Very few people outside of my immediate family know that I was nicknamed 'Bapu' after the Father of the Nation, for which I constantly bore a grudge against my father throughout my entire youth and even afterwards until it no longer mattered. My father was a man of the Left, very much a politically oriented man; though, as I realise now, abject poverty and familial obligations had compelled him to withdraw himself from activism. But I'd rather not dwell on that part now. Early youth saw me gradually being drawn into political activism in student and youth fronts where, for no particular reason, I found myself hating the colossus for being 'a Congressi', for not having condemned the hanging of Bhagat Singh "the way he should have." My father never bothered to explain to me why he adored the "half-naked fakir" so much, nor was it cool in those days for the Bengali youngsters to be adoring anybody but Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose for the l...
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