It was before history was born, and he himself became who he was, studying in a city that is always pre-natal, pre-nascent....It is as if my father came into being from fantasy, like an image, in 1923. Yet it is an image full of truth, to think of him studying in Calcutta, or taking a tram-ride, one of the marginal, anonymous people who were neighbours with history, one of millions, studying, discussing politics, listening to songs, living in hostel rooms, eating in the 'cabins' of North Calcuttam who were bypassed and yet changed, without their names or the quality of those moments ever being known, by independence and partition. So India took on a new shape, and another story began, with homelands becoming fantasies, never to be returned to or remembered.
