Memoirs of another day - Arun Roy Mukherjee

During this period the most exciting news was the sudden disappearance of Subhas Chandra Bose from their house in Calcutta where he was under surveillance of the British Government Police. I was only amazed by the news that he simply vanished and nobody could find any clue about it. My parents were however very agitated and often discussed the matter in hushed tones. There were so many stories running. Some people said that he went to have some fresh air near the Outram Ghat accompanied by the Prime Minister of Bengal and then suddenly jumped into a Japanese submarine anchoring in the Ganges and the submarine immediately vanished from the scene. Another story was that a sadhu came to visit him and after talking to him for some minutes left. When the people went to his room to serve him food after about a few hours, he was not there and the sadhu was also not there. I remember having seen Subhas Chandra from quite a distance when he came to Jalpaiguri to address a meeting. I do not remember the exact date or the year. But it must be either in 1938 or 1939. My mother along with me accompanied by a few of the family members went to see him. I faintly remember his appearance.

Memoirs of another day - Arun Roy Mukherjee

The world war broke out sometime in September, 1939. In the next two years it spread into Asia and almost covered the entire world. When at Rampurhat, my father was contributing to two daily newspapers of which one was in English and the other in vernacular. The news of the war which included the description of war zones and movement of opposite forces covered most of the pages. These also included maps of those areas. I developed a liking for study of the Maps. My father bought me a very good atlas which had detailed maps of all the countries and of India and Bengal in particular. I spent a good amount of my time, after school and studies in those pages of the newspapers and the atlas. Within a very short span of time I knew almost all the big towns, rivers, deserts and mountains of the world in the maps. I also learnt to relate the maps printed in the newspapers to the country/countries shown there to the maps in the atlas and where those are in the world. My interest in physical geography grew from that time of my life and it is continuing in the same fervor till date.