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Its very difficult to write about self, and certainly this homepage isn't meant to be an autobiography. So I leave that to you to fathom that out after going through my homepage. However, here's a brief sketch of the bigger family I belong to.
I belong to a joint family called the Makraria clan. I am told that there is only one Makraria family in India, though it is essentially an assumed title.
My grandfather's grandfather, Pt. Gangaprasad Makraria, was supposed to be one of the purohits of the Jhansi kingdom of Bundelkhand province, during the reign of Rani Laxmibai. There are stories of his valor during the great Indian uprising in 1857, though I certainly wont bore you with that. His son, Pt. Govind-das Makraria, survived a great outbreak of plague in 1897, when he was three-and-half, but lost both his parents. He re-built the family, its social standing and furthered its profession of priesthood. My grandpa, Balkrishna Makraria, opted for law and went on to become a high-court judge during his career. He took on the more formal, vedic title of Sharma as his primary title. He was also a writer in Hindi, and my only support when I followed suit :-)
My father, Jagdish Narayan Sharma, now happily retired from technical services of a chemical firm, was a President's gold medallist in engineering of his time, from prestigious Beneras Hindu University. Very fond of classical music, he started training for vocals in Banaras gharana of hindustani sangeet in college time. But he realized that it was interfering with his studies, so he opted out in few months! In his prime, he was also a good sportsman. Though an all-round sportsman, he was mainly a lawn-tennis champion, who trained with legendary Premjit Lall and Jaidip Mukerjea, and won numerous intra-country tournaments. Its from you, Pa, that I have tried to imbibe/mimic the sense of balanced persona.
My mother, Karuna, a housewife, and also my other source of inspiration. She was a great cook: one who had reached stages where she could see raw material and innovate a dish out of it! She must have prepared more than hundred kind of dishes for me, the pichle-janam-se-bhooka(hungry since last incarnation), of pan-Indian cuisine. Also she's one of the rare people I have come across who would never lose her cool. Its from her, that I have picked up my limited sense of cooking.
My elder brother, Ashutosh, is a scientist with CAT, a research lab affiliated to Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. A much closer blend of my parents, he is also a natural sportsman and a good artist. Having played football on national level, once he retired from that, he picked up badminton and effortlessly became top performer in MP state. He has a wife, an ex-teacher, and two extremely bubbly daughters in Maitreyee and Nandini.
My elder sister, Nandita, is a practising paediatrician in Delhi. She was very fond of making big oil paintings in childhood. I have been her favorite punching bag all the years. She has given me hundreds of pet names, logical or illogical, out of spur. Her husband is a practising neurologist, and going great places. She has a hyperactive son, Ishan, and also a lovely daughter, Amishi.
This was a brief portrayal of my family, with a spectrum of different people. But it will be incomplete if the other, complementary part is not introduced next.