MOTHER OF MY HEART(THE STORY OF BIVABATI BOSE)

Mother of My Heart: The Story of Bivabati Bose

A daughter's memoir of her mother laced with sensitively recollected situations and episodes of life at home, grows into something larger and momentous, when the author happens to be the daughter of Sarat Chandra Bose, elder brother and political comrade of Subhas Chandra Bose, and Bivabati Bose, all three of them actors in their own ways in India's struggle for freedom, and the development of socialist politics in the country. Trained as a social scientist, Ms Ghosh weaves the private and public seamlessly together in her account of the family saga of the Boses of Mahinagar, beginning with the founders Dasaratha Bose and his sons, and continuing with Subuddhi Khan and Purandar Khan in the days of the Sultanate; to Janakinath, thirteenth descendant of Purandar Khan, and his wife Prabhabati, one of the Duttas of Hatkhola, parents of Sarat and Subhas, the Brothers against the Raj. Growing within a close-knit family, Ms Ghosh has been a perceptive, dispassionate witness to the final stage of India's struggle for independence as it involved the Boses. As visitors and home guests, she encountered Gandhi, Nehru, Sarojini Naidu, the Suhrawardis, who appear in her narrative in rarely seen avataras. The personal and political camaraderie of the Bose brothers, and how the homely Bivabati took on their mantle and came to find her own niche in politics constitute the drama at the core of the work.