Category: Family Histories

Category: Family Histories

An Iconoclast, a trailblazer, my mother Padma

An Iconoclast, a trailblazer, my mother Padma

She is an iconoclast, a trailblazer and a lot of things put together. She is also my mother. Fifty years ...
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Love, Loss and Objects from the Past

Love, Loss and Objects from the Past

Smile - and the world smiles with you. Grieve - and you grieve alone. These had been the words I had ...
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My life with Baba

My life with Baba

I have always been proud to be my Baba’s daughter. I do not have his  outstanding intellect or his ability ...
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The Tragedy of the Roy Choudhurys

The Tragedy of the Roy Choudhurys

In 1946, a year before the Partition and Independence of India, I was a young seven year old girl living ...
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Bijoya: Sadness and Longing

Bijoya: Sadness and Longing

“I will return here once more, by the bank of Dhansiri, to this Bengal”  Jibananda Das          ...
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A Sweet Little Dolly

A Sweet Little Dolly

She was born in Calcutta Medical College on November 15 1933, past midnight, the sixth child of Hemlata Basu. Her ...
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Looking for my Ancient Religion in Uzbekistan

Looking for my Ancient Religion in Uzbekistan

Still, I was in search of something more, something concrete, something material. Last October, I walked on the trail of ...
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The Couple Who Built Sreenibas

The Couple Who Built Sreenibas

Sreenibas, the house on Morabadi Hills in Ranchi,  was built by my parents-in law, Dr. Woopendra Chowdhry and Sreemati Asoka ...
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The Assamese Connection:  Bishnupriya, Gunabhiram and Swarnalata

The Assamese Connection: Bishnupriya, Gunabhiram and Swarnalata

 I was around 9 or 10 when I first learnt that my mother’s thakurma (paternal grandmother) hailed from Assam, not ...
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Daddy: A Man of Many Moods

Daddy: A Man of Many Moods

I wasn’t the midnight’s child, arriving three weeks later in 1947 when India was in the cusp of transition; many ...
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