Elsewhere Place English 2017

From the early 1950s to the early '60s, Malay Kumar Roy spent around ten years as a young boy in Hazaribagh in the Chhotanagpur district of Jharkhand, which was then a part of Bihar. In An Elsewhere Place, Roy reminisces about his life there - a place that 'touches a boy forever'. In this memoir, he vividly describes Hazaribagh's tranquil landscape, its changing seasons about sharing a crate of mangoes with the last Englishman living in Hazaribagh, a little bear cub tipsy on mahua flowers; a gravely injured fox cub that was nursed back to health by him and his family, and a visitor from Calcutta who boasted about his detective skills and courage but lost steam upon seeing a dangerous criminal. Written in charming, spare prose, this collection evokes a gentle, easy-going time when man and nature existed in harmony: a time of friendships, wonder and grace.