty as the society was fast changing every day. The fast paced intellectual pursuits were but a cover up of the fear in each person’s heart of the uncertainty that surrounded in those days. I am referring here to the First and the Second Wars and the inter war period in Europe whose problems as well as various social upheavals came right to the doorsteps of our own Bengali gentleman’s in their everyday living causing him to think and question things which he had never engaged in prior to these earth shattering events.

The part that thirsts for learning still remains in the human psyche and it would be hard to pluck it out even if some outward force attempts. This was the background and story of my maternal side.

I have come a long way from my roots. There are some areas of my life that sit very well with this bygone era to this day. However  there was always another side of me to explore and see the world and a desire to know the hidden truth – that finally I found in knowing gradually our Triune God and the intermingling and separate existence of each of these entities with their qualities for us to know and experience.

This is my reality and my own private world that I discovered which gave me immense comfort.

Life is a full circle and I am happily coming to know my full self in the globalised village that we now enjoy closer than ever before.  It is important for each one of us to know ourselves – our past, where we are and where we are heading.  They are all intertwined and our sum total helping us to know who we are. All religions encourage us to take on a journey of  searching our own self truth. In its absence today’s world would certainly become a meaningless frenzy no matter which part of the world we come from.

As the Bible reveals itself to me I feel more and more at peace – without it I would have been nowhere – totally lost and perhaps insane.  We need to receive our Lord who is within us as a personal experience in our daily living – only then can we make sense of the why we are here and what we are supposed to do individually or in groups.

© Christinemukherjee

#myworldwithoutwalls