As India Builds (Part 2)

My family is old Calcutta. We had rice paddy fields that greened as monsoon washed over them. Heavy-limbed mango orchards bearing the juiciest and most fragrant varietals. Homesteads. A home nestled in my grandfather’s legendary rose garden in the now traumatized Bengal-Bihar border. Our relatives’ houses dotted Calcutta. These old houses in the alleys of Pathuriaghata and Shyampukur were sprawling places, bearing the stories of Calcutta’s now receding past.

In the halls of the Ghosh family of Pathuriaghata, the All Bengal Music Conference was founded in 1937, and Indian classical music, then a nascent art form, was nurtured under the patronage of Bhupendranath Ghosh. At the time, the mid-nineteen hundreds, only Baiji’s (courtesans) sang publicly. >>>