An Obvious Repository

Sachin Chaudhuri, the founder-editor of the Economic Weekly (EW) and the Economic & Political Weekly (EPW), was my father’s classmate in Dhaka University. But after their Dhaka days they lost contact for decades, until Chaudhuri traced us in Calcutta during my college days. He soon became my mentor and friend. My first article to be published in the EW was written even before I finished my undergraduate studies at the Presidency College in Calcutta.

I remember my last meeting with him shortly before he passed away. I was staying with him in his apartment in Bombay before catching an early morning flight to go abroad and he made me sit up through half the night in his study and work on drafting one of the EPW editorials, while he kept plying me with my favourite liqueur (how he procured it in those strict days of prohibition in Bombay I have no idea). (Those of you who read Bangla can find many of my stories about Chaudhuri in my quasi-memoir Smriti-kanduyan, Ananda Publishers, 2014.)