His early life in the intimate natural setting of Barisal and Silchar, the great Bengal famine of 1943, the violent legacy of Partition, and above all his experience of service in the armed forces went to the making of Manindra Gupta(1926-2018), one of the major architects of Bangla poetry in the post-Jibanananda era. He assimilated all that was best in his predecessors and carved out a style all his own. Dispensing with the conventional lyric mode marked by effusion, Gupta brought his intensive reading of world literature, critical thinking, and unsentimental worldview to bear on his unique style of presentation that is manifest in the deft employment of the occult and the absurd. This book offers an interpretation of Gupta's life, his texts and times.

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Mid-nineteenth century had brought in the hope that science was set to usher in the golden era of a humane world free from pain and exploitation. But soon it transpired that while scientific truths might be objective, the practice of science was certainly not above imperialist class interests. How then to reconcile science with human values? How then to assert that to lose faith in science is sin? Wise and compassionate scientists never stopped worrying about this crucial question. Great minds such as Joseph Needham, Linus Pauling and Dorothy Hodgkin delved deep into history, philosophy, religion and politics in order to redeem humanity's confidence in science. Each such scientist had to face imperialist persecution and harrassment despite attaining dizzy heights in their respective fields. Each had also to fight against highly talented but tragically paranoid and pro-imperialist scientists such as Edward Teller, for whom finishing off the USSR in a nuclear war was the ultimate idea of peace on earth. This book is a fascinating and inspiring account of that tumultuous struggle involving the two sides of science - the benign and the grotesque, much of it in the scientists' own words translated into Bengali with ample notes and prefaced with knowledgeable introductions. The book takes a fresh look not only at the history of science but at that of the anti-imperialist and anti-fascist struggles of the twentieth century.

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A montage of memories, legends and myths, the book discusses in detail, life and death, unnecessary egotism and man’s leaps before thought. To put it simply, it talks about the ebb and flow of human civilization as a whole. Ajoy Gupta’s soul-piercing style of writing, with hues of subtle humour echoes Gabriel Garcia Marquez as it reminds us, ‘Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it’. This book beckons not fear of living, but a grand celebration of life.

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