20 November,2021 08:28 AM IST | Mumbai | Rahul Mahesh
Pic Courtesy/Ashwani Nagpal
Amartya Sen's memoir takes the reader through his life before he became a Nobel Prize-winning economist, renowned across the world. It documents his troubled early years riddled with a surprise diagnosis of squamous cell carcinoma, a form of skin cancer, and his battles to maintain sanity in the face of doom and snatched youth. That is later replaced with astute observation of the life of an immigrant student and the journey to find purpose in life.
The book talks about his childhood experiences in Bengal during the devastating famine of 1943, and the impact that events such as that one and the Independence struggle had on his formative years. His focus on exploitation and poverty emerges during his early years in Bengal, and more so during his time as a student in Cambridge.
There is a disarming humility that runs through the book, where Sen almost refuses to accept his influence on the landscape of economics. The objectivity of understanding his own life as a passive spectator rather than an active participant makes this book an engaging read. To say that the life of Amartya Sen is punctuated by historic moments is to put things mildly. He sees the world through a divided lens of what is home and the rest of the world, often blurring the lines between the two. The voyage of a man who collects experiences on the shores he's been to leaves a lasting impact on the readers, as they follow his journey through these pages.
