A lot to be thankful for
These thoughts are not mine. A friend sent me a post passed on to her by a fellow Calcuttan (if that’s the appropriate word), and I’ve subsequently seen it on LinkedIn. I think the sentiments are beautiful, and particularly at this time of the year they remind me to give thanks for my good fortune.
Here it is:
“Dear Calcutta, thank you for giving me a childhood that taught me the true meaning of being secular. Thank you for showing me that there was nothing abnormal about attending a Catholic convent school in the middle of a Muslim neighbourhood, where most students were Hindu. Thank you for all those wonderful Durga Puja celebrations where Sikhs, Parsis, Christians and Muslims got dressed up to go pandal hopping with Hindus. Thank you for the Christmas celebrations at St. Paul’s Cathedral, where a predominantly non-Christian crowd would be spilling over the venue and singing Xmas carols loudly at Bow Barracks later in the day. Thank you for our very own brightly lit Park Street and those delicious Christmas cakes that came from a famous Jewish bakery. Thank you for those Eid celebrations, where biryani restaurants would be over-booked by a mostly non-Muslim clientele, arguing fiercely whether Shiraz or Arsalan [each a local restaurant] makes the better fare. Thank you for the free-for-all langar food at the Sikh gurdwaras. Thank you for showing us that there is nothing unusual about having a Kali temple in Chinatown. Thank you for the well-maintained (by non-Jews) Jewish synagogue that still stands proud even though it doesn’t run services anymore. Thank you for the Hungarian meat shop, the Armenian church, the pristine Jain Temple, the Anglo-Indian country club and our vibrant Chinatown. True, many of us have moved away to live outside of you, and perhaps we are holding onto a romanticized nostalgia of the past and sometimes you seem new, distant, difficult, hopeless, cold and unyielding; but as the world gets more hostile day by day in the name of religion, I take refuge in my childhood memories of you. And no one can ever take them away from me.”
I remember lovingly my own schooldays at St Xavier’s Collegiate School. The Belgian Jesuits who founded and ran SXC were wonderful; in my generation, I am particularly grateful to Fr Mairlot and Fr Goreux. In my high school class of 45 students, I recall there being at least one Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Muslim, Jew, Sikh and Parsi – an amazingly varied group, but the differences weren’t relevant, we were just kids together, and we played and socialized as kids. Many decades and countries later, I’m still in touch with some today.
Lucky, lucky, lucky – and grateful.
Happy holidays to all of my former classmates, wherever they are, and to all of you.
4 Comments
I have written about retirement planning before and some of that material also relates to topics or issues that are being discussed here. Where relevant I draw on material from three sources: The Retirement Plan Solution (co-authored with Bob Collie and Matt Smith, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009), my foreword to Someday Rich (by Timothy Noonan and Matt Smith, also published by Wiley, 2012), and my occasional column The Art of Investment in the FT Money supplement of The Financial Times, published in the UK. I am grateful to the other authors and to The Financial Times for permission to use the material here.
Life as it should be. It can actually happen.
Thanks, Ted. And yes, it actually did happen.
Hello Don,
Your message today was beautiful and up-lifting . Thanks for sharing that with your readers. We live in such a polarized world and it’s great to read a message that reminds us how thankful we should be. It is sometimes easy to forget the privileges we enjoy on a daily basis( despite the political and economic upheaval of the times). Merry Christmas to you and your family and may you enjoy good health in 2026.
Scott
Much appreciated, Scott. Best to you and yours too.