To begin with, he was not called Upendrakishore. Named Kamada Ranjan Ray at birth, he was the youngest of three sons born to Joytara and Kalinath, and later adopted by his father’s childless cousin, Harikishore Ray. Formally declared as Harikishore’s son in 1868, the five-year-old,
"The sea is the same as it has been since before men ever went on it in boats." ― Ernest Hemingway. Since time immemorial, human beings have taken to water to survive, to explore, to travel, to trade, to irrigate, even to do household chores. For
Birla Industrial and Technological Museum Driving past Kolkata’s Birla Industrial and Technological Museum (BITM) on what is Gurusaday Road today, not many would probably wonder about its origins, but for those who do, the name of architect Nundlal Guin ought to be important. This is because
When Rabindranath Tagore visited Russia, he was accompanied by a few from his family. One of them was Saumyendranath, the grandson of his elder brother Dwijendranath Tagore. Saumyendranath Tagore is considered to be one of the pioneers of the communist movement in India and was
Old Calcutta has been the city of many ‘firsts.’ From science and technology to literature and revolution, the old city was witness to several milestones. The year was 1822 when the first Native Medical Institution was established in Calcutta and Dr Madhushudan Goopta, a Bengali
TThe photograph has grown fuzzy with age, but the smiles of the confident young women are hard to ignore. Published in Bengali daily Jugantar on November 6, 1968, the photograph shows a group of 11 Bengali women who had returned to Kolkata from mountaineering training
‘Where do you consider to be your home?’ Amartya Sen was once asked by a BBC journalist. By then Sen had moved from Cambridge, to Harvard, to Trinity and despite living in England for decades, he still held an Indian passport and is an Indian
He was a man who was equally revered by Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi. Even the New York Times announced his death on December 7, 1942. So much was Kedarnath Dasgupta’s (1878-1942) influence on both sides of the Atlantic. He was a ‘godly dreamer’ of
The concluding part of an exclusive two-part account on iconic Bengali revolutionary Bagha Jatin, or Jatindranath Mukhopadhyay, written for Get Bengal by his Paris-based grandson. Since 1908, repressive laws banning all associations had left Jatin with a massive task. First, to provide proper legal defense to
W“orld will come to know the essence of India through the writings of Aurobindo…” that’s what the great poet Rabindranath Tagore had said about Aurobindo Ghosh, who was indeed the prophet of Indian nationalism. He was a great synthesizer, synthesizing philosophies of both east and