The Rise, the Fall, the Reckoning

Bhaskar Roy's Fifty Year Road is a compelling personal-political narrative that traces India's transformation from 1964 to 2014, merging together historical insight with firsthand experiences of political upheavals, social change, and media evolution

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I met Bhaskar Roy for the first time at the IIC, New Delhi on January 31 earlier this year. After an engaging discussion on his book 'Border Crossers' - a highly sensitive portrayal of the lives and aspirations of migrants - he presented me with another book 'Fifty Year Road: A personal history of India from mid-sixties onward', a 'personal-political' narrative of the five decade period from 1964-2014. This literally 'unputdownable' narrative covers the historical context, social spaces, cultural narratives, significant personalities, important institutions, ideological orientations as well as the changes in the world of media and polity in these fifty years.

The period that he covers also coincides with my childhood, boyhood and growing up years. He was born in December 1960, and I am just three months younger to him. I too studied English literature for Honours, had a brief tryst with political activism at JNU, worked as a Trainee journalist with the Times of India group, but wrote the IAS exam and was posted to Darjeeling in the heydays of the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) agitation. Had he visited Kalimpong during that period, we would have probably met, for I was holding charge of the subdivision in those turbulent times. Both of us were witness to sectarian violence and terrorism - he in Kolkata, and I in Punjab; though the way Naxalism impacted West Bengal was without parallel elsewhere.

Both of us are also witness to the intrinsic ability of this nation to resolve differences through political settlements. Whether it be through reorganization of boundaries, or tweaking the Fifth or Sixth schedule and other concessions within the constitutional framework.