My mother was born to D.K. Baisantry from Sasaram, Bihar, and Kaushalya Baisantry from Nagpur, Maharashtra. My grandfather, D.K. Baisantry, was a deputy principal information officer in the Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, and my grandmother, Kaushalya Baisantry, was a women’s rights activist and renowned writer. My grandmother was a Buddhist, hence she named my mother Sujata. My mother was the fourth child of my grandparents, the first three being boys. A neighbour told my grandmother that the birth of a daughter after three sons was a bad omen. It so happened that soon after her eldest son (and my mother’s eldest brother passed away. My grandmother couldn’t come to terms with the loss of her firstborn. That was the start of my mother’s agony. My grandmother would blame my mother for his death for the rest of her life.
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