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My Dear Brother – NAGANANA
The year was 1958. Naganana was in eighth class and I was in six. He was always the inventor and I was always the helper. He did a project that shook my mother when she was trying to hang a wet cloth on the steel wire hung in all traditional homes in Cuttack. She got an electric shock, mild though. My father came running to see what went wrong. Nana was experimenting wireless transmission, with the steel wire as the antennae. The Morse code he typed with his design of typing machine rang tick tick in the battery powered radio. Such was his ambition to invent that, father bought us “ # 000” to “# 9” Mechano Sets to design bridges, cranes; couple the cranes to homemade electric motors, using old pen nibs glued to the armature made of lac. The talent took him to top of his class and finally to Indian Institute of Technology in 1962.
As an ardent follower I joined him in IIT two years later. He surely did keep a good eye on me. He was an idealist who observed life, and I was a pragmatist more interested in sports and games. He made sure I lived in Rajendra Prasad Hall of residence in IIT. He made sure I was in room # 211 C blocks, just two rooms ahead of him. The fruits of innovation blossomed and the peak came when IIT bestowed upon my Nana the highest honor – The President of India’s Gold Medal to the best graduate of 1967. The day he left IIT, I was feeling like an orphan. He deserved to be well placed immediately after graduation. But as an idealist, he wished to do research in India and joined Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute in Durgapur. I strongly suggested him to go to USA; of course that was the craze those days. In 1969 when I graduated from IIT in Metallurgical Engineering, I was ready to join Georgia Tech or IIT, Chicago. Frustrated by politics of CMERI, Nana looked to father, Late Shree Ramaswamy Senapati (May His Soul Rest in Peace), for guidance. Our father, himself a graduate of University of Wisconsin at Madison; urged Naganana to apply to Universities in USA for higher studies. With help of TATAS in India and a MIT scholarship, he came to MIT. My parents, with four girls and me and baby brother, asked me to stay back to take care of all marriages and family affairs.
My twenty four years rolled smoothly with TATAS as my employer. All my sisters were married. Shashi, my little brother was big enough to take care of Bapa and Maa, at our ancestral home in Cuttack. My wife Dr. Indu and me and our three girls came to USA in 1993. Time flew and slowly I began to know my Nana’s life in US. He was a brilliant innovator, well respected by friends and peers. He gave his best. But to the capitalists, he was a milking cow, fed well so long it gave milk and thereafter abandoned. Still nana gave his best, to the labs in Columbus, Cincinnati, Wisconsin. I told him to retire and live peacefully. But to him work was all that mattered. Once without work he succumbed to the tides of fortune.
A devout believer of Lord Krishna and His teachings in Geeta, I know Nana’s Soul is ever present with us. His invisible hands will guide many in distress. We often see a gossamer image of him melting in the Florida sun. I know you are watching and I will take a lesson from your life to be the master of my own destiny. Never bow to any one in life. Live our lives as Bapa has taught us to live, in India or in USA. Make our future generations worthy of our culture and love all big and small. Guide us Nana to stay on course. We love you. Be happy.
Gangadhar Senapati, Miami
Gangadhar is the next brother to Nagabhusan and was very dear. He studied two years junior in school and joined him at the IIT, Kharagpur. Nagabhusan helped Gangadhar to immigrate to USA in 1993. He is an engineer in Miami, Fl.