My Family Tree!

Hi Folks,

Last Friday, I was watching a show on TV with a few celebrities on a hunt to dig into their family histories. This concept has always fascinated me. In some ways there is a lurking belief that there is a true cosmic connection between your ancestors and yourself. To put this into perspective, Hindu philosophy talks about the family and "environment" of birth being chosen very carefully by the "lords of karma" to enable the development of the soul. Well so here I was trying to put different parts of the puzzle together really talking this over with my parents in Shimla, India. Here's what I was able to gather:

My grandfather Lala Parmanand Sood was a really noble man - a very loving grandfather and true gentleman. I did have the great fortune of spending several years of my childhood with him around. He had emigrated from our ancestral village "Lambagaon" in H.P and took to business in Shimla. He was also the one to set up the now famous Hira Lal Salig Ram business for the family. My paternal grandmother was Smt. Jagtamba Devi Sood. She doted on me and I was really close to her as well - have fond memories of her presence in our small 2 room house right on top of the family shop in Lower Bazaar. "Ammaji" is what the the kids used to call her.

Discussing with my father, I learnt my grandfather's father was Sh. Tulsi Ram Sood, who had a grocery business in Lambagaon, H.P (our ancestral village). His father was Sh. Bhuttu Shah, again having a general purpose business in that area - "Draman" to be more precise. Bhuttu Shah was a respected elder in the area. On the grandmother's side, her father was Sh. Jassa Shah. He also had his own business in Bharanta (a medium size town) in H.P, India.

I liked my maternal grandmother Smt. Paarvati Devi Sood as well, and feel her blessings are always with me, though it would be fair to say that i did not spend much time with her. Call it a matter of fate, I was able to take part in some of her funeral ceremonies in "Maniyara" H.P during a visit to Shimla in late 2009. I never saw her husband, my maternal grandfather, Lala Amarnath Sood. He had a partnership business in "Bharanta" in H.P. His father was Sh. Jog Raj Sood, and he earned his livelihood writing applications and composing documents for people in the village.

With some basic guessestimates, it can be conjectured that this leads to a family tree dating to the late 1700's/early 1800's. I am curious to more about my ancestors and their forefathers and will be on the lookout for opportunities to expand this critical knowledge. After all isn't it always good to know where you are coming from to help assess where you want to go!

Incidentally, this weekend Shallini and I visited the museum of natural history in DC - it was really interesting and one of the key takeaways for me was that was that pretty much all human beings can trace their origins to Africa from where they migrated to different parts of mother earth. And this might surprise you, but we share 99% of our DNA with each other!! - really there is much truth to the maxim that our differences are "skin deep" at best.

So what other benefits are there to knowing your family history over a prolonged period of time?