Kolkata: To be Young was Paradise

This book of the author’s reminiscences of his life and times in Kolkata in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s is in effect a political an socio-cultural history of post-World War II and post-partition India with special references to Kolkata and West Bengal. This is a scholarly tome liberally laced with quotations from the epics, ancient religious texts and the scriptures. It bids fair to stimulate the reader’s interest by virtue of its deep studies and gripping accounts of a wide range of subjects such as tracing the origin of Kolkata city to its dim past, the social controversy over the traditional differences between the people of east and West Bengal (‘Bangal’ and Ghati’), portrayals of contemporary Kolkata’s cultural, literary and academic scenario and the prevailing coffee house culture, the INA saga, the roles of the sub-continent’s historical figures like Mahatma Gandgi,Qaide-Azam Jinnah, netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjeer and M.N. Roy, the Great Calcutta Killing of August 1946, the communal conflagration in Noakhali, the travails of India’s partition in Noakhali, the travails of India’s Partition, Gandhiji’s assassination, the growth of the communist movement and the controversial role of Prof. Maurice Dobb of Cambridge university, who visited India a few years after our independence and provided guidance to the local communist movement.