The House Where Pather Panchali Was Born: Gouri Kunjo, Ghatsila.

It was an early February morning in 2013. I stood before a quiet, modest house in Ghatsila, Jharkhand. Whitewashed walls, a red tiled roof, green shutters, a verandah with a locked iron gate. A house that looked ordinary — but held within it the extraordinary. This was Gouri Kunjo, the home of eminent author Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay (12 September 1894 – 1 November 1950).

 

It was here, in these rooms, that he wrote Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road, 1929). A novel that gave us not just a story, but an entire world. Apu and Durga — their joys, their hunger, their wonder at the simplest things — all first came alive within these very walls. Later, Satyajit Ray would immortalize them on screen, twenty-six years later. But the seed was planted here, in the silence of Ghatsila, in the solitude of a writer deeply attuned to the rhythms of rural Bengal.

 

When I visited, I wondered — what was it like in 1929? Rural Ghatsila, where literature and life blended so seamlessly that even cracked walls seemed to whisper fragments of prose. Ghatsila’s green silence outside; inside, the hum of memory and pen scratching paper. Perhaps it was in this very verandah that he paused, looked out, and dreamt of Nishchindipur.

 

Today, when I think of Pather Panchali, or watch Ray’s Apu Trilogy, I rarely stop to think of the room where it all began. And so, on his birth anniversary, I felt compelled to share.

Photo: Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay with wife Rama Bandyopadhyay (Photo Courtesy: Trinankur Bandyopadhyay).

In the Heart of Darjeeling: Step Aside, Where Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das Breathed His Last

On a recent trip to Darjeeling, I stumbled upon a house with a name that almost read like a metaphor — “Step Aside.” I paused. Read the board. Stood quietly.

Turns out, this was the place where Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das — freedom fighter, reformer, political activist, lawyer and one of the strongest voices of the Swaraj movement — spent his last days. He passed away here on 16 June 1925, exactly 100 years ago today.

The house is also known as the Deshbandhu Museum now. It was closed when I went, so I could only take a few photos from the outside. But there was something about that quiet corner — almost as if the echoes of Mahatma Gandhi’s footsteps and C. R. Das’s final conversations were still hovering.

They say he invited Mahatma Gandhi here in his last days. They say they spoke of Swaraj, not knowing time was running out.

A century later, “Step Aside” still stands. Not just as a structure, but as a reminder — of service, sacrifice, and a life lived for something far greater than self.

I didn’t expect to find history that morning. But I did. And maybe that’s how we’re supposed to remember.