Category: Memoirs
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A Chance Encounter with Eternity
… One morning, as I was trying miserably to concentrate on my books, I heard sounds that appeared to emerge, not from the direction from which they usually did, but from my immediate neighborhood. A man was singing it seemed in the ground floor flat of the building right next to ours. I peeped out…
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Nisheeth-babu: Small Man in a Large World
There is a proverb in Bengali which, translated, runs, While Emperors and Kings merrily fight, The small fries suffer a dreadful plight! The words conceal deep wisdom, as amply borne out by the treatment life meted out to Nishith-babu. Nisheeth-babu sold books, but he was more of a hawker than a seller.
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The Born Loser
‘I wonder why nobody don’t like me, Or is it a fact that I’m ugly?’ This immortal Belafonte calypso … Click on title to read the article.
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Journal April 18, 2021 – The Mona Lisa Man
Morning arrived like every other morning. The usual chores, … Click title to read the story.
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Utpal Dutt and the Magician: A Tale of Two Performers ©
Utpal Dutt, before he turned into a professional actor commanding pan India fame, was a school teacher. No run of the mill teacher he was of course. Any student exposed to his teaching skills in the early days of South Point High School in Kolkata will probably affirm this. Not unlike a magician, he could…
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Looking Back at the Sixties: Tale Told by an Absolute Nobody
Published by Presidency College Alumni Association in Autumn Annual, Vol. XLVII 2018-19 “True, I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy…” Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 4 Anyone belonging to my generation, when asked to conjure up his version of the Presidency tale, cannot…
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Tryst with a Teacher
Teachers who stick to a syllabus bore me to death. I have always enjoyed being taught by teachers who didn’t mind crossing boundaries and trespassing into other subjects. Arithmetic mingling with geography, history with chemistry, or, for that matter, English literature taking a u-turn into physics. Teachers who lead you that way are eccentric for…
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Of Doctors, Loose Bowels and Françoise Hardy
She howled at me. I wasn’t particularly scared of a howling female. Of course, she was not my wife. A female in the shape of my howling wife never fails to loosen by bowels. But as I said, she was not my wife. “I want you to get that hole sealed up by tomorrow,” howled…
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The Master’s Class
Arup Mallik, who passed away on May 25, 2017, was an economic theorist from Calcutta, a city with an established tradition of producing some of the brightest Indian economists. He had impressed all those who taught him and won coveted prizes in India (he studied in University of Calcutta) and the United States of America…
A KALEIDOSCOPE WORLD 