Had I not checked the invitation letter thoroughly I would surely have missed him.
A slightly above average height, a shock of white hair and a benign smile – Amitav Ghosh, the author extraordinaire of The Shadow Lines, Calcutta Chromosome, The Hungry Tide and Sea of Poppies sat quietly at the coffee bar of Oxford Bookshop at Park Street, on a slightly foggy December evening in Kolkata, 2005. The authorities seemed enough flabbergasted to suddenly have a literary behemoth at their disposal, and their frantic runarounds reminded me oddly of a film star – hit premier movie show. I watched from afar, not daring to go near, having nothing common between us except the distant bangal connection. He didn’t like the coffee, it seemed. Shrugging off the shawl from his shoulders, Ghosh quietly stood up and walked towards the podium where he was supposed to adorn the seat of the chief guest. I was at Oxford for the following couple of hours, listened to his talk (which I vaguely remember to be something about the state of Indian English Literature), but somehow the only indelible imprint that he left me with was him sipping coffee beside the smoky glazed glass window. He seemed distant, yet very much there, absorbing the present quietly. A true author – I concluded.
বা ঙা ল না মা 
