Sunlight on the Garden

Andre Beteille's memoir, spanning his childhood, his schooldays and his early years as a sociologist, encompasses many worlds--that of colonial Chandannagar, where he spent his early years; of Patna and Calcutta where he went to school; and of his college days where he started off as a physicist and then turned to sociology--a field in which he was to win international renown. There are unforgettable descriptions of his colonial childhood and his two grandmothers, one French and the other Bengali; and of momentous events he lived through such as famine, communal riots and Partition. Equally compelling are his portraits of his neighborhood, school friends, tachers and Calcutta's intellectual stars, among them Sukhamoy Chakravarty and Amartya Sen. With its lucid and eloquent prose infused with acute sociological observations and insights into family relationships, childhood and adolescence, caste, class and community, this is a book that illumines the evolution of a brilliant teacher and scholar.