Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

Nana with her newspaper In my childhood, an old black and white picture hanging on the family wall stood as a reminder of the possibilities that was India. We knew to pay our respects to the hanging picture, alongside other pictures of ancestors who had passed on our way out the door. Paying homage to the hanging picture was particularly important before exams.   My grandmother, we called her nana, would fondly recall the stories of her Jnan kaka (uncle in Bengali), the bespectacled man, dressed in a white shirt and with a smile, in the picture. She would recall the stories of growing up, of her doctor father, and her Jnan kaka, the scientist in the family. Those conversations would almost always underscore the nation building role of science in modern India.  Sir Jnan Ghosh writing at his desk In the picture, Jnan dadu as we would call him, following our parents, appeared more like a poet, perhaps an invitation to consider the poetic relevance of his role as an architect of the engine