I was born July 31 1945 in Calcutta in the home of Nalini Mohan Shastry, my mother Dipty’s maternal grandfather. My mother had traveled to be with her mother at child-birth, a practice still largely prevalent. My maternal grandmother Snehalata was a widow, her husband Nani Gopal Majumdar had been killed several years earlier. As a result, Snehalata was largely under the care of her mother Kiranbala and father Nalini Mohan. Nalini Mohan was a Professor of Sanskrit, hence the title Shastry. So I came into existence at the home of Nalini Mohan Shastry 3/1 Dover Lane Calcutta 29. The times were uncertain and my father Achalendranath Mukherji was then Munsiff in Purulia and his father, Surendranath, was in Patna. Our ancestral house used to be on Bank Road, Patna. These persons will hopefully figure later in these accounts.
The tiger used to be located in Bank Road. Now it stays with me in our house located in National Media Centre Campus in Gurgaon. So how did the tiger land up here and what happened along the way is the principal story-line of these pages. In Bank Road the tiger was the stand for my grandfather, Surendranath’s, prayer beads, a Rudraksha Mala; the Rudraksha beads were big and my grandfather would pray twice a day. When time came for us to move away from Bank Road, I was surprised to notice that the beads were missing. So when I placed it in our current house, I got some rudraksha beads nowhere as magnificent as the ones my grandfather used, and placed it around the tiger’s neck. To get some dates in, the tiger remained in Bank Road till December 2019 and thereafter, was transported to Media Centre.
I would like to stress that the tiger stayed at my permanent residence always; which is why the intervening stays for reasonable lengths of time in Dover Lane (where I returned to go to College and my first job), then Kendrick Road in Rochester New York while pursuing a doctorate, or in 30 Dakshinapuram in JNU where I was to spend almost four decades, or at Truro Road in North London while I was teaching at the LSE or the NorthEast Apartments in Ithaca, NY while I was teaching at Cornell or the Matsushiro 5 apartment complex in Tsukuba near Tokyo in Japan or the I house in Osaka, the tiger never accompanied me. It stayed put in Bank Road, for that’s where it belonged. It shifted only when its habitat felt threatened. How that came to be, is something we shall talk about. So the subtitle indicates the two points where the tiger lived; I, on the other hand, had these two as my initial and end points; with a lot of intermediate points.
A family friend had told me that the tiger could be my pot of gold, a very famous piece. He had assumed that given its ancient look, it could be one of the famous Tipu Sultan Tigers commissioned by the Sultan. I have looked at some pictures and our tiger looks much more handsome and there isn’t any marking on it. I remember asking my grandfather where did he get the tiger from. And he said what a silly question, from the jungle of course. He had a sense of humour, we shall see examples of this but humour was not his defining characteristic.
Enough about the picture and the subtitle. Who am I? Even in the world of Google, there are several Anjan Mukherjis; some Anjan Mukherjees as well. The fist time I became aware of this non-uniqueness was when Barack Obama was elected President; that was in 2008 late November. His transition team was announced and there was Anjan Mukherjee in that team. The PTI office in Patna was familiar with the name for reasons that may be clear from what has been said so far; they were not familiar with the way I spelt my last name and in any case, people in India do not pay much attention to spellings. And PTI rang up a common acquaintance to check about the veracity of this report. He immediately called me up and complained: ” what is this you did not tell us that you are going to DC?”. It was fairly late that night and I asked him for clarification. He told me about Barack Obama’s transition team. I did tell him that some one who was going to be on the President Elect Obama’s transition team would have to be an American Citizen. He did not believe me and kept the phone down. I went back to doing whatever I was doing: we were still in Dakshinapuram JNU. The tiger was in Bank Road. Suddenly there was a call from some one who said he was from some press service, enquiring about whether I was accepting the assignment. I told him that look there must be some mistake and asked him to check the matter out. After I kept the phone down I realized that I need to check myself. So the net was switched on; sure enough there was a Anjan Mukherjee in the transition team; some one who had studied with Obama in high school and I felt relieved. Returning to the topic at hand, there are at least three Anjan Mukherji/Mukherjee in Google: a Mathematican who works with fuzzy concepts, a corporate type, an University Professor of Economics. And I am the last. 1951-60 was spent in school (St. Xavier’s) in Patna; 1961-69 in Calcutta (Kolkata, Presidency College); 1969-73 in the US obtaining a Ph.D., 1973-2010, primarily in JNU, New Delhi; 2010 onwards in Gurgaon, mainly except there were frequent trips to Patna for short stays during the first few years till 2019 when the tiger moved.
My students and friends may not be surprised by my beginning with existence and then worry about uniqueness in the above; but these are things which have concerned me for sometime. So far as Introduction goes, this should be adequate. More details will follow.
Anjan Mukherji 