The man who left home to become a renowned monk

The man who left home to become a renowned monk
My great grandfather (seated left) with an unidentified radio interviewer. Location Unknown. Circa 1960

My great grandfather (seated left) with an unidentified radio interviewer. Location Unknown. Circa 1960 Image and Narrative contributed by Nupur Nanal, Pune My maternal great grandfather, Mr. Bhaskar Gangadhar Athalye owned a dairy farm in Borivali, Bombay (now Mumbai), and lived in a rented home in Shivaji Park with his wife and eight children. The dairy farm came to an abrupt halt when his entire cattle died due to a disease. (This information is unverified but he supposedly helped draft the plan for the now well known Aarey Milk Co-operative). Around 1940, with communal tensions abound, the family travelled to Baroda, Gujarat to attend a wedding and since Baroda was relatively safe from the communal turmoil and violence, he decided to extend the stay and keep his family there and look for some work. But a job interview in Delhi didn’t go as planned because of a conflict in political beliefs. It seems that my great grandfather decided to go on travelling and visited various parts of the country. He even wrote letters to the family regularly, for a year. No one really knows what happened after because, in what was to be the ‘last letter’, in 1943, he suddenly announced a shocking decision to the family that he was no longer going to return and that he had decided to follow a spiritual path. Signed as his sanyasi (monk) name, Swami Bhaskarananda Paramhansa, there was no further correspondence with the family. I am told, in 1953, a family friend spotted him at the mass Hindu pilgrimage, Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, UP and called out to him by his family name Raja. He discovered that my great grandfather was…

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The mysterious death of my grand uncle, Laxman

The mysterious death of my grand uncle, Laxman
My great-grandfather Venkatrao Kadle; his sons – Ramdas, Laxman, Shyam, Vasant, Anant, and daughters – Indu, Vimala, Manjula, Sushila. Poona (now Pune). Maharashtra. 1943

My great-grandfather Venkatrao Kadle; his sons – Ramdas, Laxman, Shyam, Vasant, Anant, and daughters – Indu, Vimala, Manjula, Sushila. Poona (now Pune). Maharashtra. 1943 Image and Narrative contributed by Udit Mavinkurve, Mumbai In this photograph Purushottam Venkatrao Kadle, (standing rightmost) fondly called Vasant is my grandfather. He was 17 years old at the time. The photograph was taken, in honour of his elder brother, Lieut. Laxman Kandle, (sitting, in uniform) who was leaving for his duty as a medical officer in the military. He had been posted in Bengal for famine relief. The Bengal famine of 1943 had struck the Bengal province of pre-partition British India during World War II following the Japanese occupation of Burma. A mystery surrounds my grand-uncle Laxman. He never returned from Bengal, they tell me. A telegram arrived, with its customary terseness, which said he had died; cause and place of death, unknown. His body was never found. And a few days later, they got a letter from him, written when he had been alive. A pre-teen under the heady influence of a great English teacher, I fantasized about a novel I would write about him when I would grow up. That was back in 2005. Last month in December 2013, during our annual cleaning, my mother found the said letter and the telegram that my grandfather Vasant, Laxman's youngest brother had kept for all these years. And the dust covered letters awoke those pre-teen fancies of writing about my uncle yet again. (The letters are presented in the links below)  The first letter offers more than mere curiosity of any Indian seeking out people from his own community when in strange land. The Kadles, the Koppikars,…

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“I lied to the Prime Minister of the country.”

“I lied to the Prime Minister of the country.”
From Rajiv Gandhi to me. New Delhi. December 1, 1985

From Rajiv Gandhi to me. New Delhi. December 1, 1985 Letter and Narrative contributed by Swati Bhattacharya, Gurgaon Blame it on my only child-ness if you must, but I love famous people loving me. I like provoking intimacy. But only from the jet-setting beau monde. I crave intimacy from people who have no business to get intimate with me. After coming back from school (Delhi Public School R.K.Puram), and doing the stuff I had to do, I'd sit down and think of writing to someone. The first person I had written to was Hiroko Nagasaki, a Japanese 13 year old swimmer who had swept the Asian Games in 1983. She and I became pen-pals for the next two years. She'd send me paper stickers, perfumed erasers and then one day in school somebody stole my Hiroko box. Traumatic as it was, I quickly recovered because by then I had received a flowery handmade-paper letter all the way from 22, Zaman Park, Lahore, Pakistan. Imran Khan, the famous cricketer, had written to me. The letter became my raison d'etre for a while. The fact that love does find a way, the fact that the letter had 18 red flowers printed at the back, and the fact that it had been signed as 'Imran' and not 'Imran Khan', to me it was a sign of a cosmic connection. We were meant to be and all that...Anyway, I lost this letter in a crowded Mudrika bus, while doing my nth show and tell. The letter I am sharing with you is one that still lives with me. Born out of jealousy, it got written in the November of 1985, when newspapers were full of Rajiv Gandhi writing to a Sri Lankan kid. The TV cameras had gone loooking for her and captured…

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As a magistrate he could impose a large fine of Rs.10

As a magistrate he could impose a large fine of Rs.10
My Great Great Grandfather, Mukuntha Madhav Reddy Yekollu, Zamindar of Yelagiri. (far left, with hands folded) with associates from the region. Jolarpet, Tamil Nadu. Circa 1880

My Great Great Grandfather, Mukuntha Madhav Reddy Yekollu, Zamindar of Yelagiri. (far left, with hands folded) with associates. Jolarpet, Tamil Nadu. Circa 1880 Image and Narrative contributed by Sanjay, UK This photograph of my Great great grandfather Mukuntha Madhav Reddy Yekollu (sitting far left, on chair) was taken in my ancestral home in Yelagiri near Jolarpet. He later went on to become a honorary civil magistrate/judge with a capacity to impose fines upto Rs.10 ( a princely sum then). He committed suicide in 1907 for reasons no one knew, but we conjecture- it was depression. All I know of the two European gentleman in the picture is that one was a Railway supervisor of Jolarpet which was an important railway junction. The other was a Police Inspector of Italian origin. My Great Great Grandfather was educated up to form three. He had two wives, four sons, six to seven daughters and an elder brother who died on the eve of his marriage. The last time I visited  my ancestral home in India I also found a letter that was never posted (Dated : 1927) With an interest to find out more about my ancestry I searched and found distant uncles and aunts. Some were not welcoming at all, and some wouldn't allow old photographs to be scanned. This photo was given to me by my great grand father's sister's son. He thought it would be better off with me than him.

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