Across Time and Space

I was the grandson he had hardly known. I remember him only through sepia images and lawyer’s robes for he was gone before I had turned three.

He had lived most of his life under colonial rule. With the swish of a foreign pen, his childhood hometown had become part of another country. He had come away to Calcutta to study and make something out of himself. He was the past and I was his future, but to me that past was my future.

I was born in a time of transition; at a time of conflict between old feudal values and modernity. Fortunately, I had him to set up the foundations. He had before him only obstacles and struggle and what I thought was a wonderful adventure. Those were the early 1920’s. He wanted to be a lawyer and go to study in England. His orthodox father wouldn’t allow it. In those days society looked down on people who crossed the 'kalapani' or ‘black waters’ to travel to foreign lands. After graduating from Calcutta he decided to hit out on his own. He was promptly disowned by his father. With a little help from a doting but visionary aunt, he shipped out to England to study at the University of Cambridge. The money wasn’t enough and he struggled to meet his board and the cost of books. He kept at it and passed with flying colors. He then went to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn and returned to Calcutta as a full fledged barrister.

Through my childhood I kept hearing stories about my grandfather’s life. His days as a junior to a famous lawyer of the time. Of the time he went to court in a horse drawn car. His first real car, his first house, his social causes; those stories to me were larger than life. The social reformers in those days were fighting to bring dignity to widows. Nobody married widows in those days. My grandfather did and showed the way to others. He began practicing in the High Courts and his practice spread, so did respect for him as a human being.
“He was a self made man and a thorough gentleman,” a friend’s lawyer father told me in reminiscence. “You don’t get them anymore.”

His struggle to make it on his own had made him a hard man. That is what many recalled. He drove his children hard though he provided many with financial support. He financed a cousin’s education at Harvard. He was always curt, to the point and a strict disciplinarian. I was the exception. I heard that I was allowed to play on his huge mahogany table and didn’t mind at all if I messed up. I could pee on his lap too with complete impunity. The future had to be given some leeway it seems.

I pushed myself through higher education and professional studies. I joined the corporate world and landed straight into the culture of corporate feudalism. It was all about who knew whom, of cronism and personal likes and dislikes. It was easy to progess if you came from a well known family that wielded power and influence. Life could be very easy if you followed the accepted norms and status quo. I could have had it easy but didn’t. To me there were two ways of doing things, the easy way or the hard way. I would imagine what grandfather would have done and in most cases he would have done it the hard way. Most of the time, I chose the hard way. There would be stiff opposition. Seniors would advise me not to make waves and let sleeping dogs lie. Sometimes I would be cut off from the inner tribes. But grandfather would approve and it made me a stronger person as a result.

Somehow, strangely, grandfather kept on exerting his influence from the vast beyond. After I had got married, I had to go to a lawyer’s office to get an affidavit done for my wife. I had never met the lawyer before and was expecting to quickly finish the documentation, pay his fees and be on our way.

“Is this where you live?” the lawyer asked pointing to the address, looking at me over his bifocals. When I nodded in the affirmative, he asked me whether I knew a certain gentleman who was his teacher at the college of law. It turned out to be my grandfather.

“He taught me the law of limitations,” he exclaimed . “And you’re his grandson…?” he paused with a big smile on his face. “We still have a special place for him in the bar library, you know. A place preserved in his memory.”

I looked at him in awe. The lawyer’s fee was waived; the work was done and we just ‘had’ to join him for lunch. Grandfather was watching all the time, the sly old fox; and the legend kept growing. He has this habbit of playing these tricks all the time.

I had a colorful and traditional Bengali wedding. After the marriage vows had been recited and we had walked seven times around the fire, it was time for Phool Sajya, the night of flowers. The entire family was there to wish us with flowers. Husband and wife had to put garlands on each other and exchange ‘crowns’ of flowers. Then we would retire to a bed decorated with white rajanigandha and red roses.
My father walked in with a huge packet. “A present from your grandfather,” he said. “He had left intructions that this be given to you on your wedding night. Open it and see.”

It was a huge cutlery set made in Sheffield, England, shining on purple velvet. There was a note written in ink that had turned sepia over the thirty intervening years . “To my grandson and his wife,” it said. "May you have a very happy married life." The old fox was still around. I was still being guided.