Buddhadeva Bose

A young student in pre-Independence Dacca, Ranajit Dutta is relatively untouched by the patriotic fervour gripping the rest of the country. He is suffocated by and often critical of, the constricted environment and superstition ridden society he lives in. He seeks an escape through poetry and his search for the embodiment of universal womanhood. But one event shakes up his idealism and fundamentally changes his relationships with the women in his life: his first love Mitu Bardhan; his affectionate but neglected aunt Kajol; his revolutionary friend Bulbul; his naive, adoring wife Nalini.

This collection brings together ten stories and two one-act plays which embody all of these qualities. In ‘The Love Letter’, Birupaksha Ray, a translator and a linguist, receives a ciphered missive from an old flame, unlocking which could occupy the rest of his life; in ‘A Scent of Tulsi’, Mihir, a husband comfortable in his patriarchy discovers a side to his wife, Kamala, which shakes up his world. And, in ‘Twenty-five Years After?or Before’, a one-act play, old lovers meet by chance at an international airport and talk about opportunities missed, and those not taken.His prose is marked by invention, refreshing modernity and an easy yet deep engagement with timeless themes: love, the nature of memory, and the complexity of the relationship between man and woman?qualities which keep Bose’s work enduringly relevant.