CYCLONIC MONK

CYCLONIC MONK ... 1

Millions of Hindu devotees were taking a dip in the holy waters of the Ganga on the occasion of Makar Sankranti sending their prayers to the highest heavens when the babe who was to alter the course of history was born to Bhuvaneshwari Devi and Vishwanath Datta of Simla in North Calcutta. It was 6:33 a.m., 12 January, 1863.

The Dattas were an affluent family with their line being traced back to Rammohan Datta who had made a fortune in the practice of law and settled down in 3, Gourmohan Mukherjee Lane in Simla, North Calcutta. Even today this ancestral house of the Dattas stands as a shining monument to the glory that was Vivekananda.

Rammohan had two sons,Durgaprasad and Kaliprasad. The former renounced home and hearth in 1835 after the birth of his son,Vishwanath. He was thereafter once sighted by his wife Shyamasundari in Varanasi and once more by his family when he paid a return visit to his home 12 years after renouncing. On both occasions the contact was fleeting and the monk,true to his vows, overcame attachment and retired to his life of solitude with God. In later years Vishwanath visited Varanasi but could not trace his father.

Written by Sugata Bose

CYCLONIC MONK ... 2

When Vishwanath was ten,his mother passed away. The boy grew up amidst difficult circumstances but overcame great odds to rise to eminence in life.He became an attorney and practised law at the Calcutta High Court. His practice flourished and his fame spread all over Northern India.

A liberal at heart,Vishwanath absorbed Hindu, Islamic and Western influences to evolve into a person of rare catholicity.He earned handsomely and spent lavishly in family-maintenance, hosting feasts and in charity that knew no bounds. His philosophy was simple -- if he could provide nutritious diet, a sound education and the taste of a good standard of living, then they would in time grow up to automatically succeed in life for the very habit of the good life would force them to work hard for its maintenance. However, the basis of it all,according to Vishwanath,was the formation of character, the springboard of all life's actions.

Bhuvaneshwari was highly pious,of regal bearing, the lone child of Nandalal Basu of the esteemed Basu family of Simla,Calcutta. She was exceptionally intelligent and a worthy life-partner of her husband. She had great dignity and amidst the difficulties that so often beset a joint-family, maintained it with expertly. She was a delightful blend of tradition and modernity, perhaps, the proto-type of the ideal Indian woman Swamiji had envisaged. Her days were spent in prayers and vigils before the conception of her prophet son. She was well-versed in reading and writing and read the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata. Endowed with a prodigious memory, a sure reflection on her innate purity, she could memorise passages of the epics after a single reading, a foreshadowing of her illustrious son's phenomenal memory in later years.

Written by Sugata Bose