My first lessons in English

When I was about four years old, my eldest sister, Arpita, saw that I had no interest in learning the letters of the Bengali alphabet. So she began to teach me the letters of the English alphabet. I liked them very much, but when my mother discovered what Arpita was teaching me, she was so displeased. She wanted me to learn my mother tongue first. She did not care for the English language at all, although my father had a very good command of English, and his immediate bosses were all Englishmen.

It was beyond my mother’s imagination that one day I would come and live in America, but God gave my sister divine insight.