Portraits and Memories

It was Dr R K Dasgupta who suggested a new edition of Portraits and Memories by S C Sengupta (Jijnasa, Calcutta 1975). We would have liked Dr Dasgupta to contribute to this volume a memorial piece on the author in the manner in which he had recorded his recollections of some of his teachers and contemporaries. Dr Dasgupta has not been keeping well for some time, and regretting his inability, he advised us to use an earlier piece he had written on S C Sengupta when the latter had been awarded the Sarat Smriti Puraskar in 1984. The piece appears in this volume in lieu of an introduction. In its enlarged second edition, Portraits and Memories contains five new items. The Master as I Saw Him III-on Praphulla Chandra Ghosh-appeared for the first time in a shorter version in a Souvenir publication on the occasion of the Department of English Students Reunion at Presidency college, Calcutta, in 1982.