In parallel to all this, another influence added up: Vivekananda, his karma yoga and advaita Vedanta, the Hindu Reformist movement. My mother’s guru was a direct disciple of Abhedananda, the second most famous of Ramakrishna’s disciples. He was a physicist by training who moved to the United States and took care of the Vedanta mission there, for about 25 years. He was like a super-spiritualist, and was perhaps the philosophic guide of Vivekananda. His very scientific approach definitely influenced me. He tried to explain the sum total of energy that we are and how microcosmic of a part of that energy we are. Being such a minute element in the world, what is life about, why bother at all? This is where Vivekananda’s karma yogic approach came in and deeply influenced me, as he said: “since you were born, at least leave a small mark on the seashore of time”.
One more influence was the challenge posed by the Gita’s most famous lines: one’s efforts should be detached from their results. I have not managed to reach that detachment, even though my father definitely did. He grew up in it. His family was very wealthy, but his father treated him as one of the hundred students he brought from his village in a dorm behind the main house. My father was never allowed to sleep in the main house until he finished his matriculation. My grand-mother even used to secretly send him food.

The last influence I would mention is the Western one. I spent twelve years in the United States and found there such different spaces of tradition. And the question is to what degree should one adopt Western Aristotelian values and how do they gel with my Indian upbringing; what is the appropriate mix of contractual, consistent, open, pluralistic, non feudal traditions of the Anglo-Saxon world, and Indian traditions?
So on the overall as you can see, I am the result of a great many influences, sometimes contradictory, definitely enriching each other, from the poorest Bengali villagers to sophisticated Missionaries to Marxist ideas and democratic ideals, mixed with Vivekananda’s approach to spirituality.

... contd.