Influences
His childhood experiences in a Dalit-Shia Muslim ghetto gave Roy Choudhury several positive dimensions to his identity. At the age of three he was admitted to the local Catholic School by Father Hillman, who was a photographer and knew Malay's father. He had to attend Bible classes in the school and that is how Malay entered the world of Old and New Testaments, and eventually, western literature. After completion of primary schooling at the Catholic School, Malay was sent to the Oriental Seminary administered by the Brahmo Samaj (Brama Samaj was a monotheistic religious movement, founded in 1830 in Kolkata by Ram Mohun Roy who attempted to recover the simple worship of the Vedas and purify Hinduism), a completely Bengali cultural world where he came across student-cum-librarian Namita Chakraborty, who introduced Roy Choudhury to Sanskrit and Bengali classics. All religious activities were banned in this school. Roy Choudhury claims that his childhood experience has made him instinctively secular.
Read more about this topic: Malay Roy Choudhury
Famous quotes containing the word influences:
“I don’t believe in villains or heroes, only in right or wrong ways that individuals are taken, not by choice, but by necessity or by certain still uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances and their antecedents.”
—Tennessee Williams (1914–1983)
“Whoever influences the child’s life ought to try to give him a positive view of himself and of his world. The child’s future happiness and his ability to cope with life and relate to others will depend on it.”
—Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)
“Without looking, then, to those extraordinary social influences which are now acting in precisely this direction, but only at what is inevitably doing around us, I think we must regard the land as a commanding and increasing power on the citizen, the sanative and Americanizing influence, which promises to disclose new virtues for ages to come.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)