Prof. Prodyut Das 2

 Eye witness & Hearsay 2 My Father’s school My father went to a four anna school. I use the term evocatively; I do not really know how much my grandfather paid for my father’s school education he had a large family and his pay as a Station Master could not have been too much. I remember paying a monthly subscription of four annas for my membership in the Juvenile section of the local public library in 1955 so perhaps four annas per month in 1931 is not too far out.   The school was founded by a local “Zamindar” a “Bourgeoise” and Merchant Prince who donated land and money to start the school in the 1880’s. Despite politicians who have made a rather comfortable living out of claiming rapacity of the moneyed class the fact was quite opposite. Such benevolence was quite common and India is dotted with such schools by their thousands. The school was naturally enough, named after the benefactor but he, with becoming modesty, added the name of the locality to his own rather ...

  Eye witness and Hearsay1 These are autobiographical notes which I hope to post serially.  Happy Birthday It was my eldest aunt, the garrulous Aunt Kannan who almost “lost” one of her babies in the Maternity ward of what was then the Cambell’s Hospital in Calcutta. What the details were of that oft heard tale I cannot tell because I never really listened. I mention it here only because I think it decided for my father that he was going to have his babies delivered at home. Home delivery in those day could only mean babies and so I, like my sister Puss the year before, were “delivered” at home. Intellectual films in black and white will depict “home delivery” in terms of a cleaned-out cattle shed, cattle ruminating in the mists, wide eyed children up at dawn and the sudden wail of a newborn infant but it was not always like that. “ Bundobast ” is an onomatopoeic Hindustani word which means not just organization but bustling organization and my father, despite his dhoti, ...