Birth and Early Life
Swami Paramananda was born on February 5, 1884 as Suresh Chandra Guha-Thakurta, the youngest son of a prestigious family, in the village of Banaripara. The village is in the district of Barisal, which was then part of East Bengal in British India and is now part of Bangladesh. His father, Ananda Mohan Guha-Thakurta, was well known as a progressive, a champion for women's education, a legacy he was to pass along to his sons. His mother, Brahmamoyee Basu, bore eight children before dying of cancer in her early forties, when Suresh was nine years old. Suresh was known for his affectionate nature and cheerfulness. When Suresh was sixteen, his father began to lose his eyesight. As a result, Suresh read devotional texts aloud and one that was particularly compelling was a collection of "Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna," a revered saint who had died fourteen years prior.
Read more about this topic: Swami Paramananda (Ramakrishna Mission), Biography
Famous quotes containing the words early life, birth, early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“When we consider how much climate contributes to the happiness of our condition, by the fine sensation it excites, and the productions it is the parent of, we have reason to value highly the accident of birth in such a one as that of Virginia.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“Children became an obsessive theme in Victorian culture at the same time that they were being exploited as never before. As the horrors of life multiplied for some children, the image of childhood was increasingly exalted. Children became the last symbols of purity in a world which was seen as increasingly ugly.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)