<p>The recent dismissal of a white New York professor for reading aloud the "N-word" from a Mark Twain novel has shone a spotlight on the use of&nbsp;racial&nbsp;slurs&nbsp;in&nbsp;American&nbsp;classrooms.</p>

<p>It has renewed a long-standing debate about how books from some of the United States' most famous authors should be taught during an age of reckoning with&nbsp;racial&nbsp;injustice.</p>

<p>After years of hearing the term read from the texts of writers such as Twain and William Faulkner, students are increasingly taking a stand.</p>

<p>"There was no reason that I should have to go to my class and hear that slur," said Dylan Gilbert recalling the time in 2019 when her white English teacher at the University of Michigan uttered the term while reciting a passage from Faulkner.</p>

<p>Gilbert, who is Black, walked out of class.</p>

<p>"It felt like a reminder that even though I had gotten into Michigan I would still not be afforded the same opportunity for a safe learning environment as my white peers," she told AFP.</p>

<p>The issue came into sharp focus again last month when Hannah Berliner Fischthal, who is white, departed St. John's University in Queens, NYC.&nbsp;</p>

<p>She apologized after upsetting several students by pronouncing the&nbsp;racial&nbsp;slur out loud while reading an extract from Twain's 1894 book "Pudd'nhead Wilson" -- having first explained the context for the word in Twain's text and saying she hoped it would not cause offence.</p>

<p>The incident came after another professor, also white, this time at Duquesne University in Pennsylvania was dismissed for using the&nbsp;slur during a course.</p>

<p>"The word has such a history and such a psychological-emotional impact that just hearing the word, for some people, can be disruptive," said Arizona State University English professor Neal Lester, who is Black.</p>

<p>Derived from a Latin word, it became widely used in 18th Century America, partly to dehumanize African Americans and cast them as an inferior race.</p>

<p>Lester says he never says the word in his classroom.&nbsp;</p>

<p>Vershawn Young, a Black communications professor, takes a different view.</p>

<p>When, in June 2020, his employer, the University of Waterloo, announced that the word was banned on campus, Young refused to adhere to the new rule.</p>

<p>"When reading from a text, I say the word," he told AFP. "When students quote the text, they too are free to speak what they read. However, they also may replace the word with its euphemism. What they can't do is ignore it."</p>

<p>Young says he always prepares his students that it is coming so they aren't shocked.&nbsp;</p>

<p>"Outside of quotes, I do not use the word because I recognize my authority in relation to the multiple sensitivities that my students embody," he added.</p>

<p><strong>Censorship</strong></p>

<p>In an article in The Conversation last year, Young wrote that the ban on his campus censored Black professors like himself.</p>

<p>"I belong to multiple Black communities, where we use the N-word in six or seven culturally rich ways," he wrote, adding that banning it "serves the purposes of white supremacy."</p>

<p>In recent decades it has been culturally acceptable for Black people to use the word. It is regularly heard in discussions, movies or music, hip-hop songs being the most obvious example.&nbsp;</p>

<p>"Hearing a non-black person say the N-word is always offensive and harmful to me," said Gilbert, the student who objected to her white teacher using it.</p>

<p><a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/uks-former-finance-minister-javid-appointed-as-health-minister-394201"><strong>Also Read |&nbsp;UK's former finance minister Javid appointed as health minister</strong></a></p>

<p>"(But) I have no problem with Black people saying (it). In my personal opinion the word is never violent or threatening to me when it comes out of Black person's mouth," she added.</p>

<p>Wendy Kaminer, a lawyer and writer who used to be an&nbsp;American&nbsp;Civil Liberties Union board member, said "the distinction between quoting a&nbsp;racial&nbsp;slur and using a&nbsp;racial&nbsp;slur has been completely erased."</p>

<p>"I think that's quite problematic," she told AFP.</p>

<p>Kaminer says the disappearance of the word from university campuses is part of a wider trend that started in the 1990s of banning other terms, including relating to sexuality and minorities.</p>

<p>She&nbsp;thinks the United States, where freedom of speech is enshrined in the constitution, is moving towards a more western European approach to the regulation of what people can and can't say.</p>

<p>For Lester, the Arizona State University professor, the answer is to talk about the word and its complex history without uttering it.</p>

<p>"I've had many conversations in class around the word without actually saying it," she said.&nbsp;</p>

<p>"That in and of itself is not a huge intellectual gymnastics routine."</p>


The recent dismissal of a white New York professor for reading aloud the "N-word" from a Mark Twain novel has shone a spotlight on the use of racial slurs in American classrooms.

The recent dismissal of a white New York professor for reading aloud the "N-word" from a Mark Twain novel has shone a spotlight on the use of racial slurs in American classrooms. It has renewed a long-standing debate about how books from some of the United States' most famous authors should be taught during an age of reckoning with racial injustice. After years of hearing the term read from the texts of writers such as Twain and William Faulkner, students are increasingly taking a stand. "There was no reason that I should have to go to my class and hear that slur," said Dylan Gilbert recalling the time in 2019 when her white English teacher at the University of Michigan uttered the term while reciting a passage from Faulkner. Gilbert, who is Black, walked out of class. "It felt like a reminder that even though I had gotten into Michigan I would still not be afforded the same opportunity for a safe learning environment as my white peers," she told AFP. The issue came into sharp focus again last month when Hannah Berliner Fischthal, who is white, departed St. John's University in Queens, NYC. She apologized after upsetting several students by pronouncing the racial slur out loud while reading an extract from Twain's 1894 book "Pudd'nhead Wilson" -- having first explained the context for the word in Twain's text and saying she hoped it would not cause offence. The incident came after another professor, also white, this time at Duquesne University in Pennsylvania was dismissed for using the slur during a course. "The word has such a history and such a psychological-emotional impact that just hearing the word, for some people, can be disruptive," said Arizona State University English professor Neal Lester, who is Black. Derived from a Latin word, it became widely used in 18th Century America, partly to dehumanize African Americans and cast them as an inferior race. Lester says he never says the word in his classroom. Vershawn Young, a Black communications professor, takes a different view. When, in June 2020, his employer, the University of Waterloo, announced that the word was banned on campus, Young refused to adhere to the new rule. "When reading from a text, I say the word," he told AFP. "When students quote the text, they too are free to speak what they read. However, they also may replace the word with its euphemism. What they can't do is ignore it." Young says he always prepares his students that it is coming so they aren't shocked. "Outside of quotes, I do not use the word because I recognize my authority in relation to the multiple sensitivities that my students embody," he added. Censorship In an article in The Conversation last year, Young wrote that the ban on his campus censored Black professors like himself. "I belong to multiple Black communities, where we use the N-word in six or seven culturally rich ways," he wrote, adding that banning it "serves the purposes of white supremacy." In recent decades it has been culturally acceptable for Black people to use the word. It is regularly heard in discussions, movies or music, hip-hop songs being the most obvious example. "Hearing a non-black person say the N-word is always offensive and harmful to me," said Gilbert, the student who objected to her white teacher using it. Also Read | UK's former finance minister Javid appointed as health minister "(But) I have no problem with Black people saying (it). In my personal opinion the word is never violent or threatening to me when it comes out of Black person's mouth," she added. Wendy Kaminer, a lawyer and writer who used to be an American Civil Liberties Union board member, said "the distinction between quoting a racial slur and using a racial slur has been completely erased." "I think that's quite problematic," she told AFP. Kaminer says the disappearance of the word from university campuses is part of a wider trend that started in the 1990s of banning other terms, including relating to sexuality and minorities. She thinks the United States, where freedom of speech is enshrined in the constitution, is moving towards a more western European approach to the regulation of what people can and can't say. For Lester, the Arizona State University professor, the answer is to talk about the word and its complex history without uttering it. "I've had many conversations in class around the word without actually saying it," she said. "That in and of itself is not a huge intellectual gymnastics routine."

Classrooms grapple with racial slurs in classic American novels

It was partly thanks to a bet with her sister that Agatha Christie wrote her first detective novel. Now, 100 years since it was published, the late author remains a household name, continuing to grow in popularity.

100 years on Agatha Christie still as popular

<p>Tom Wolfe, an early practitioner of "new journalism" who captured the mood and culture of America across five decades with books including "The Bonfire of the Vanities," "The Right Stuff," and "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," has died at the age of 88, his agent said.&nbsp;</p>

<p>Wolfe, who had a knack for coining phrases such as "radical chic" and "the me decade," died on Monday of an unspecified infection in a New York City hospital, his agent, Lynn Nesbit, said in a phone interview on Tuesday.</p>

<p>Wolfe`s works - fiction and non-fiction alike - looked at realms ranging from the art world to Wall Street to 1960s hippie culture and touched on the issues of class, power, race, corruption, and sex.</p>

<p>"I think every living moment of a human being`s life unless the person is starving or in immediate danger of death in some other way, is controlled by a concern for status," Wolfe said in an interview.</p>

<p>Wolfe came up with "radical chic" to brand pretentious liberals, the "me decade" to sum up the self-indulgence of the 1970s and the right stuff&nbsp;to quantify intangible characteristics of the first U.S. astronauts and their test pilot predecessors.</p>

<p>He was never deterred by the fact that he often did not fit in with his research subjects, partly because he was such a sartorial dandy, known for his white suits.</p>

<p>Wolfe was in his mid-70s while hanging out with college kids and working on the novel "I Am Charlotte Simmons," and was a fairly conservative drug-free observer in a coat and tie while travelling with Ken Kesey and his LSD-dropping hippie tribe known as The Merry Pranksters for "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" in the `60s. By looking so out of place, he figured people would be more prone to explain things to him.</p>

<p>`NEW JOURNALISM`<br />
Wolfe started his writing career at the Springfield, Massachusetts, Union newspaper and also worked for the Washington Post, New York Herald-Tribune and New York magazine. He was present at the birth of what was known as "new journalism," a loose style that featured lots of dialogue and detail and allowed reporters to narrate and develop characters in a way more often associated with fiction.</p>

<p>One of the genre's defining moments came when Wolfe was having trouble meeting a deadline for a 1964 magazine story on the hot-rod car culture.</p>

<p>In frustration, he sent his editor a letter with his thoughts and reportage. The magazine ran it verbatim as "There Goes (Varoom! Varoom!) That Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. "That led to a compilation of Wolfe`s magazine pieces, followed by "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," which captured the spirit of the psychedelic era during his time with Kesey, author of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo`s Nest," and his band of pranksters who helped spread the popularity of LSD in California. Written in a wild free-association style that disregarded rules of punctuation, it was filled with sentence fragments and used words like "skakkkkkkkkkkkkkk" and "wowwwwwww."</p>

<p>Wolfe`s style was not for everyone.</p>

<p>"The question is not only whether Tom Wolfe can be taken seriously but whether he can be taken at all," a leading magazine critic wrote in 1968. "He is irritating, but he did develop a new journalistic idiom that has brought relief from standard Middle-High Journalese."</p>

<p>Wolfe became fascinated with astronauts after Rolling Stone magazine assigned him to cover an Apollo program launch in 1972. Nine years later and in a more restrained style than some of his earlier works, he wrote "The Right Stuff" about the first seven U.S. astronauts and test pilot Chuck Yeager who came before them.</p>

<p>His first try at fiction was "The Bonfire of the Vanities" in 1987, which captured the cultural feel of free-wheeling Wall Street "masters of the universe" as well as his non-fiction books did. "Bonfire," a best-seller that was a much-revised version of a serial he wrote for Rolling Stone, portrayed class struggles in New York City against a backdrop of Wall Street ambition, racial stress, and yellow journalism.</p>

<p>New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Tuesday that Wolfe`s "wry wit and sharp observations defined an era of life in New York."</p>

<p>Wolfe followed with more novels - "A Man in Full" about race, big money and high society in Atlanta "I Am Charlotte Simmons," a tale of college high life, and "Back to Blood" about immigrants in Florida in 2012.</p>

<p>Wolfe complained that novelists did not bring enough reality to their books, and while bemoaning the state of American literature, offered himself as an exemplar of what it should be. That kindled rivalries with contemporaries Norman Mailer and John Updike, who Wolfe referred to as "two old piles of bones." John Irving angrily denounced Wolfe by saying, "I can`t read him because he`s such a bad writer."</p>

<p>Wolfe`s trademark was the white suit, often accessorised with a white hat and two-tone shoes. He admitted he liked the attention they brought him.</p>

<p>Wolfe was born March 2, 1930, and grew up in Richmond, Virginia, the son of an agronomist father and an arts-oriented mother. He was a star pitcher in high school and in college at Washington and Lee and unsuccessfully tried out for the New York Giants. Wolfe lived in New York with his wife, Sheila. He had two children.</p>


The American author of many novels and the one who had been a practitioner of New Journalism dead, told by his agent on phone interview.

Tom Wolfe, an early practitioner of "new journalism" who captured the mood and culture of America across five decades with books including "The Bonfire of the Vanities," "The Right Stuff," and "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," has died at the age of 88, his agent said. Wolfe, who had a knack for coining phrases such as "radical chic" and "the me decade," died on Monday of an unspecified infection in a New York City hospital, his agent, Lynn Nesbit, said in a phone interview on Tuesday. Wolfe`s works - fiction and non-fiction alike - looked at realms ranging from the art world to Wall Street to 1960s hippie culture and touched on the issues of class, power, race, corruption, and sex. "I think every living moment of a human being`s life unless the person is starving or in immediate danger of death in some other way, is controlled by a concern for status," Wolfe said in an interview. Wolfe came up with "radical chic" to brand pretentious liberals, the "me decade" to sum up the self-indulgence of the 1970s and the right stuff to quantify intangible characteristics of the first U.S. astronauts and their test pilot predecessors. He was never deterred by the fact that he often did not fit in with his research subjects, partly because he was such a sartorial dandy, known for his white suits. Wolfe was in his mid-70s while hanging out with college kids and working on the novel "I Am Charlotte Simmons," and was a fairly conservative drug-free observer in a coat and tie while travelling with Ken Kesey and his LSD-dropping hippie tribe known as The Merry Pranksters for "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" in the `60s. By looking so out of place, he figured people would be more prone to explain things to him. `NEW JOURNALISM` Wolfe started his writing career at the Springfield, Massachusetts, Union newspaper and also worked for the Washington Post, New York Herald-Tribune and New York magazine. He was present at the birth of what was known as "new journalism," a loose style that featured lots of dialogue and detail and allowed reporters to narrate and develop characters in a way more often associated with fiction. One of the genre's defining moments came when Wolfe was having trouble meeting a deadline for a 1964 magazine story on the hot-rod car culture. In frustration, he sent his editor a letter with his thoughts and reportage. The magazine ran it verbatim as "There Goes (Varoom! Varoom!) That Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. "That led to a compilation of Wolfe`s magazine pieces, followed by "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test," which captured the spirit of the psychedelic era during his time with Kesey, author of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo`s Nest," and his band of pranksters who helped spread the popularity of LSD in California. Written in a wild free-association style that disregarded rules of punctuation, it was filled with sentence fragments and used words like "skakkkkkkkkkkkkkk" and "wowwwwwww." Wolfe`s style was not for everyone. "The question is not only whether Tom Wolfe can be taken seriously but whether he can be taken at all," a leading magazine critic wrote in 1968. "He is irritating, but he did develop a new journalistic idiom that has brought relief from standard Middle-High Journalese." Wolfe became fascinated with astronauts after Rolling Stone magazine assigned him to cover an Apollo program launch in 1972. Nine years later and in a more restrained style than some of his earlier works, he wrote "The Right Stuff" about the first seven U.S. astronauts and test pilot Chuck Yeager who came before them. His first try at fiction was "The Bonfire of the Vanities" in 1987, which captured the cultural feel of free-wheeling Wall Street "masters of the universe" as well as his non-fiction books did. "Bonfire," a best-seller that was a much-revised version of a serial he wrote for Rolling Stone, portrayed class struggles in New York City against a backdrop of Wall Street ambition, racial stress, and yellow journalism. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Tuesday that Wolfe`s "wry wit and sharp observations defined an era of life in New York." Wolfe followed with more novels - "A Man in Full" about race, big money and high society in Atlanta "I Am Charlotte Simmons," a tale of college high life, and "Back to Blood" about immigrants in Florida in 2012. Wolfe complained that novelists did not bring enough reality to their books, and while bemoaning the state of American literature, offered himself as an exemplar of what it should be. That kindled rivalries with contemporaries Norman Mailer and John Updike, who Wolfe referred to as "two old piles of bones." John Irving angrily denounced Wolfe by saying, "I can`t read him because he`s such a bad writer." Wolfe`s trademark was the white suit, often accessorised with a white hat and two-tone shoes. He admitted he liked the attention they brought him. Wolfe was born March 2, 1930, and grew up in Richmond, Virginia, the son of an agronomist father and an arts-oriented mother. He was a star pitcher in high school and in college at Washington and Lee and unsuccessfully tried out for the New York Giants. Wolfe lived in New York with his wife, Sheila. He had two children.

'Bonfire of the Vanities' author Tom Wolfe dead at 88

<p>I first got to see some &lsquo;red&rsquo; books at my maternal grandmother&rsquo;s place [in the late seventies], which probably my uncle had collected and read at some point as a young man. Sometimes there were discussions of contemporary politics at home. It is at this stage perhaps, unconsciously, the first few words and ideas of Marxism began to enter me.</p>

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<h5>Complicated concepts like &lsquo;dialectical materialism&rsquo;, &lsquo;class consciousness&rsquo; etc. were still quite far away. I had also come to know of the Naxalites but was not clear as to what the differences between CPI-M and Naxalites were.</h5>
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<p>Marxism was less clearly understood by me at this point as a political philosophy and more as the ideology of the political party that my family supported. It was, I understood the most progressive political party of the country and to be progressive meant supporting CPI-M. By the time I was about eight or nine, I came to understand that the hammer and sickle icon meant a party of ordinary folks (<em>sadharon</em><em> </em><em>manush</em>) like us and not of the rich (<em>borolok</em>). Complicated concepts like &lsquo;dialectical materialism&rsquo;, &lsquo;class consciousness&rsquo; etc. were still quite far away. I had also come to know of the Naxalites but was not clear as to what the differences between CPI-M and Naxalites were.</p>

<p>By 1980, Cold War had crept into my consciousness. Not through a sound reading of international relations but through the discourse surrounding the Olympic Games which was scheduled to be held in the USSR but the&nbsp;USA had boycotted the Games. We had taken the side of the Soviet Union (in Bengali we preferred to say &lsquo;Raa-she-aa&rsquo;). We liked to believe that &lsquo;bad&rsquo; USA was afraid of losing to &lsquo;good&rsquo; USSR.</p>

<p>In 1981, my parents were relieved when I finally managed to pass the entrance exam of a well-known school in South Calcutta, Patha Bhavan. The school was created by a group of educationists affiliated to the Communist Party of India (CPI) and was heavily influenced by the educational philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore.</p>

<p>The most important contribution of my school in my upbringing was that it made me a bibliophile. I enjoyed reading books by the masters of Bengali literature, such as Tagore and also the literature meant for teenagers (Kishore-Sahitya) by authors such as Satyajit Ray, Bimal Kar, Premendra Mitra, Sunil Ganguly, Sirsendu Mukhopadhaya, Saktipada Rajguru and others.</p>

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<h5>My love for books slowly took me towards becoming a member of the children&rsquo;s library at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture in Golpark area of South Calcutta.</h5>
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<p>There was also the slightly more adult detective fiction of Saradindu Bandyopadhaya. There were also the Bengali translations of Jules Verne by Adrish Bardhan. Slowly, I also began to read books in English starting with Enid Blyton and then moving on Sherlock Holmes and thriller writers such as Alistair McLean. Enid Blyton was the first stepping stone towards English language confidence.</p>

<p>My love for books slowly took me towards becoming a member of the children&rsquo;s library at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture in Golpark area of South Calcutta. Here, in the library of a religious institution, I discovered some of the most wonderful books on modern art, scientific discoveries, and illustrated histories of modern Europe that helped to form a modernist mythology inside me. This was a mythology of progress and science as opposed to religion and blind faith.</p>

<p>Reading books was only one part of the story. I also developed a fascination for buying books and writing my name on them. The principal stumbling block in this pursuit was of course money. I used to roam around the second-hand book-stalls near Golpark which used to have a wide range of second-hand books &ndash; from Encyclopedias to pornographic magazines.</p>

<p>While I did buy some important books from these stalls such as Carl Sagan&rsquo;s Cosmos and magazines such as National Geographic, Time and Newsweek, nothing could match the delight of holding a brand new book in one&rsquo;s hand. The exchange rate vis-&agrave;-vis British Pound and US Dollar at that point in time was not as harsh as it is today but still buying a book published by Penguin, for example, was not easy. Fortunately, there was a much more attractive alternative.</p>

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<h5>The love of these Russian books also took me, like many others, towards books by Marx and Engels, Lenin and Stalin.</h5>
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<p>The bookstall that I visited the most during this time, on the other side of the second-hand stalls of Golpark, a small shop owned by a certain Tiwari-Ji, used to have a series of beautifully produced but inexpensive hardbound books coming from USSR. The works of masters such as Tolstoy, Gorky, Dostoyevsky, Gogol and others were available in richly illustrated hardbound editions that even I could buy. It was impossible not to get attracted to these books and of course, the writing was mesmerising, to say the least.</p>

<p>The love of these Russian books also took me, like many others, towards books by Marx and Engels, Lenin and Stalin. The big fat volumes of Capital were still a little too intimidating to buy (and read) but the book that acted as the bridge between me and Marxism was a novel named &ldquo;How the Steel was Tempered&rdquo;&nbsp;by a relatively unknown writer named Nikolai Ostrovsky. The book was immensely popular at that point in time in Calcutta and also had a Bengali version named &ldquo;Ispat&rdquo; or Steel. Its protagonist, a young man named Pavel Korchagin, left a deep impression not only on me but on many young hearts of my age.</p>

<p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>Excerpt from Debraj Bhattacharya,&nbsp;<i>Exploring Marxist Bengal: Memory, History and Irony</i>, K P Bagchi and Company, Kolkata, 2016</p>


Russian authors and literature had a great influence on India during the Cold War

I first got to see some ‘red’ books at my maternal grandmother’s place [in the late seventies], which probably my uncle had collected and read at some point as a young man. Sometimes there were discussions of contemporary politics at home. It is at this stage perhaps, unconsciously, the first few words and ideas of Marxism began to enter me. Complicated concepts like ‘dialectical materialism’, ‘class consciousness’ etc. were still quite far away. I had also come to know of the Naxalites but was not clear as to what the differences between CPI-M and Naxalites were. × Marxism was less clearly understood by me at this point as a political philosophy and more as the ideology of the political party that my family supported. It was, I understood the most progressive political party of the country and to be progressive meant supporting CPI-M. By the time I was about eight or nine, I came to understand that the hammer and sickle icon meant a party of ordinary folks (sadharon manush) like us and not of the rich (borolok). Complicated concepts like ‘dialectical materialism’, ‘class consciousness’ etc. were still quite far away. I had also come to know of the Naxalites but was not clear as to what the differences between CPI-M and Naxalites were. By 1980, Cold War had crept into my consciousness. Not through a sound reading of international relations but through the discourse surrounding the Olympic Games which was scheduled to be held in the USSR but the USA had boycotted the Games. We had taken the side of the Soviet Union (in Bengali we preferred to say ‘Raa-she-aa’). We liked to believe that ‘bad’ USA was afraid of losing to ‘good’ USSR. In 1981, my parents were relieved when I finally managed to pass the entrance exam of a well-known school in South Calcutta, Patha Bhavan. The school was created by a group of educationists affiliated to the Communist Party of India (CPI) and was heavily influenced by the educational philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore. The most important contribution of my school in my upbringing was that it made me a bibliophile. I enjoyed reading books by the masters of Bengali literature, such as Tagore and also the literature meant for teenagers (Kishore-Sahitya) by authors such as Satyajit Ray, Bimal Kar, Premendra Mitra, Sunil Ganguly, Sirsendu Mukhopadhaya, Saktipada Rajguru and others. My love for books slowly took me towards becoming a member of the children’s library at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture in Golpark area of South Calcutta. × There was also the slightly more adult detective fiction of Saradindu Bandyopadhaya. There were also the Bengali translations of Jules Verne by Adrish Bardhan. Slowly, I also began to read books in English starting with Enid Blyton and then moving on Sherlock Holmes and thriller writers such as Alistair McLean. Enid Blyton was the first stepping stone towards English language confidence. My love for books slowly took me towards becoming a member of the children’s library at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture in Golpark area of South Calcutta. Here, in the library of a religious institution, I discovered some of the most wonderful books on modern art, scientific discoveries, and illustrated histories of modern Europe that helped to form a modernist mythology inside me. This was a mythology of progress and science as opposed to religion and blind faith. Reading books was only one part of the story. I also developed a fascination for buying books and writing my name on them. The principal stumbling block in this pursuit was of course money. I used to roam around the second-hand book-stalls near Golpark which used to have a wide range of second-hand books – from Encyclopedias to pornographic magazines. While I did buy some important books from these stalls such as Carl Sagan’s Cosmos and magazines such as National Geographic, Time and Newsweek, nothing could match the delight of holding a brand new book in one’s hand. The exchange rate vis-à-vis British Pound and US Dollar at that point in time was not as harsh as it is today but still buying a book published by Penguin, for example, was not easy. Fortunately, there was a much more attractive alternative. The love of these Russian books also took me, like many others, towards books by Marx and Engels, Lenin and Stalin. × The bookstall that I visited the most during this time, on the other side of the second-hand stalls of Golpark, a small shop owned by a certain Tiwari-Ji, used to have a series of beautifully produced but inexpensive hardbound books coming from USSR. The works of masters such as Tolstoy, Gorky, Dostoyevsky, Gogol and others were available in richly illustrated hardbound editions that even I could buy. It was impossible not to get attracted to these books and of course, the writing was mesmerising, to say the least. The love of these Russian books also took me, like many others, towards books by Marx and Engels, Lenin and Stalin. The big fat volumes of Capital were still a little too intimidating to buy (and read) but the book that acted as the bridge between me and Marxism was a novel named “How the Steel was Tempered” by a relatively unknown writer named Nikolai Ostrovsky. The book was immensely popular at that point in time in Calcutta and also had a Bengali version named “Ispat” or Steel. Its protagonist, a young man named Pavel Korchagin, left a deep impression not only on me but on many young hearts of my age. Excerpt from Debraj Bhattacharya, Exploring Marxist Bengal: Memory, History and Irony, K P Bagchi and Company, Kolkata, 2016

Russian Revolution and my childhood

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