From Transylvania to Gopalganj: One man’s effort to rediscover his roots
Born to a Hungarian mother and Bengali father, Gregor’s roots on his father’s side trace all the way back to the now dilapidated Zamindar bari in Ulpur of Gopalganj. After reconnecting with his roots on his mother’s side, Gregor is now doing the same with his paternal ancestry
On a cold winter afternoon in November, Gregor, a handsome-looking man in his late-40s, is sitting in front of his computer screen at his residence in Transylvania, Romania. His residence is in fact a manor named Mikes Castle, on an estate named Zabola that houses many other similar castles, built at different times over the last 600 years.
An hour's drive from Zabola Estate is the famous Bran Castle, where Vlad the Impaler – known to the world as Count Dracula – resided for a while. Bran Castle draws around a million visitors every year, some of whom spill over to the Zabola Estate – now converted into a guesthouse where rooms are rented out for overnight stays, for events such as weddings and concerts, and other occasions. Among other attractions in Gregor's neighbourhood is an estate owned by King Charles.
"Sometime in the 1700s, one of my ancestors occupied Bran Castle. So I guess I have a connection to the place as well," laughs Gregor in his soft-spoken manner over a Zoom call.
Having chanced upon a Bangladeshi journalist, Gregor is eager to discuss the economic and political situation in Bangladesh. In 2020, he became a majority shareholder in one of the largest textile factories in Romania and has been exploring the possibility of sourcing at least some of his production requirements from Bangladesh's famous RMG industry. Earlier this year, he had deliberated on whether to take a trip to Bangladesh, along with his team, to attend an export fair.
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But why Bangladesh, all the way from Romania? Because Gregor's last name is Roy-Chowdhury. Born to a Hungarian mother and Bengali father, Gregor's roots on his father's side trace all the way back to the now dilapidated Zamindar bari in Ulpur of Gopalganj, Bangladesh. The family had settled there in the 11th century and enjoyed its heyday during Mughal rule, when they inherited the Chowdhury title as Jagirs.
His mother's family, on the other hand, are esteemed Transylvanian royalty whose names appear in local historical records dating back to the Middle Ages.
You would imagine being born to virtual royalty on both sides, Gregor's childhood would be all about running through palace corridors, being attended to by servants and maids, and attending grand dinners and balls. Unfortunately for Gregor and his family, the 20th century happened. Gregor and his younger brother ended up being raised in a foreign country – Austria – by parents who had been turned into refugees by the violent events of history.
The Roy-Chowdhurys
The village Ulpur was founded by the Basu Roy-Chowdhury family as a seat of the Zamindari, known as Shahpur-Pargana, which consisted of a number of connected villages. At its height, the estate contained many small and large structures, including a domineering palace built on 200 acres at the turn of the 20th century.
But then in 1947, almost all of the family left for Kolkata overnight, as a result of the partition of the subcontinent, although one family member stayed behind. Today, most of the estate has become vested property and lies in various stages of ruin, despite being repurposed as different public and government facilities.
Growing up, that is as much as he knew about the origins of his father's side of the family. Most of the family in Kolkata had built a thriving community, while most of Gregor's direct ancestors had migrated to Delhi even before partition. Gregor visited both places a number of times.
"Bangladesh was not at all spoken of. It was after my father passed away in 2002 that my interest about Bangladesh grew more. I really wanted to discover my roots," said Gregor.
Having studied political economy at the London School of Economics and worked as an investment banker in London for a few years, he had already migrated to Romania by then, unable to resist the pull of rediscovering his roots on his mother's side. Around the same time, he began floating the idea of reestablishing contact with the family in Bangladesh that stayed back.
"Whenever the topic came up, many relatives totally blocked the story off – 'We left, it is the past, forget about it' – they said," remembers Gregor.
Gregor came across a book written in the 1920s on the family's history by one of its family members. But he could not read Bangla. "I asked somebody to translate it. Every week I got a few pages and read a few pages. Then more and more. Eventually I became more interested in the history of the area," remembers Gregor.
Gregor also set up a website with exclusive information on the history of the Roy-Chowdhury clan, which would serve as a platform for relatives around the world to connect to each other. Although most such communication has now shifted to other platforms, it initially helped many family members rekindle ties.
When Gregor initially told his relatives about his desire to visit Bangladesh, they became very emotional. Some even took a hardline and said "Don't go."
"I desperately wanted to go to Bangladesh. Eventually, they relented and told me about a cousin, Popa, who still lived in Gopalganj."
Gregor subsequently got in touch with Popa – Mrinal Roy-Chowdhury – the third of four sons of Sudhanaya Roy-Chowdhury, the lone member of the family who decided to stay back in Bangladesh. Another family member based out of Delhi, Jayanta Roy-Chowdhury, helped them connect.
"Jayanta told me we have a 'man from Austria' who wants to visit you," recalls Mrinal, who runs a pharmacy business in Gopalganj, now living in a newly-built house on the old family property.
In 2008, after securing a visa from Delhi with the help of Jayanta, Gregor finally headed for the Bangladesh-India border from Kolkata on a private vehicle. Mrinal waited for him on the other side of the border.
"I was immediately overwhelmed by the natural beauty of Bangladesh the moment I crossed the border," remembers Gregor. During his first trip, Gregor spent two nights at Mrinal's place while he visited his ancestral home.
"The old houses reminded me of an Indiana Jones movie; they were covered in trees and bushes," Gregor laughs. "The ground floors had been taken over by other people, while the second and third floors were still empty."
For the villagers, it was a novelty to see a 'man from Austria' for the first time.
"There were hundreds of people following us wherever we went. I remember eating a lot of food, all of the time. And of course, I ate a lot of Ilish," says Gregor.
Gregor has so far come four times to Bangladesh, making the trip down to Gopalganj both through Kolkata and Dhaka. During one of his trips, Gregor also brought along his younger brother.
Mrinal and Gregor subsequently helped many other family members connect to their roots in Ulpur, including Gregor's illustrious uncle Amitav Ghosh, the celebrated international author, who made a trip to his ancestral home on his maternal side for the first time in January this year.
During his latest trip right before the Covid 19 pandemic, he arrived with two photographers – Béla Kása from Hungary and Kushal Ray from Kolkata – and hired photographer Protick Sarker from Dhaka to visually document his ancestral roots with the hopes on hosting an exhibition at some point in the future.
Today, the family's resistance to rediscovering their past in Bangladesh has visibly eased. But Gregor understands the initial resistance.
"There were many negative stories from the time they had left. They had to flee overnight and it was not a positive experience. There was trauma. You live life and suddenly you are a refugee," Gregor says. What was however interesting for Gregor was the stories his Bengali relatives told were the same ones he heard from his mother's side. "Just on a different continent," he says.
In the early 2000s, when he first moved to Romania, he had faced the same resistance from family members dispersed around the world: "Don't go back to Eastern Europe. Don't go back to Romania. There is nothing there. It will only mean trouble."
The Mikes
Around the time the Roy-Chowdhury clan made their way to Kolkata and other parts, forced to leave their centuries-ancestral land by the greater forces of history, another family in another part of the world, the Mikes, were caught up in a similar historical tide.
Romania fell under Communist rule in 1947 and one night in 1949, all the noble families in the country were evicted from their homes and rounded up. When his mother Countess Katalin Mikes left the castle Gregor now sits in – walking over the creaking shards of glass of the broken front door – she was only a little girl.
"My great-grandmother was sent to the labour camp while my mother grew up with a landowning family in the neighbouring village who were not immediately kicked out by the Communists. But that eventually happened as well."
In 1960, Katalin moved to Austria, to a town near Graz, where she would be raised by a grandaunt. It was at Graz that years later she would meet Gregor's father Shuvendu Basu Roy Chowdhury.
Tagore and Keyserling
German philosopher Hermann von Keyserling met Rabindranath Tagore in 1911, two years before the poet laureate became an international sensation on winning the Nobel Prize in 1913, and was immediately smitten. Keyserling became not only a friend and collaborator, but spent a large part of his remaining years promoting Tagore's work in the West, including hosting the 'Tagore Week' in the German town of Darmstadt in 1921 during the poet's visit to Germany.
"This Keyserling's son married my mother's cousin and he came to Graz to give a speech at the university. And so my mother went there."
Gregor's father, meanwhile, had broken from the family tradition of studying in the United Kingdom where his father and two brothers had studied, and chose to study mechanical engineering at a technical college in Darmstadt. He later went to a university in Austria on an exchange program and switched over to that university. Aware of the strong connection between Tagore and Keyserling, Shuvendu also ended up at the event where Keyserling's son spoke.
"At the event, somehow they met up and connected. All thanks to Tagore and Keyserling," Gregor laughs, sharing that there is still a photo of Tagore and Keyserling that hangs on the walls of their house.
Two refugees from two parts of the world had come together. "But it must have not been easy. In the end, they were two people from two cultural backgrounds in a country where they both did not grow up," says Gregor.
Building a future on the past
In 1989, Romania was the last of the Warsaw Pact countries to experience a revolution and collapse of a Communist government, preceding the eventual fall of the Soviet Union. Democracy had returned after 42 years and the new government introduced restitution laws in an attempt to privatise properties once again.
"It's one thing to create laws but it's altogether another thing to make it work," says Gregor. "We went through many years of lawsuits before we managed to get back some part of the property."
Gregor was still at university when his mother won her first lawsuit in 1998. After his father's passing, he decided to go down to Romania to renovate a little house in the property so the family had a place to stay when they went there. The property was in a very bad state and had not been renovated in 50 years. Mikes Castle at one point had been used as a sanatorium by the Communist regime.
"Somehow I ended up staying here and more than 20 years later, I'm still here," Gregor says. Over the years, Gregor became a part of the now thriving rural tourism that slowly developed in Transylvania, boosted by Romania's entry into the European Union. Zabola Estate now employs 60 people and offers 20 rooms (soon to become 30) to visitors for rent.
In 2021, he became a majority shareholder in Secuiana, a textile manufacturer that employs around 700 workers. Ironically, his mother's family in Transylvania had once been in the textile business before World War II.
Meanwhile, although his planned exhibition got stalled because of the pandemic, he is still seriously exploring the possibility of building a more permanent relationship with Bangladesh by establishing a business connection.
"Now that I've gotten into the textile business, it's a constant topic," says Gregor. "We are in a country which is one of the cheaper production places within the European Union, which is why we can still produce. But I think in the long term, labour force costs will also rise here. The gap between Eastern Europe and Western Europe is narrowing pretty fast," he adds.
"Since I have this family relation, my office always says, let's do something in Bangladesh."
An intriguing aspect of Gregor appears to be this desire to not just connect to his roots, but then build on that connection for the future through entrepreneurial initiative.
"It is natural for people to want to know about their roots. But I was also interested in doing things on my own and finding places that are full of opportunities and possibilities. Romania at the time was full of possibilities," he says.
For Gregor, it is not just about making money, but about trying new things. It is about the surrounding, society and community.
"And so when I went to Bangladesh, my idea was, why not start something here? I haven't yet, but there is still time," says Gregor, who even considered starting a guest house in Ulpur mirroring his efforts in Transylvania, before he realised "tourism is not that simple here."
