It took me one death and a couple of decades to discover what I had inherited from my grandfather. When he was alive, and we were together, I had not realized how he had shaped, was shaping and would shape me as a person. I did not think of my inheritance back then. No, it’s not about the obvious inheritance of genes. Although I do thank my genes of fast walking.
Just a couple of hours ago I was bragging (truthfully and with a lot of pride) about how my grandfather would never take a rikshaw for going from one corner of the city to another. I still remember that he’d simply announce at our place at Sonarpura that he was going to my uncle’s place behind Uday Pratap Degree College, Varanasi and just walk to and from there. For me that meant walking around the world (Google maps gives the one way distance as 8.1 kilometre. Child’s imagination!). He was the fastest walker I had seen for nearly the first thirty-three years of my life. The only other person I have seen walk with a comparable speed does that consciously and as his exercise, my grandfather did that habitually.
It’s about my discovering that I inherited the yearning for scholarship from my grandfather. He was autodidact. He had taught himself Sanskrit so well that he could conduct all the important ceremonies with all their rituals himself. He was good at its literature too. I had seen him teaching Kiratrjuniyam to an M. A. Sanskrit student. I have made a commitment to myself, that I’d teach myself Sanskrit. Although I haven’t done anything to write of till now, I keep buying and downloading books for that purpose. I’ll get there, by and by. Whenever I think of a scholarly pursuit, his image flashes across my mind. It is like I want to make him feel proud of his grandson, all these years after he is gone. In a way, just like my grandmother, my grandfather lived in me. He lives in me, and walks and reads when I walk and read, like he did.
rajnishmishravns 