Reflections

In today’s peripatetic existence, most people will be hard put to pin down what they consider their home. Take me, for instance. We were brought up in the residential quarters provided by my father’s employers, the Calcutta Port Commissioners, today the Kolkata Port Trust, or maybe the Shyamaprasad Mukherjee Port Trust or whatever. My father’s parental home was scattered to the winds by the time I became aware of such matters and while we loved going to my maternal grandparents in a village near Krishnanagar, it was not “Home”. For us, home was B/6 Nimak Mahal Road and then 12 Portland Park and finally my parent’s apartment in Parnasree. Some of my friends who lived in Nimal Mahal with us used to depart every winter to their “homes” in Lucknow and Delhi and elsewhere, but for us, our parents’ residence was our home. Later when I got married I have lived in a succession of places: Budge Budge, Baishnabnagar in Malda, The Lake Gardens’ Government Quarters and then successively in Pokha...