Shantilal Nanji Satyabhashak was born in Baroda, India on February 19, 1931.  He was the son of an Indian Methodist pastor and one of nine children from two marriages.  His parents succumbed to sickness and died in the same month when he was six years old.  He was mostly raised by his brother Joseph and eventually went to live in hostels for schooling.  He told us stories of how he only had 2 outfits and 2 pairs of underpants that he had to wash frequently.  He laughed heartily as he spoke of some of his childhood memories. 

Eventually the time came for him to be married and an arrangement was made between the Satyabhashak and Canara families for Kathleen Canara to become his wife.  They married on May 15, 1958.  During the first few years of marriage, Shantu was the postmaster in Radhanpur and later Maninagar, India. He also completed a Bachelor’s degree in Economics at Maninagar College.  While my mother attended my grandfather's church on Sundays, you could find him playing cricket.  Perhaps that's why he fell in love with American baseball.  In 1962, their first child arrived.

In 1963 he left India and came to the United States on a student visa to pursue his master's degree.   He first arrived in Bangor, Maine to attend Husson College.  He was teased by his classmates for coming to a cold weather climate.  I guess Florida didn't have the program he was looking for.  From Maine he went to Fairleigh Dickenson University where he completed his M.B.A.

His wife and young daughter came to the states in 1967. They resided for a couple of years in Hoboken, New Jersey and then moved to Spanish Harlem six months after I was born. My brother came a year later.  He would spend all his time living there until 1999.

During our school years I remember frequent trips to Coney Island, the Bronx Zoo and Bear Mountain.  We would often drive up to Albany, New York and Burlington, VT to visit my sister at college.

Food was one of the ways I knew my Dad loved his kids.  In the morning he would cook us eggs, cream of wheat or oatmeal.  He would leave us snacks after school if he knew he wasn't going to be there.  Evenings we always had Indian food, and Tuesdays, American meatloaf. Even in his hospital stays over the last few years, he'd offer me his food making sure I had something to eat. 

 On special occasions we would either go out to eat in Chinatown or he would cook his delicious biryani.  My friends loved his biryani so much they learned to cook it.  He and my mother would spend hours making Indian sweets at Christmas and other holidays.  Kind of hard to make sweets as a diabetic, but I'm glad he did.  They’re now some of my treasured memories.  I also loved his keema and chicken curry in which he would throw some grated coconut on occasion. But I never got any real recipes from him.  It was always watching him cook and him telling me “use a little of this or a little of that.”  When visiting a local Afghani restaurant a year ago, I tasted their chole (chick peas) and remarked to my husband that they must have gotten the recipe from him. 

 He was openly passionate about his faith in God.  He found God in America.  It happened in a very Samuel-like experience.  In the Bible, Samuel was hearing someone call his name at night. Thinking it was Elkanah he went to him and Elkanah said it was not him but that instead that he should say, "Yes Lord."  I remember the countless hours we spent listening to my Dad preach at churches in Harlem, or the Haitian church in Brooklyn.  I can still hear the Creole translations in my mind. 

He had great plans and aspirations for his children and for himself.  He started working at Standard and Poor’s after he received his M.B.A.  He then worked for General Development in the 1980’s and became a real estate broker for commercial and private property in New York.  He became a citizen in 1982, another stepping stone in achieving his American dream.  He was a broker until his health started to fail in 1999.

My Dad tried to steer me toward computer programming.  After I received my B.A. in French and had been teaching for a while he recommended news broadcasting to me. My Dad knew that not only did I have an analytical side but a people side.  He used to call me his “Public Relations” person because of the hours I spent on the phone or with my best friend Lilly next door. 

He moved down to Virginia with my mother in 2000 so that it would be easier for us to take care of him.  And every day in Virginia he never let us forget that he had to get back to his promised land, New York City.  He also got to experience the joy of having two granddaughters and see his grown children settled in their lives and careers.  He also helped sponsor his two brothers and their families to come to the United States.