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The death last August of thesculptor, Sankho Chaudhuri, hasbrought to an end the saga of eight

siblings closely knit to one another. Theannals of this octet of brothers and sistersand of the family they belonged to – aswell as of similarly situated families –occupy a space in India’s 20th centuryeconomic and social history. Viewsmay differ on the relative significanceof their particular contributions; the

remarkable nature of the saga is notdiminished thereby.

Narendra Narayan Chaudhuri, born in1873, was a landowner with his roots inthe village Bharenga in the district of Pabnain what is now Bangladesh. He was scionof the varendra sect of brahmins. Accord-ing to one version, the Maithili brahmins,once they crossed from Bihar settled inthe upper reaches of the Indo-Gangeticvalley in Bengal, took to the sobriquetvarendra. Whatever their other attributes,the varendra brahmins were reputed for a

The Chaudhuris of BharengaThe death of the eminent sculptor, Sankho Chaudhuri, last August,has brought an end in some ways to the saga of the Chaudhurisiblings. Scions of a brahmin landowning family in Bharenga, nowin Bangladesh, the Chaudhuris were characterised by a restless,freewheeling, ever inquisitive spirit. Sachin Chaudhuri, the eldestamong them became the founding editor of the Economic Weekly,that later became the EPW. As the youngest of his siblings, SankhoChaudhuri was drawn to the creative arts, never hesitating toexperiment with new forms and mediums of expression.

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razor-sharp intellect. Perhaps because ofthe numerical smallness of the sect, theirsense of close kinship was also widelytalked about.

The brand of feudalism flourishing underthe colonial sky in Bengal, otherwise knownas the Permanent Settlement, was, by theend of the 19th century, about to lose bothits use- as well as exchange-value. Landin the control of intermediaries was bothshrinking in size and getting increasinglyfragmented. The heraldic pageantry asso-ciated with landlordism however refusedto wither away despite the lack of funds.The Chaudhuris were no exception; theostentation they practised also stemmed,some suggest, from a generosity of theheart which was the particular by-productof a riverine culture. Narendra Narayanhad studied in Calcutta’s PresidencyCollege and had a degree in law. He couldnot quite make ends meet with rentierincome alone. To augment earnings, hedecided to enrol as a lawyer. He crossedthe Padma – the principal flow of theGanges after its bifurcation on enteringBengal –, set up an establishment at Dacca,and joined the bar there. Both he and hiswife, Kiranmoyee, were extraordinarilyradical specimens for their times. Theirradicalism was as much sparked by whatis described as the 19th century Bengalirenaissance as by the generally liberatinginfluence of the Brahmo movement. Butperhaps there was a bit more too in it.Their adherence to the rituals of thevarendra brahmins notwithstanding, thecouple imbibed the ethos of Enlighten-ment the British-administered new educa-tional system and the Brahmo cult jointlyengendered. Feudalism, they were fullyaware, was a dying culture and wasswiftly being supplanted by the emergingideology of nationalism. They were readyto greet the change. Their ardour forliterature, music and the arts went handin hand with their interest in classicalSanskrit. Having sailed through MichaelMadhusudan Dutt and Bankim ChandraChatterjee, they soon discoveredRabindranath Tagore.

Between January 1904 and February1916, Narendra Narayan and Kiranmoyeebegot eight children, four sons andfour daughters. The sequence was asfollows: Sachindra Narayan (son), Shanti(daughter), Dharitri (daughter), Shakuntala(daughter), Deb Narayan (son), HitendraNarayan (son), Swapnamoyee (daughter),and, finally, Nara Narayan, better knownas Sankho (son). It was a large family,accommodation in the rented house atDacca was always under a squeeze. There

was, besides, a constant movement offriends and cousins, some of whom choseto stay on for long periods. None of theseset a problem for the Chaudhuri siblings;share-and-share-alike was the unspokenbut well understood family motto. Duringschool vacations and at festival times,the family would visit Bharenga; thelink with the ancestral village and theresponsibilities going with landlordshipcontinued to be considered as basicpriorities. Of equal concern was arrangingappropriate education for the children.They were sent to good schools in the city.For the daughters, ‘ustads’ would comehome to provide vocal training. NarendraNarayan was well read in Bengali, Sanskrit,Persian and English literature. KiranmoyeeDevi was 13 years younger than herhusband. She nonetheless had a mind ofher own, coming as she did from a radical-minded, equally sophisticated family. (Oneof her nephews, Amiya Chakravarty, wasa major Bengali poet in the post-Tagoreanphase; he was also, for long years, personalsecretary to Rabindranath Tagore; later inlife, he taught in a number of Americanuniversities.)

The Chaudhuri Household

Love for scholarly and artistic activitieswas synonymous with the Chaudhurihousehold, which was accompanied by afierce regard for free thinking. This pre-dilection for freewheeling thoughts andacts conceivably had something to do withthe family’s financial circumstances. Earn-ings from landed property were dimini-shing and subject to the climatic cycle ofgood or bad harvest. Income from lawpractice – particularly for one who cameto the profession somewhat late – wasequally chancy. For one or two months,there would be a rush of cases, leading towindfall income for Narendra Narayan;this would however be followed by a longstretch of lean months, with income redu-ced to a driblet. The family learnt quicklyto cope with the tidal idiosyncrasies offortune. The parents and the children wouldspend lavishly – often extravagantly – andenjoy a measure of good life when familyincome soared. Once a financial reversetook place, they adjusted to the situation.Such vicissitudes in family fortunestaught the children to be at home withthe mystique of risk and uncertainty; theytook delight in exploring the outer hori-zons of challenges and adventures. Themanner they went about every now andthen could, according to some socialmores, be considered as bordering on

irresponsible behaviour; kind-heartedones would have chosen to describe theescapades as youthly pranks.

The eldest of the children, SachindraNarayan, later famous as Sachin Chaudhuri,possessed an exceptionally agile mind. Heprovided evidence very early of an un-canny ability to explore, simultaneously,different frontiers of knowledge. He lovedto wander along the gorgeous corridors ofSanskrit kavya, he was thoroughly ac-quainted with the trends in Bengali litera-ture and could recite from memory Tagore’spoetry and prose for hours on end. Hecould hold a discourse on eastern philo-sophy and, in the same breath, offer weightycomments on western political thought. Hecould as easily wade into the abstruserecesses of economic theory. If the testi-mony of his classmate, A K Dasgupta, isto be accorded due respect, SachinChaudhuri was by far the most brilliantstudent to walk the lawns of the Universityof Dacca in the first decade of its existence.What was breathtaking though was histotal disinterest in the conventionalcriteria of academic excellence. MahatmaGandhi’s non-cooperation movement wasat its peak. Sachin Chaudhuri registeredhimself as a Congress volunteer andbegan to don khadi, the habit stuck withhim till the last day of his life. He caredlittle for syllabi and examinations. Theuniversity result was therefore disappoint-ing. That did not worry Sachin Chaudhurithe least. For a while, he disappeared fromthe scene, some said to seek the innermeaning of life in the repose of theHimalayas. He resurfaced in Calcutta aftersome months, was the talk of the town asa top order unemployed intellectual, andmanaged to eke a living from privatetuitions.

Other things were meanwhile happeningin the family. The second child and theeldest daughter, Shanti, got married intoan affluent varendra family settled in Gayain neighbourly Bihar. The rest of her lifewas remarkably tranquil; she raised a happyfamily and lived what, in the context ofthe Chaudhuris, was an “ordinary” exist-ence. The third child was another daugh-ter, Dharitri, often addressed as Kamala.She was married to the son of a familyfriend who too hailed from Bharenga, acivil servant rising to the rank of a districtmagistrate. The groom was an income taxofficer, and was a powerful writer of bothprose and poetry in Bengali. He was closelyassociated with the post-Tagore literarystirrings in Calcutta, finding expression atthe time in the literary magazine Kallolpublished from Calcutta and Pragati

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published from Dacca. A man of dazzlingcharm, he was nature’s wayward offspring,temperamentally unstable. The bouts ofwild encounters he loved to entanglehimself often led to devastating sequels.He soon lost his job and, after a while, sethimself up as an income tax lawyer, butwas never quite out of financial strains.Dharitri, the long suffering wife, copedstoically with the consequences of hiscapers. She bore these not only with equa-nimity, but also with some pride. A blendof genius and eccentricity, after all, ranin her husband’s family; Ritwik Ghatak,the film director, was her husband’syounger brother. Dharitri herself had aremarkable writing talent and had pub-lished some prose and poetry in early life.She sacrificed her literary aspirations tolook after the husband and children.Mahashweta Devi, the writer, is her eldestdaughter.

The fourth child and third daughter ofNarendra Narayan and Kiranmoyee,Shakuntala, fell for the charisma of LeelaNag (later Roy), the revolutionary leader,while still in high school. Leela Roy, thefirst woman to pass out of the Universityof Dacca, was closely associated withthe underground terrorist activities con-stituting a counter-force to MahatmaGandhi’s creed of non-violence. She was,at the same time, one of the pioneers ofthe women’s liberation movement in thecountry. She presided over the secretpolitical outfit, Srisangha, and establisheda string of educational and social insti-tutions for the spread of women’s welfare.Shakuntala joined Leela Roy’s organisationand for a number of years played a majorrole in it. When Leela Nag was impris-oned, Shakuntala took charge and edited,with great competence, the literary-cum-political journal Jayashri. Accidents,though, are accidents. A young IndianCivil Service officer came to interrogateher. They fell in love and got married.That ended effectively Shakuntala’spolitical career. She passed into oblivionand stayed there for the rest of her life.Whether she was content with thedénouement is a question nobody is aroundto answer.

Bombay Talkies

The fifth child and second son, DebNarayan – Debu – stood first in the firstclass in physics in both his honours andmaster’s degree examinations, and wasSatyendra Nath Bose’s special pet in theUniversity of Dacca. To Bose’s greatdisappointment, Deb Narayan, partly

taking into account the financial difficul-ties the family was passing through, joineda multinational concern which offered himan attractive pay package. He was postedin Bombay, where the sixth of the siblings,the third brother, Hitendra Narayan – Hitenor Hitu – had already turned up. In someways, Hiten was the most unusual amongstthe siblings. Although a bit short in stature,he was exceedingly good looking, withdreamy eyes, a soft voice and captivatinglyimpeccable manners. The pursuit of rou-tine academic studies was not his cup oftea. In his early youth in Dacca, he workedas an earnest cadre, with the Congress aswell as with a number of terrorist groups,participating in programmes for boycott-ing foreign goods and acting as courier,sworn to secrecy for terrorist groups. Givenhis innate charms, he was also a mostsuccessful fund-raiser for different causes.The examination season and the narrowconfines of Dacca however rendered himrestless. He left home and, after strayadventures en route, ended up in Bombay.He made his way into the households ofboth important Congress leaders in the cityand Gujarati and Marathi business tycoons.He was Sarojini Naidu’s particularfavourite; every time she was in Bombay,she would seek him out, listen to his pattersand dreams and introduce him to peoplewho mattered. In due course – never mindhow – Hiten found himself enmeshed inthe Bombay film industry. Whether he firstbefriended Devika Rani who introducedhim to her husband, Himansu Rai, orwhether it was the other way round is ahistory yet to be unravelled. At this timeBombay Talkies was producing suchhits as Achhut Kanya, Kankan andBandhan; Hiten was very much a part ofthe scene. A fact rarely in the knowledgeof outsiders, a callow youth from Punjab,arriving in the tinsel world of Bombay insearch of fortune, is said to have got hisfirst chance in films through the courtesyof Hiten Chaudhury; the young man,Yusuf Khan, later came to be known asDilip Kumar.

In his heydays, Hiten struck it rich fromhis involvement in film production. Butthe family trait refused to disappear, hewould fall victim to all sob stories,whether likely or unlikely, and generouslygive away his money. He was a confidantto stars and starlets in distress, and,alternately, their heart-throb. WhenSadhona Bose was an alcoholic wreck,and about almost everybody had desertedher, the ever-loyal Hiten Chaudhurywould go over, console her and humourher wild tantrums.

It was the mid-1930s, Sachin Chaudhurialighted in Bombay as a full-fledgedvagabond. He would billet sometimes withDebu and sometimes with Hitu. His pref-erence was to move into Debu’s apart-ment, for Hitu’s unconventional ways oflife did not always receive the seniorbrother’s approval and this despite hisprofessed – and otherwise frequentlydemonstrated – liberalism. The feudalmindset apparently dies hard. That apart,Debu had got married and had a stablehousehold. There was a problem though,Debu’s wife, Hena, had her own ideas howa bourgeois household should be run. Amost affectionate and understandingwoman, she was unstintingly tireless intaking care of the welfare of the seniorbrother-in-law, who was de facto head ofthe household and addressed by the youngerones, in true feudal tradition, as ‘apni’ andnot by the more familiar ‘tumi’. Even so,Sachin Chaudhuri’s rampant bohemianismraised her hackles; while polite and def-erential, she could be no less outspoken.A crisis seemed to brew. The two youngerbrothers conferred among themselves andthought it wise to hunt for an apartmentwhere the senior brother could lead a lifeof his own. They located a third-floorapartment in a building – Churchill Cham-bers – immediately to the rear of the TajMahal Hotel: Sachin Chaudhuri moved in,and, for the next quarter of a century,reigned there in splendour befitting agrandee.

In fact this is where the strength of thefamily bond revealed itself. The parentshad moved from Dacca to Calcutta, thesiblings had gone their different ways. Thesenior brother might be earning little ornothing, he was still the senior brother.Besides, about everybody acknowledgedthe quality of his mind and the depth ofhis learning. Whatever the strains anddifficulties, the junior brothers in Bombayconsidered it their duty to look after SachinChaudhuri who however was apparentlynot particularly concerned about the pre-dicament he was the cause of. Withinmonths of his arrival in Bombay, he hadestablished a wide circle of friends indifferent circles: politicians, artists,writers, journalists, businessmen, societyladies. A natural conversationalist andraconteur, witty, sharp enough to catch thenuances of political and social develop-ments, equipped with a sense of sarcasmwhich did not bite though, and with araucous open-hearted laughter that wouldensnare into friendship even those whoarrived in a combative mood, he wasconstantly in great demand.

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Once ensconced in the Churchill Cham-bers flat, his conquest of Bombay wascomplete. He had no or little income, butso what. He would occasionally earntwenty-five or fifty rupee bits by writingnotes on economic issues for this or thatnewspaper, or a film review for a cinemamagazine, or a commentary on share markettwists and turns in a financial journal.Gossip had it that he would even contributewisdom-laden advice very now and thenfor rags carrying racing tips. The uncertainstate of his financial affairs did not preventhim from being close to Yusuf Meherally,Ram Manohar Lohia, Asoka Mehta,Achyut Patwardhan, or, for that matter,Harindra Nath Chattopadhyay, ShantiSadiq Ali and Aruna Asaf Ali. At somestage in the early 1940s, his friendA K Dasgupta introduced Sachin toD Ghosh, the economist from Cambridge,who was then reader in the Bombay Schoolof Economics and Sociology. Ghosh ar-ranged for him a research scholarshipfetching a monthly stipend of perhaps onehundred rupees. Sachin had to register asa PhD student at the university. But thatwas end of the story; the research did notprogress. After a while, both Ghose andChaudhuri stopped talking about it. Theynonetheless remained great friends.

Sachin obviously was hugely enjoyinghimself. For a while, he was, maybe at thesuggestion of Hiten, made general mangerof the Bombay Talkies. This involvedbidding temporary adieu to khadi appareland donning stylish double-breasted suitsand natty ties imported from Oxford Street.That interlude too, as was only to beexpected, of a brief duration. Toward theclosing years of the second world war,Sachin had some windfall earnings fromwriting scripts for BBC war newsreels forthe south-east Asia region. Anyway, theChurchill Chambers apartment alwaysoverflowed with guests. Hiren Mukherjee,in Bombay to attend the first Congress ofthe Communist Party of India in 1943, hadsuch a rollicking time as Sachin’s guestduring that week that he would ever fondlyremember it.

Some months following independence,Hiten was on an non-official trade delega-tion touring Europe and the United Statesto explore prospects of developing com-mercial relations with parties in the twocontinents. The delegation was led by aprofessional economist of considerablestanding who edited an economic periodi-cal from New Delhi owned by a businessgroup. For nearly three months Hitensuffered the company of this gentleman,whom he found to be both opinionated and

shallow. On his return home, he keptpestering his senior brother: if that econo-mist from New Delhi, whose quality ofthinking was so ordinary, could still enjoya reputation and edit a successful eco-nomic journal, why could not his vastlymore learned and far more sophisticatedbrother, Sachin Chaudhuri, do so too?Finances should not be a worry, he, Hiten,would talk to his business associates andarrange the money. The younger brother’spersistence bore fruit; Sachin Chaudhuricapitulated. That was how the EconomicWeekly was born on January 1, 1949,sponsored by a private limited companyin which a business firm, with interests incotton and groundnut marketing, was thesleeping, but major, partner.

A Weekly Is Born

His friends in the academic, political andjournalist friends cheered Sachin along;D P Mukherji, the doyen of India’s socialscientists, wrote the first editorial for theinaugural issue, ‘Light without Heat’; anexhilarating time set in for young scholarsall over the country, who were now ableto have an outlet for their ideas and views,however inchoate or immature. There wasno pecking order in the Economic Weekly’spuny little office on Dalal Street or in theChurchill Chambers flat. It was an openhouse in all seasons. Sachin himself wasa devout Nehruvite. But as far as hiscontributors were concerned, their ideo-logy did not matter the least, what matteredwas “good copy”, brightly written andintelligently argued.

Back to the events taking shape with theother siblings. The fourth sister,Swapnamoyee – nicknamed Kuchi – wassent to Santiniketan along with her young-est brother, Sankho. While there, sheshowed great promise in music, dance andpainting. Ramkinkar Baij, legend says, fellfor her charms. It is difficult to gaugewhether the infatuation was mutual.Quickly realising that it could not but bean impractical conjunction, Swapnamoyeewithdrew from Santiniketan and opted fora tranquil domestic existence in Calcutta.The person she got married to was fromthe town of Rangpur in northern Bengal.The Communist Party, during its begin-nings, had set up its first cell in the townin the house owned by Swapnamoyee’sin-laws. That is a different story.

Sankho stayed on in Santiniketan. Hispassion for fine arts was discernible evenwhen the family was still in Dacca:Narendra Narayan, the great liberal, al-lowed his youngest son to paint the four

walls and the ceiling of his lawyer’s cham-ber in the house with replicas from theAjanta murals. Sankho found a naturalabode in Santiniketan. Restlessness, thefamily trademark, however kept implant-ing its imprimatur on him. Part-dilettante,part-rebel, he underwent a term of im-prisonment during the uprising in August1942, returned to Santiniketan to resumepainting, equally dividing his time betweenoils and watercolour. But Ramkinkar’smagnet proved irresistible, Sankho soonmigrated all the way to sculpture. In thatera, teachers and students from all over thecountry congregated in Santiniketan.Nandita and Krishna Kripalani becameclose family friends. There were otherstoo, such as Jaya Appasamy, NirmalaPatwardhan, Sabita Amin, Usha Bhagatand of course Indira Nehru, later Gandhi.These bonds endured. The Tagorean ethos,stressing the indivisibility of the home andthe world, was for Sankho Chaudhuri notjust the cliché of a credo; it was somethinghe fiercely believed in. Ira – daughter ofJehangir Vakil, whom Tagore persuadedto come over to Santiniketan to lecture onEnglish literature – was a determinedwoman. She chose him as her husband and,over the next 70 years, managed with greatcompetence to cajole Sankho’s explosivebrilliance into accepting a structure ofdiscipline. (An aside. When Sankho broketo the family the news of his engagementand the date of wedding was announced,Sachin Chaudhuri, the unemployed andseemingly unemployable genius of asenior brother roaming the by-lanes ofBombay, borrowed money from amysterious source and bought the mostexpensive Benarasi sari for the bride.)

Sankho travelled from Santiniketan toEurope, spending long months in France,some more time in England, absorbing thenuances of forms and ideas from foreignsculptors, but never deviating from thelegacy of Ajanta, Ellora, Khajuraho andKonarak. His fascination for the adivasimode of living and art forms, which heconsidered to be the purest of the pureIndian inheritance, was equally un-wavering. His works began to be widelytalked about; that is to say, he became acelebrity. The department of fine arts atthe M S University of Baroda grew, underhis guidance, into a hub of creativity, whereexperiments proceeded with media andmaterial – Sankho spent, in all, 15 yearsat Baroda. All of a sudden, somebody orsomething rubbed him in the wrong, thefederal ire was rekindled, he chucked hisprofessorial slot and arrived in New Delhito start a new chapter in life. He had

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meanwhile travelled far, from terracotta tobronze, from bronze to cast and wroughtiron, to alloys of diverse metals, to stonechips and mortars, and finally, romancewith the Makarana quarries. It was hardgoing initially, but, as the years rolled by,he proved his point: a creative artist – anycreative artist – must be given by societythe dignity he deserves. Society, meeklyand humbly, accepted his point – at leastup to a point.

It was undoubtedly Sachin Chaudhuri,the revered elder brother and formertramp, now editor of the Economic Weekly,around whom however the family priderevolved. Once it became public know-ledge that Jawaharlal Nehru had passedinstructions that the fresh issue of the journalbe placed on his table each week, theculture proliferated. The finance ministerat the time, Chintamani Deshmukh, wasequally attentive to Sachin’s editorialruminations, including the admonitions headministered. Sachin was incorrigiblyindependent-minded, partly because ofthe family tradition and also because hesimply did not care whose amour proprehe wounded. There was one occasionwhen a union government directive, hewas convinced, had compromised thedignity of the Reserve Bank of India; if theincumbent governor of the RBI possessedany sense of self-respect, he, Sachinthundered, should immediately resign.The governor did resign the followingmorning.

Official advertisements for the journalbegan to creep in. The business worldthough was still in an uncertain frame oftime. The two younger brothers did theirbit to canvass for advertisements. Themaverick nature of the editorial commentsthe journal printed perhaps intimidated theprivate sector bosses. That constituted noproblem for Sachin; he got intense satis-faction in describing his journal as a “shoe-string” operation, the Economic Weeklywas his personal cottage industry, otherscould keep their hands off it. BothKiranmoyee Devi and Narendra Narayanpassed away in the 1950s, they died withthe satisfaction that their hunch was right,their first offspring did indeed possess ariveting, intellectually superior personal-ity and was going places.

The scholarly crowd swarmed roundSachin. The juxtaposition of commentarieson current political and economic eventswith learned academic articles, incorpo-rating mathematical formulae and formi-dable-looking diagrams, made the journala cause célébre. Economists and othersocial scientists from distant shores

considered it a fabulous thing and beganto write for it. In the colonial climate inwhich post-colonial India thrived, that facthelped. The Economic Weekly scaled togreater heights of fame. Visiting scholars,such as Joan Robinson, Michal Kalecki,Nicky Kaldor, Oskar Lange and JohnGalbraith, would call on him and sign upas his contributors. P C Mahalanobis toowould drop in whenever in Bombay.Sachin Chaudhuri, the spell-bindingconversationalist, would enthral them.He, the confirmed bachelor, became thenatural target of a bevy of pretty, vivaciousscholars of the female species fromAmerican academic institutions; hetreated them to excellent cuisine and sentthem home.

All this was too good to last. For 16 longyears, the business group who helped HitenChaudhury to keep the Weekly afloathad remained quiet. With their prosaicminds, they nonetheless could not quiteunderstand the worth of celebrity statusif it did not bring in any monetaryreturns. They were polite people andmaintained their distance from the affairsof the Weekly. However, even the wormturns; they made a mild suggestion forrevamping the financial management ofthe journal. That was enough to hurtChaudhuri’s pride in suzerain rights. Heclosed down the journal, abruptly, inJanuary 1965.

Perhaps the wanderer in him preferredthat kind of sudden disappearance. TheEconomic Weekly was his major achieve-ment; in life in its own manner; it enrichedthe nation too. But the concept of fixitywas to Sachin Chaudhuri – and generallyto the Chaudhuris – an alien proposition.In any event, because of the irregularitiesbachelor living is often responsible for, hehad developed a cardiac problem and goteasily tired. Friends and admirers wouldnot however let things reach this denoue-ment. They gathered the necessary fundsto set up the Sameeksha Trust. Thus beganthe new incarnation of the journal, theEconomic and Political Weekly. SachinChaudhuri went along with the rituals ofa fresh beginning. He was not terriblyinterested though. He was gone within sixmonths.

Other things had been happening to thefamily since the 1950s. Debu, bitten latein life by the bug of escapades which wasthe outstanding distinguishing attribute ofthe family, chucked his job with themultinational company and went back toCalcutta to start a business venture. Itwas at first a distributional network forelectric and electronic goods; subsequently

he branched out to start a televisionassembling unit. But he too was a sophis-ticate, a good and proper Chaudhuri sibling.He presided over an informal ‘adda’ wherethe city’s more interesting specimens wouldforegather: poets, politicians, painters,musicians, doctors, lawyers, philo-sophers, film stars, do-gooders, crooks andcertified mad men; the flavour wasquintessentially Chaudhuri-esque.

Following Sachin’s death, however, theyeast that bound the family together seemedto have lost some of its quality. The nextgeneration had arrived on the scene. Theywere conscious of the legacy left behindby the senior uncle and would also baskin the reflected glory of the increasingrecognition the junior uncle Sankho’sworks were being accorded at home andabroad. Even so, with the patriarch gone,it was a different ambience. HitenChaudhury’s various magnanimitiesproved his undoing. Most of his past savingshad been dissipated by the 1960s. Hissubsequent business ventures failed oneafter another; all that he was left withwas the imposing bungalow at Pali Hills.While gradually withdrawing into hisshell, he still considered it his duty totake on the responsibility of managingthe Sameeksha Trust after the seniorbrother’s death. Since he was overlyconscious of his non-academic background,it somewhat cramped his style. KrishnaRaj, were he around, would have vouch-safed for the generosity he received fromHiten, his managing trustee. Hiten too, ifhe were still alive, would have acknow-ledged the quiet firmness and abidingimagination with which Krishna Rajcarried forward what he considered thenearly holy inheritance Sachin Chaudhurihad left behind for him.

The other siblings survived the seniorbrother by nearly two decades. They thenbegan to depart, in quick succession, oneafter another. Sankho Chaudhuri, theyoungest, was also the longest living. Withhis departure, the saga of the Chaudhurisiblings has now come to a surcease.

Their parents were born in the Victorianage; they themselves grew up amid themany exciting phases of the freedommovement, some of them were activeparticipants in it, they contributed, intheir own manner, to shape the contoursof post-independent India. In the broadgrey canvas on which the nation’s historyis or will be charted, the spasmodic eventswhich were the contributions of a parti-cular family within a particular time frameperhaps add up to nothing. Or, whoknows, perhaps it is otherwise. EPW