They were our neighbours. And he, my batchmate.
\nSumit Bagchi used to stay just a few blocks away. His mother, having lost her husband, was worried about her youngest. I was in college then. And she had this idea that somehow I might be the one to help her out. I became private tutor to Sumit’s kid brother.
\nTime flew. Life’s demands started turning tougher. And a short span of time later I had to quit my responsibility of tutoring him. The pressure of life’s demands started mounting. We left the locality and moved to South Calcutta. Old memories have this habit of giving way to the more recent ones. And Baranagar, my incubator of what I am today, became a distinct blur.
\nAnd then a couple of days ago the alert flashed. There was a scrapbook entry on my Orkut space. One Subroto Bagchi wanted to know whether I could recognise him. NO. So he jogged my memory. And how! He was Sumit’s kid brother! The little kid who was my student travelled three decades to stare at me with a beard from the screen! He told me how I happened to have been the first in his life to have gifted him a book! A HaJa Ba Ra La! Trust me I had forgotten all of it! And now he holds a Ph.D.! The guy says that the degree was just a natural culmination of a process!
\nFolks, if you ask me what present would I expect on Saraswati Puja? I would say more and more of him from our school!
\nHe has already searched our site. He wants it to be simpler. But then that is a different though a relevant issue.
\nSuparna Pathak<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
They were our neighbours. And he, my batchmate. Sumit Bagchi used to stay just a few blocks away. His mother, having lost her husband, was worried about her youngest. I was in college then. And she had this idea that somehow I might be the one to help her out. I became private tutor to … Continue reading “Lost & Found”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bnnvalumni.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bnnvalumni.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bnnvalumni.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bnnvalumni.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bnnvalumni.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bnnvalumni.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bnnvalumni.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bnnvalumni.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bnnvalumni.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}