For almost 3 years, I have been writing a post everyday on my blog. And since today I have nothing special to write (or cut, copy and paste), let me bore you a bit with my family history.
My ancestors came from Ambala, Haryana where we had a small furniture business. My grandfather, who was the first person in my family to complete his high school, was the Panjab state rank holder in the matriculation exam. Since there was no college in the district, he went to Monga, Punjab to pursue his higher education on full scholarship.
There, he unfortunately fell ill and was misdiagnosed by a local hakeem, who made the conditions worse. The household was run by his grandmother, who became a widow at the age of 20 and was hardened with the hardships of raising her kids and grandkids alone and protecting the family from scheming cruel world. Plunged into the debts and in absence of any male family member capable of running the family, my grand father had to discontinue his education.
Due to spiraling interest costs and the expenses of his sisters marriage, we had to sell off our furniture shop. Without any education, without any money, one of the brightest students was forced to pick up a job as an apprentice at a ration shop.
This was probably the lowest point in our family history, but we did recover. In the free time, he self schooled himself to learn English and soon joined the GoI as a lower division clerk. Promotions were hard to get for high school drop out and he had to work for 17 years after his retirement, but he did succeed in imparting the best education for his kids and married his all 3 daughters off.
My father, the only son, secured an admission in IIT Roorkee where he topped his class of Mechanical Engineering and joined Indian Railways. He is now an Executive Director at CAMTek, a subsidiary of Indian Railways. He has 2 sons. I, the first real IITian in the family, who topped his class of Aerospace engineering at IIT Kgp and is now working with Broadcom for the past 4 years. And my younger brother, who finished his Chemical Engineering from IIT Delhi and is now pursuing his MBA at IIM Calcutta.
Another interesting aspect of my family is the diversity it has. My paternal grandfather is from Haryana, my paternal grandmother is from Himachal Pradesh, my maternal grandfather is from Rajasthan, while my maternal grandmother is from Uttar Pradesh. And I have lived in 9 different states and was schooled in 7 different schools.
The diversity did not end here. My grandfather did his entire schooling in Urdu (a variant of Arabic). If you have noticed, my father, my mother and we kids have different last names. My father hated the division of the country on lines of caste so much that he dropped his last name and adopted ‘Kumar’ (a generic last name which spans across all castes) My mother continued her family name (a very rare move at that time) while we kids adopted our original family name and never bothered to change.
It was really nice to know u more Ankur
Comment by Rash — February 3, 2008 @ 1:14 pm
thanks
haven’t seen u here in a long time
Comment by Ankur Aggarwal — February 3, 2008 @ 1:53 pm
You have surprised me Ankur.Your posts indicate some kind of finance or economics background.9 different states and 7 schools- must be an enriching experience.It is a pleasure knowing the real you.
Urdu is not a variant of Arabic as far as I know.It has lots of words from different north Indian languages and Arabic.The script is Arabic.Correct me if I am wrong.
Comment by pr3rna — February 3, 2008 @ 3:25 pm
wow that is good clean inspiring history
i think urdu came from persian arabic and hindi if im not mistakebn
Comment by prax — February 3, 2008 @ 3:54 pm
urdu is basically the language used in Pakistan and by Muslims of India. Its script is Arabic, but the words are a hybrid of hindi and arabic.
Sometimes, blinded by our own success, we tend to forget the sacrifices which our parents and grandparents make. This post is a small token of thanks to my grandfather, the most hardworking man I have ever met.
@pr3na…
i have had no formal education in economics or finance, isn’t that the whole idea of blogging. Learning from others experiences and refining your own thoughts
Comment by Ankur Aggarwal — February 3, 2008 @ 6:59 pm
Urdu aka Rekhta itself is a Turkish word and was originally spoken by the Mughal army contains words of Persian, arabic and turkish language. the script is Arabic alright but it can be considered as a variant of Persian then Arabic. for example Pepsi is spelled Bebsi in Arabic because the syllable ‘ب”Be’ doesn’t exist in Arabic unlike its existence in Persian and Urdu language.
@ Ankur
You and your family has impressed me a lot
one learns not to give up no matter what from the story.
Comment by عمار - aMmAr — February 3, 2008 @ 7:34 pm
That was a good reading and a turbulent record. Life in the previous generations was not so easy indeed. For me, the striking point in your narration was the way you feel a collective ownership of assets, its SO Indian! e.g. we had to sell off our furniture shop, etc. now that was your grandfather’s shop
Comment by Priyank — February 3, 2008 @ 8:20 pm
@ammar…
i did not know so much about the origins of urdu.
@priyank…
yups, those were really hard times
Comment by Ankur Aggarwal — February 3, 2008 @ 9:07 pm
Hey, good that you thought of writing this post. Really nice to know more about you and your family. It brings us a lot closer.
[Any hidden motives behind this post? Intended for a specific someone?
]
Comment by Jayan — February 3, 2008 @ 11:16 pm
//Any hidden motives behind this post?//
even after writing about 900 posts, answering to over 5100 comments, and 156,000 page hits, very few people know the real me.
so i thought why not write about me.
// Intended for a specific someone? //
unlikely, although i have made a lot of friends over ENagar. but haven’t met any of them in real life.
u might be surprised to know, but i have no idea who the 2 of the 4 authors of ENagar are and what do they look like.
Comment by Ankur Aggarwal — February 3, 2008 @ 11:52 pm
So who is going to be the latest addition to the diversity?
Comment by deadmanwalking — February 4, 2008 @ 9:50 am
Comment by Ankur Aggarwal — February 4, 2008 @ 10:00 am
ur grandfather had a very exciting and adventurous life.
Comment by Anonymous — February 4, 2008 @ 3:28 pm
i would rather like to say a hard life
Comment by Ankur Aggarwal — February 4, 2008 @ 3:33 pm
he must be a happy man now to see his son, and grand children doing well in their respective
fields.
Comment by laxmi — February 4, 2008 @ 4:28 pm
he is
very proud of their success. and the best part is that even though he is 85 years old, he is strong enough to take care of himself, regularly goes on morning walks and can solve Sudoko faster than I can.
Comment by Ankur Aggarwal — February 4, 2008 @ 4:32 pm
how can u compare him with urself??
he is a brave man, can’t say same about u.
Comment by laxmi — February 4, 2008 @ 5:03 pm
u let loose a ferocious dog on me and expect me to stand brave and get ripped into pieces by it?
Comment by Ankur Aggarwal — February 4, 2008 @ 5:38 pm
was it a ferocious French poodle?
Comment by deadmanwalking — February 5, 2008 @ 9:02 am
it was a Pomeranian.. but thats not the point….
it was trained by an army officer
Comment by Ankur Aggarwal — February 5, 2008 @ 11:25 am