The Writer I Inherited

The Writer I Inherited

In our old home in Chotisadri, there was a second floor (dusri manzil) that felt frozen in time. It wasn’t a place we visited often. Reaching it meant climbing very high stone stairs, worn smooth by generations of footsteps, with multiple doors. The climb itself felt ceremonial, as if you were leaving the present behind. And the air carried a distinct smell, something like churned ghee, old paper, and history fermenting together.

That’s where I first saw them.

Stacks of books. Some in English, some in Sanskrit. Their covers worn, pages yellowed, edges fragile. I don’t remember most of their names now. At the time, I didn’t know I was supposed to remember them.

Some books spoke of Jain philosophy, ethics, restraint, the nature of truth. Others were surprisingly technical: meticulous records tracking daily records stocks and commodities prices, documented with a discipline that felt almost obsessive.

Around them lay other relics of another era: old swords, rusted lanterns, objects that didn’t feel decorative but functional, as if they had once lived real lives.

Back then, I didn’t ask many questions. Families often don’t. History sits around us, and we mistake familiarity for understanding.

Years passed.

I left India. I did my master’s degree. Life moved forward the way it always does, quickly, without pausing to check if you’re keeping up. When I eventually moved back to India, I found myself in a strange place internally.

A kind of self-dilemma.

I was doubting everything. My choices. My interests. My direction. Even the parts of myself I once felt confident about.

During those years away from home, I relied heavily on the Bhagavad Gita. I returned to it again and again for motivation, for calm, for some anchor when nothing else felt stable. It became a quiet form of therapy, something familiar to hold onto while everything else shifted.

One night, around three in the morning, when clarity and chaos feel indistinguishable, I opened my laptop. Not with intention. Just with restlessness.

I typed a name.

“Seth + Chandanmal + Ji + Nagori.”

I didn’t expect much.

But there it was.

Multiple websites. Digitised texts. Books written by my great great grandfather, preserved online by people who had never met him, yet found his work important enough to save.

Some of the books had been translated. Some summarised. Some carefully archived.

I spent the next few days immersed in them. Comparing different versions of the same text. Checking publishers. Noticing illustrations. Realising the sheer range of what he had written across religion, economics, documentation, thought, and history.

These weren’t casual writings. They were deliberate. Structured. Meant to last.

Around the same time, I had recently visited the castles of Edinburgh. Walking through stone corridors, reading plaques about people who refused to let their ideas disappear, it had already lit something inside me. A quiet but persistent spark.

Finding my great-great-grandfather’s work didn’t just add fuel to that fire.

It reframed it.

Somewhere between admiration and delusion, a thought formed:

“Maybe it’s in my blood to be an author.”

Not in a romantic way. Not in a dramatic way. But in the sense of needing to record, analyse, question, and leave behind something coherent.

I had always believed I shared only my love for finance and stock markets with him.

Now I see it differently.

What we truly shared was a respect for patterns, an obsession with recording reality, and a belief that knowledge whether spiritual, economic, or historical deserves to be preserved.

For years, the Bhagavad Gita helped me find peace during uncertainty. Now, I have something equally powerful. The work of my ancestor. His contribution. His voice across time.

Reading his books feels like a new kind of therapy. Not just comfort, but continuity.

Those books on the dusri manzil were never just old books.

They were a reminder.

Some legacies do not fade. They wait.