Book description
André Béteille's memoir, spanning his childhood, his schooldays and his
early years as a sociologist, encompasses many worlds-that of colonial
Chandannagar, where he spent his early years; of Patna and Calcutta,
where he went to Englishmedium as well as Bengali-medium schools; and of
his college days, where he started off as a physicist and then turned to
sociology-a fi eld in which he was to win international renown. There
are unforgettable descriptions of his colonial childhood and his two
grandmothers, one French and the other Bengali; and of momentous events
he lived through such as famine, communal riots and Partition. Equally
compelling are his portraits of family members, his neighbourhood,
school friends, teachers and Calcutta's intellectual stars, among them
Sukhamoy Chakravarty and Amartya Sen. With its lucid and eloquent prose
infused with acute sociological observations and insights into family
relationships, childhood and adolescence, caste, class and community,
this is a book that illumines the evolution of a brilliant teacher and
scholar, even as it deepens our understanding of universal human
dilemmas and desires.
