Category Archives: Tributes

by | June 30, 2021 · 4:33 pm

My Didibhai, Purnima (Lekha) Banerji (May 2, 1927 to June 28, 2021)

I have a vivid memory, from when I was around five years old, of playing Monopoly with my didibhai (grandmother) on the floor of my family’s living room. About midway through the game, Didibhai got up to go to the bathroom. While she was gone, I placed hotels on a couple of my properties. The look she gave me and the way she asked whether I had changed anything on the board that I shouldn’t have when she came back was all it took for me to recognize that what I did was wrong and resolve never to cheat in a board game again.

Didibhai had that effect on many young people, which is why she had such a successful career as a teacher. She combined kindness and patience with unwaveringly high standards for both academic performance and behavior. Her students loved her and didn’t want to disappoint her, both because of how much they respected her and because to risk doing so was just a little bit terrifying; she inspired them to be the best versions of themselves. I got to see a glimpse of that firsthand when she subbed for a few of my classes in middle school; in my entire experience attending and working in schools, including as a teacher myself, I have never known a substitute to manage a class as well or get as much work out of their students as she did.

Fondly nicknamed “Shorty” by some of her computer science students, Didibhai packed the presence and personality of a person three times her size into her diminutive 4’ 10” frame. It wasn’t just her students who were obsessed with her; growing up, I rarely went anywhere without someone telling me they loved her. She was a raging extrovert and befriended just about everyone she met at the library, in grocery stores, at restaurants – you name it. I wouldn’t be surprised if, at one point, every waiter in Haddon Township, New Jersey knew her by name. She was extremely generous and went out of her way to thank people for the smallest kindnesses they showed her or for simply doing their jobs, baking brownies or chocolate chip cookies and hand-delivering them to local retail workers, firefighters, and neighbors. If you visited Didibhai in her apartment, the odds of leaving with a chocolate bar were very much in your favor.

Food was, in general, a Didibhai specialty. Beyond baking the best chocolate chip cookies one could find – as my older sister Lela often raved, they somehow always contained fully intact, unmelted chocolate chips – she excelled at cooking American comfort foods, European delicacies, and a variety of Bengali dishes. Her macaroni and cheese, shingara (a type of samosa), luchi (a type of bread), french toast, crepes, and fried eggplant were my personal favorites.

Word games were another Didibhai specialty. We played Boggle, Scrabble, Perquackey, and Quiddler all the time while growing up. Didibhai was competitive but took great pride in her grandchildren beating her. Much to the amusement of my wife Kate, Didibhai threatened to quit a Scrabble game she was winning against us once because, due to the fact that I wasn’t in the lead, the luck of the letters we were drawing couldn’t possibly be fair. Even during the last few weeks of her life when she was dealing with dementia and bedridden in her apartment, Didibhai maintained her sense of humor. When Kate and I visited her a few weeks before she died, she determined that I was offering her water too frequently and jokingly accused me of working for the Water Department.

I was incredibly lucky to live five minutes away from Didibhai and my dadabhai (grandfather) for most of my childhood. Their fun-loving spirits, warmth, and wisdom have helped me to grow into the thinker and person I am today. Their love for each other and enthusiasm for extended family has also been a model for me in my relationships. Didibhai and Dadabhai became family not just to my dad, but also to his parents, his siblings and their spouses, and my cousins to whom Didibhai and Dadabhai weren’t actually related. I am particularly grateful for the very close relationship Didibhai and Dadabhai developed with Kate, who they loved like another granddaughter. Kate loved Didibhai and Dadabhai as if they were her own grandparents as well.

Didibhai believed in reincarnation and would tell me occasionally that she planned to be reincarnated as Kate and my daughter. Both Kate and I hope to one day have a strong, brilliant, loving, generous, and funny child who reminds us of Didibhai.

3 Comments

Filed under Tributes

Tagged as , , , , ,

by | December 20, 2016 · 11:16 pm

My Dadabhai, Ranan Banerji (May 5, 1928 to December 9, 2016)

My dadabhai (grandfather), Ranan Banerji, was an amazing person with whom I was very close.  He died on Friday, December 9 and I will miss him greatly.

I spent a lot of time with Dadabhai while growing up.  When I was really young, he’d often take me on the train to a nearby town called Lindenwold.  I looked forward to these train rides for days, thinking that Lindenwold was a special place called “Linden World” that specialized in ice cream, which I perceived to be the purpose of our trips.  I learned later that riding the train was actually the main reason for our excursions, and that the ice cream we got at a diner when we got to Lindenwold was decidedly mediocre.  But hanging out with Dadabhai was well worth it.

dadabhai-and-me

Dadabhai loved to tell stories and jokes and to play games.  A former professor of physics, mathematics, and computer science and an early leader in the field of artificial intelligence, he instilled in me a deep appreciation of the beauty of logic, strategic reasoning, and math. He taught me how to play chess in elementary school and precalculus in high school, tutoring me over the summer between my freshman and sophomore years.  We had many long talks about science and religion, which he felt were more compatible than is commonly thought.  After I went to college, he’d send me emails and handwritten letters about mathematical concepts that he had promised to prove, or about political conversations he’d been replaying in his head.

I looked up to Dadabhai in many ways.  For one, he was a great life partner to my didibhai.  My sisters, wife, and I never tire of hearing the story of how they originally met.  They were on a boat to Edinburgh, Scotland in 1952 and, after their first encounter, Didibhai’s brother raved about Dadabhai’s intellect.  Didibhai told her brother that she thought Dadabhai was a slob.  “And I thought she was a snob,” Dadabhai would say.  “And then, two weeks later, we got engaged.”

I still don’t quite understand how they got from there to here – life apparently moves quite fast on a boat – but I do understand how they had an incredibly happy marriage that lasted 62 years.  Their respect for each other’s thoughts, admiration of each other’s strengths, and enjoyment of each other’s company were always apparent.  I have learned much of what I think a healthy relationship is from them (as well as from my parents).

I also admired Dadabhai’s power-balancing instincts.  He sought to buy from high-road companies and introduced me to Working Assets, which donates to progressive causes whenever I use my credit card.  He’d recommend I read The Hightower Lowdown and Yes! Magazine, pulling out and sending me articles he thought I’d find particularly interesting.  I recently learned that, in the late 1960s, he openly advised his students to get higher degrees to avoid enlisting in the Vietnam War.  Having such outspoken, authority-challenging views couldn’t have been easy for an Indian immigrant of his generation.

Other traits of Dadabhai’s that will always stick with me were his thoughtfulness and open-mindedness.  During debates, he’d lay out his assumptions and listen carefully to what others said.  He had a clear perspective, but it was grounded in logic and evidence and open to compelling counterarguments; in fact, he’d express excitement when confronted with evidence that was in conflict with a preconceived notion he had.  I think of him whenever I need a reminder to carefully and fairly consider opposing views.

For the last six years, up until Dadabhai’s health no longer permitted it, I would talk to him on the phone on my way to work almost every morning.  It was one of the highlights of my day, as continuing to talk to Didibhai in the mornings will still be.  I hope to one day be as good a grandfather as Dadabhai was to me.

8 Comments

Filed under Tributes

Tagged as , , ,