Lost Addresses: A Memoir of India 1934-1955

Krishna Bose was born Krishna Chaudhuri on 26 December, 1930 in Dhaka, to East Bengali parents settled in Calcutta. In December 1955 she married Sisir Kumar Bose, son of the barrister and nationalist leader Sarat Chandra Bose and nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Lost Addresses is Krishna’s story of her childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. It vividly describes Calcutta, Bengal and India in the 1930s and 1940s and the early years after Independence. Krishna’s memories of growing up and coming of age are set in the social, cultural and political milieus of the time. The East Bengal heritage and the life of the Calcutta intelligentsia at its prime feature prominently, but this is no private nor provincial memoir. Bengal, India and the world were then in great ferment and transition. Krishna relives how she experienced World War II, the Quit India movement of 1942, the Bengal Famine of 1943–1944, the Red Fort trials of the Indian National Army (INA) officers in 1945–1946, the Great Calcutta Killings of 1946, and Partition and Independence in Delhi in 1947. Illustrated with old photographs, this memoir is a valuable historical record, told in flowing literary style.