Mira Bai

My parents and I emigrated from India in 1981. My father’s parents were both East Indian, but on my mother’s side her grandfather was an Englishmen. We came to the U.S because my mother’s family lives here and they sponsored us, another reason was the opportunity to better our lives here in the U.S., specifically education would be better. My father received this decoration piece as a going away gift from his co-workers in India, where he was employed at for many years. My mother was a high school teacher at a Catholic school.

The depiction of this image not as significant to my father as whom and why it was given. Mira Bai was a beautiful teenage widow who chose not to remarry after her husband’s death, and became a sort of a monk. To the Hindu people, she became a connection to the god Hari Krishna. Mira Bai also wrote poetry and sang at the Krishna temples.