Category: Memoirs
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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, …
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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,…
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The Man Who Would Be Magician
I have caught this nagging infection that makes me travel backwards in time. Unlike Benjamin Button or Barnaby Fulton, it doesn’t make me any younger mind you. (In case you haven’t heard of Barnaby Fulton, you will be well-advised to watch Monkey Business on YouTube. It was made in 1952, when most of you were…
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Once Upon a Time a Girl: Not to Speak of the Cats and the Skull
Spring, it would appear, is invariably followed by summer and summer in its turn by autumn, and so on and so forth. No wonder therefore that as the spring moonshine girl receded into the past, other seasons invaded. And I grew older. And older. Though not quite as old as I am today. In fact,…
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Spring Moonshine
Instead of proceeding southwards at the crossing of Manoharpukur Road and Rashbehari Avenue and arriving at the now vanished patch of green I once pondered over, if you were to make a right about turn and retrace your steps along Manoharpukur itself, all the way towards its crossing with Lansdowne Road …
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That Patch of Green Behind the Bright Yellow House
As you cross Rashbehari Avenue from North to South, near the corner that never fails to extract a sigh out of me, you part company with the lilting twists and turns of Manoharpukur Road and walk into Lake View Road, which leads you straight on to the Dhakuria Lakes. In the language of mathematics, if…
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Kamala Bastralaya
As you meander down Manohar Pukur Road towards Rashbehari Avenue in Calcutta, you are likely to notice a paint store bearing the Asian Paints logo at the right hand corner of the meeting point of the two streets. I never had any use for the store, but have often wondered in the course of the…
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Prehistoric Memories — Radhakrishnan
But he did exist once upon a time. My classmate of course, a classmate who keeps floating up every now and then in my stream of memories. Among other flotsam I guess. I wonder why. He must have been special.
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Chivalrous Serenades
Come to think of it, a “chivalrous existence”, however appealing it might appear, has deluded me throughout my life. Especially so when it came to my earnest desire to act Sir Knight to damsels in distress. Not that I had ever draped myself in mail chain armour a la Ivanhoe, having decided that the mca’s…
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A Two Penny Opera
His attire, though not extraordinary, was not exactly ordinary either. It consisted of a homemade poncho of sorts running all the way down to an inch or two below his knees as the rest of his legs lay hidden under a lungi, if I remember correctly. It is unlikely that his clothes had ever been…
A KALEIDOSCOPE WORLD 