Category: Memoirs
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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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Jr 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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The Father, the Son and the **** Ghost
As evening approached, I walked out into the balcony of my son’s rented residence in suburban Philadelphia. It is located on the eleventh floor of an imposing apartment building and overlooks a densely wooded park. The sun was setting beyond the trees and there were three churches in the distance which raised their heads above the tall trees. The sky was wondrously crimson, though there was a hint of approaching darkness borne on the wings of serene peacefulness.
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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 make his students fall into a trance.
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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 she, …
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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 (he did his PhD work at the University of Rochester). He warily avoided self-advertisement though, and refrained from publishing his research output in academic journals, possibly on account of the unreachable standards he had set for himself.
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Of Prescriptions, Encryptions and the Pair of Pimps
Medical practitioners, divide up into two clearly defined and mutually exclusive categories. Those who write prescriptions and those who write encryptions (or cryptographs, to use old fashioned terminology). Depending on how critical the nature of the illness is, one has to decide which category of doctor needs to be visited. Under normal circumstances, …