My Unbreakable Bond With My Grandparents by Neelakshi Banerjee

The bells of my childhood still bring happy tunes in my mind, a carefree rhythm, a melody of infinite promises, a soft trail of happiness.

- Neelakshi Banerjee

My childhood was spent in a happy home in the outskirts of Calcutta in India. I grew up in a joint family amid the love and laughter of my parents and grandparents. Every day came with new energy, and the evenings exuded a party spirit with my grandmothers regaling us with fairy tales and ghost stories. I used to wait eagerly for dinner when my grandfather whom I fondly called RangaDadu used to tell me of our ancestral home in Dhaka where we were zamindars, of the adventure they confronted there, of the opulence and grandeur amid which they grew up.

The stories of them owning private steamers, horses seemed like a fairy tale sitting in a house in Calcutta. He also told of the hardships they had to ensure due to sudden turn of events which left them no choice but to abjure all their wealth and abscond from their home in the middle of the night to reach the eastern shores of India to escape mortal danger a couple of years after independence. From my grandfather, I got firsthand experience of India under imperialism and India after independence and the differences that came with it.