Sketches From Memory : A Journey To Gandhi, Vol. I

Written at the suggestion of a friend, this book chronicles a tale in space and time, a journey from one culture to a completely different one. After the introductory sections dealing with the author\'s early life, the influences that were at work, and the interests developed, the focus shifts to people met in the course of unusually wide travels. They were so memorable that they are given centre stage. The author arrived in India in 1946 and the book is incompletely autobiographical for it does not include a large part of her life -- her marriage to Nripendranath Chatterjee, originally a Professor of English, her experiences in a university in UP in which there were caste hostels, and her subsequent involvement in district and village life in Bengal after her husband became one of the first emergency recruits to the newly formed IAS. They were crowded years in which she raised a family and acquired a working knowledge of two languages. So the journey to Gandhi was prepared by what the author had already learnt about India through the years, which she has not recorded lest the book become too long. She eventually met a number of senior people who in various ways had a link to Gandhi, or at least, to the Gandhian era. She was well on her way in her journey to Gandhi about whom she has written six books.