Prashant Gopal on his grandfather

My childhood memories of the stories he told have largely faded. But I can almost hear my grandfather's mumbling, raspy, whisper of a voice that seemed to rise only when he called out to my grandmother in the next room. When he laughed especially hard, his voice vanished entirely and a grin took hold of his smooth, round face. Sometimes, it took him several attempts to spit out the punchline that triggered the silent bought of laughter to start with.

Grandpa was a captivating storyteller. After school, I'd run down the stairs to my grandparents' room in the basement of our house in Chappaqua, N.Y. He sat, hunched over his shortwave radio, adjusting the tuner and bending the antenna to find the clearest possible signal from the BBC. When I landed on the bed next to his chair, he stopped what he was doing and launched into a story, sometimes about his adventures hunting man-eating tigers, an episode from the Mahabharata or Ramayana, or a ghost story (His favorite was the “The Monkey's Paw,” a short story that I remember him telling with long pauses and ghostly sound effects). He was patient when I interrupted with questions that sometimes took us in new directions: Why was Rama's skin blue? What does Nirvana feel like? Have you ever seen a ghost?

His experiences as a judge and hunter in pre-independence India seemed far removed from the man I saw in front of me who was hobbled by multiple strokes and was a deeply religious, vegetarian. But he drew me into that world and made me feel that my own short history was part of a larger family narrative that spanned generations and three continents. He, himself, seemed to be a conduit to the past. Educated in Cambridge University, he retained the demeanor of an upper-class Englishman. I can only remember him in a suit, one that must have been tailored decades before to fit his short, stocky frame.

I wish I could recall details of our many conversations, but they've made a lasting impact on me. Grandpa taught me how to tell good stories, something that has helped me in social situations and in my own career as a journalist. I still feel his presence every time I think about his voice, which instantly brings me back to my parents' basement, the shortwave radio, and the stories that sparked my early imagination.