Category: Memoirs

October 10, 2021

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.
April 18, 2021

Jr April 18, 2021 – The Mona Lisa Man

Morning arrived like every other morning. The usual chores, … Click title to read the story.
December 13, 2020

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…
March 1, 2019

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…
June 27, 2017

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…
June 19, 2017

Gone with the Wind

Like the rest of humanity residing on the wrong side of seventy, I often lament over the good old days when a family physician visited your home. Somewhat in the manner of a dear old friend, he smiled and briefly chatted during visits, and these constituted the best part of the cure. But he prescribed…
June 7, 2017

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…
June 3, 2017

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…
June 2, 2017

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, …
May 18, 2017

Krishnendu Karmakar – Unfinished Story of an Unknown Man

It is doubtful that any story involving a human life is ever complete. And this is true even for the simplest of nursery rhymes. Jack, we know, had sustained a skull fracture after he had fallen down and Jill had tumbled down after him. But we never got to know if Jack’s fracture was treated,…