Life is an intoxicating experience, it teaches us so much. It takes us through myriad experiences – some good and some not so good – and similarly we meet people on this journey – some great and some not so. In all of this, life flows on, but sometimes there are severe disruptions in this journey. The fun lies in how we tackle these impediments – do we let tragedy define us or let our resilience win over it? In my case, I have always believed that life is such a wonderful journey that we should live every moment of it and treat each day as a blessing.
Life has a way of throwing curveballs; the trick is to constantly focus on the positives in life. I was born into one of the most famous families of Kolkata, Lahabari which is considered a ‘bonedi bari’ or old family of repute. These are the old opulent families that came into prominence in late nineteenth to early twentieth century and dominated the commercial space of Calcutta. Messrs Prawn Kissen Law & Co., the family firm was established in 1839, and my family migrated to Calcutta from Chinsurah (a suburb near Kolkata) in 1857. Hailing originally from Ramgarh in Ayodhya, my family till date hosts the most important of all Bengali festivals – the Durga Puja. Our family deity Sree Sree Joy Joy Maa holds the focal place in our family and especially in my life.
My life has been quite a roller coaster ride. I am the only child of my parents born nearly thirteen years after my parents’ marriage, I was indeed the apple of their eye. In 2012, my world came crashing down when I lost my parents in a span of a mere seven months and three days – with my mother passing away on the 20th of April 2012 and my father on the 23rd of November 2012. I found solace in academics. Being a student of history, I started to research my own family and also the caste I belong to – the Subarnabaniks. This caste is unique to Bengal and were originally dealers in bullion and money lenders.
Research meant hunting for original sources in archives especially colonial archives scattered in Kolkata, the West Bengal State Archives, in New Delhi – the National Archives of India and in London – the British Library. I discovered travelling solo as a wonderful option to deal with grief alongside my scholarly pursuits. Besides London, I loved traveling to Europe and discovering places like Paris, Rome, Athens, Barcelona, Madrid and Lisbon, among others. Life seemed to fall into a semblance of peace.
As mentioned earlier, I hail from one of the oldest families in Kolkata which celebrates Durga Puja in all its pomp and splendor. The system of deciding the host of a particular year’s puja and the daily worship is through a rotation system. My grandfather and my father never got a turn in their lifetime. Come 2019 and it was our (my late father’s) turn to host the Durga Puja that year. Our next turn to do this would be half a century later – precisely fifty-four years later – in 2073!
But there was a problem – I was the only descendent of my father and there was no precedent of a daughter hosting a family puja. I persisted and was able to prevail upon the elders in the extended family – I became the first daughter in the family to host the puja. My logic was that since I was unmarried, my gotra (lineage that is linked to a particular ancient sage) had not changed, and I was well within my ritualistic right to conduct the puja. An irrefutable but difficult proposition for the conservative elements in our extended family. I must mention that widows are allowed to carry on with their late husbands’ turns but to give the daughter the ritualistic right of a son was quite a bitter pill to swallow indeed.
I had a total of one hundred and twenty days of worship allotted to me. The turn for worship is termed ‘pala’ and the person conducting the same is called the ‘paladar’ and the daily worship is known as ‘nitya seba.’ With several trials and tribulations, the turn for worship finally ended but then Covid 19 hit us and my life, like that of all others, came to a grinding halt.
With restrictions easing out, I was back in Europe – now exploring cities like Amsterdam, Prague, Budapest, Vienna, Warsaw, Berlin and Brussels, nearer home I went to Angkor Wat. Just a mere six days after returning from my trip to Angkor Wat, on the 5th of September 2023, I was admitted to the hospital with severe pain in my abdomen.
What followed next was a tragic tale of epic proportions, a severe case of medical negligence resulting in a total hospitalization of eighty days in coma, three cardiac arrests, sepsis – all thrown in the mix. Even after two years, till date, I struggle with my daily routine and grapple with a chronic foot drop.
The silver lining to my cloud has been my friends and professors who came together in a consorted mission to save my life as I lay totally unconscious, oblivious to the fact that all my savings as well as the limit on my health insurance had long since been exhausted. Literally, a coordination committee was set up to raise funds to save me by my friends and professors. In all this, my paternal family members were conspicuously absent.
The last two years have been such a wonderful journey replete with problems but what a discovery of kindness in random people. How wonderful it is to simply enjoy a cup of tea, a smile with a passerby or a conversation with a friend. It is these small human interactions that keep me going. Faith is also a huge gift too. While the medical issues persist to this day, I have faith that there is always a friend somewhere who is ready to hold my hand.
Whatever life throws at you, keep going on with the faith that some blessing is on the way. With my book on my family history coming out earlier this year, I wish to begin a new chapter in my life. I eagerly look forward to life with all its challenges since challenges are the biggest blessing – they prove to us that we are capable of much more than we give ourselves credit for.
About Supriya Law:
Supriya Law is currently pursuing her Phd in History from Calcutta University. Her area of interest lies in the history of colonial Calcutta of late nineteenth to early twentieth century especially focusing on the mercantile families of that time. She is also the author of Living with the Past: The Law Family of Calcutta (Primus Books, 2025).
She can be reached at supriya.law@gmail.com
