Love, Life and Connected Pasts
It’s August 2010 and I’m in a village called Domkhar Barma half way up the Domkhar Valley, western Ladakh. The mountain river coming from the snowmelt higher up the valley divides the village with a few houses on the far … Read the rest
My earliest memory of Dashami (the last day of the Durga Puja festivities) is sitting on the terrace under the bright sun, with an umbrella propped up over our heads, Didi (older sister) and I reading books. Correction: we … Read the rest
“I will return here once more, by the bank of Dhansiri, to this Bengal” Jibananda Das
Political spaces may be partitioned, but human emotions, joy, sadness, hope and aspirations, the nostalgic mind, love – can these be split asunder?… Read the rest
When I joined Bird & Co. in 1960, there were 8 jute mills under its control. One of the mills, called Lawrence Jute Mill, stood on the banks of river Hooghly near Chengail in the district of Howrah. It had … Read the rest
She was born in Calcutta Medical College on November 15 1933, past midnight, the sixth child of Hemlata Basu. Her birth went through an unusual turn of events though things fell into place at the end.
The story of … Read the rest
Still, I was in search of something more, something concrete, something material.
Last October, I walked on the trail of emperors.
Like most ogle-eyed tourists, I ping-ponged my way through different cities in Uzbekistan: Samarkand, Bokhara, Khiva, Nukus, Urgench, Margilon, … Read the rest
Just after the Sino-Indian War of 1962, about 3,000 Chinese-Indians were interned in a disused World War II POW camp in Deoli, Rajasthan, marking the beginning of a painful five-year-long internment for some without resolution. At a time of India’s … Read the rest
Sreenibas, the house on Morabadi Hills in Ranchi, was built by my parents-in law, Dr. Woopendra Chowdhry and Sreemati Asoka Devi Chaudhurani.
My father-in-law belonged to the village Bhowanipur in the Jagannathpur district of Sylhet, a province now in Bangladesh. … Read the rest
I was around 9 or 10 when I first learnt that my mother’s thakurma (paternal grandmother) hailed from Assam, not Bengal as I had assumed, and that she shared a name with my mother’s maternal grandmother – Swarnalata. That information … Read the rest
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