Proud of my Grandfather

Proud of my Grandfather!
Quoting an EMail from Shri Gurbir Singh to my cousin sis - Rita Mahapatra and brother-in-law Brajendra Mahapatra. Thanks to the diaries preserved by my uncle Shri N Gantayat!

====EMAIL From Shri Gurbir Singh==

Paralakhemundi.

22.3.11

Smt. & Sri Mahapatraji,

         

Thank you very much for writing that wonderful E-mail to me, which was very much intrinsically imbued on with feelings of great understanding, love and admiration for a family patriarch and great soul, who had contributed so much to the making of a great familial lineage by being a great human being with so much of a sensitive side to him ( I personally treasure this aspect more than anything in a human being), of course, besides his enormous contributions to the royal household of Paralakhemundi and to the latter cause of  including the PKD Zamindari to the approved boundary of the Orissan State. 

This I feel inclined to write because when I first met Sri N. Gantayet Babu, I was overwhelmed with his dedication and love for his father; to find him having preserved the old diaries (even of the very young days of his father that described his hostel life and high school days) with so much care and devotion was like seeing a small sensitive, adorable, spiritual charisma. This I admired much; this I find in this E-mail itself. The diaries which I read with so much interest, the diaries which allowed me a journey into the mind of a sensitive young man that was filled with enormous dreams and concern for the society he lived in, the sensitivity I found in him, I found dominant in the successive family trees as well. He must be a happy man in heaven to see this intellectually sensitive side predominantly running in his family.

I am no scholar, no researcher, no publication craving contributor. I wrote what I meant and I meant what I strongly felt. There was so much to write; the diaries had so much in them, maybe the haste of writing the piece to keep the deadline did make me leave out some other aspects of this unacknowledged, great man of Orissa. I am sorry for that. At a personal level, I found it highly satisfying to read the entries in the diaries, and it was also quite energizing to write that piece. Mentally I have been enriched by the mind of the young man who felt so much, whose feelings unfortunately remained unknown, so much like his valued scribbles which have remained obscure till date, though very well preserved and read by a small inner circle of family acquaintance.  

I strongly feel that he could have become a chronicler par excellence, besides contributing politically to the state and the nation post independence, if he had not been God’s favourite in dying young.  But as you have rightly affirmed in your E-mail that he had left behind a legacy of quiet dignity, perseverance and high moral conduct as the goal for all of us to strive and achieve, I am sure that the throbs that still beat in the hearts of those diaries will definitely make many more readers like me rededicate themselves to strive to become better human beings. One day, he surely will get his due mention as one of the architect in shaping the minds of those were acknowledgedly at the helms of affairs in carrying forward the struggle of independent statehood of Orissa.

Thank you once again for writing.

With warm regards!

Gurbir Singh