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.