My brother
Santi Bhattacharya
AA 82
We are seven brothers and three sisters. Dada was the eldest, 18 years older to me. I did not see him amidst us. He had already left home. After Partition, Baba settled in Jiaganj, in Murshidabad. After he took sanyas, this is where Dada visited us for the first time. I remember Ma handing him a saffron cloth. 

Every time Dada came for a couple of days, it used to be so much fun. All of us would voyage by boat to a Shibmandir in a wooded area downstream. There was also a Nowlakha temple that we would visit together. How we wept when he would leave.

I think Dada and Rangada (Swami Juktananda, our second brother) had got spiritually motivated by coming in touch with Gadadhar Maharaj, the mahanta of the Dinajpur ashram who visited our house regularly. 

Baba was a Vaishnav. He used to read The Bhagabat Gita. In fact, he read The Gita even when the Ramakrishna temple in Belur Math was being consecrated. 

I had heard from Dada that when he was leaving home, father followed him till Parbatipur, the nearest rail station urging him to reconsider as he was the eldest son of the house. But his mind was made up. Ma had taken three sons and a daughter taking up sanyas stoically. She wept only when the fourth (Sourendrakrishna, later known as Gopeshananda Maharaj) eventually left home. 

When Dada was studying IA in Cotton College, Guwahati, anti-Bengali sentiments were running high and a bomb was burst downstairs in the hostel and there was an attempt to implicate him. But as luck would have it, the principal was with Dada at the time and he vouched for his innocence. 

Two of my siblings got married back to back. I remember Dada and Rangada (Yuktananda) were home on the day of the ashirvaad ceremony. But neither came down to take part in the festivities. As monks, they were not supposed to. 

Dada was a sevak of Swami Virajananda, a direct disciple of Sarada Ma and the President of the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission. He gave brahmacharya and sanyas vows to Dada. 

When he came to Dinajpur with other monks, Rangada and Ma would cook and Rangada would take the food for sadhubhojan. Swamiji even visited our home to pay obeisance to our household deity Dadhibaman. 

After Dada became president, my sister Pranati (Chakraborty, a resident of BE Block) and I would visit him often. 

Buddha Purnima was the tithi of his birth. My son and daughter-in-law went to see him at the hospital. Tapas Maharaj, his secretary, warned me against a big crowd. My knees make it difficult for me to walk properly. I had no idea he would leave us so soon afterwards. 

My brother-in-law
Jamuna Bhattacharya 
AE 316
The country had just become free. We were staying in Berhampore. Next to our school there was a huge ground called Bhikhari Saheber Maath where all the religious festivals took place. Once the school gave over early for such a festival and I, then a student of Class V or VI, started walking across the crowded ground alone. I reached the structure that housed the temple and walked straight into the sanctum sanctorum. Then I lost my nerve and sat grabbing my school bag, refusing to come out. Finally a monk came and very sweetly asked me not to be scared of him and that he had a sister my age. I somehow trusted him and told him my father’s name. Word was sent and father came to collect me.

Years later, when there was talk of my marriage, the groom'’s eldest brother wanted to speak to me in private. For an hour he spoke to me about how spiritual I was and then decided I was the right choice. My father later said it was the same person, the monk from my childhood, who would now be my brother-in-law. 

When my husband was posted in Raigunj he stayed with us for three-four days. He had brought rasagollas and insisted that I have one right away. I have not seen anyone else with such a loving heart. 

My uncle
Niladri Bhattacharya
AE 316
We are of spiritual stock. My grandmother’s uncle was Bijaykrishna Goswami (a 19th century religious figure). My father Nityakrishna was the third brother after Satyakrishna, or Swami Atmasthananda, and Jyotikrishna, or Swami Juktananda. My earliest memory of my eldest uncle, whom I called Dada Maharaj, is of him treating all of us to ice cream the day Sourendrakrishna, the fifth brother (Swami Gopeshananda), came home after taking sanyas. 

The brothers used to come to visit their mother (Nanibala). Dada Maharaj loved her a lot and would sometimes pluck her gray hairs. I still remember how he shed copious tears when she was being cremated at Cossipore crematorium. After he became president, he came to worship our household deity Dadhibaman, a form of Narayan. 

He was extremely fond of me. Whenever he called Pritin babu, his sixth brother, he used to ask how his “sathi” was doing, referring to me. Pritin jethu had taught me how to perform the religious rites. When he was admitted in Ramakrishna Mission Seva Pratisthan, I used to go utter Narayan mantra, sitting next to him. His fingers would always be folded in dhyan mudra.

There was a sombre air about him, something in his very gaze. He would get angry if even the smallest detail was not adhered to. Yet he loved children, handing them lozenges and asking little girls to dance.

There was a phase in 2015 when two brothers were admitted together in the same hospital. Pritin kaku, who stayed in this house in AE Block, passed away the same year on April 14. And now Dada Maharaj is gone.