chandidas kumar

Gray hairs are signs of wisdom if you hold your tongue, speak and they are but hairs, as in the young
Rabindranath Tagore

Chandidas Kumar felt this draw soon after he graduated in 1967. “I married early in a family-arranged affair, and was desperately in need of a job,” he says, sitting down in 2008 at the same table he frequented in the Sixties, with many of the familiar faces still around. “And then, I got the opportunity of going to either England or America. So I collected papers from both High Commissions, and, before submitting them, sat down here for a coffee.”

And that’s when things took a very Kolkata-esque turn, something at once noble and yet tragic. For Chandidas never did reach out, or leave. Instead, he tore the papers and left them with the coffee dregs. “I found the idea of going to another country very disgraceful.”

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