Small Collections Box 11
Given by Mrs H. Ghoshal. Bengal 1940-47.
Xerox of typescript. 9 pp.
This short memoir, entitled ‘The Memsahib I Could Never Be’, describes the author’s personal transition from the life of a university student and member of a middle-class Bengali family associated with the 1930s struggle for Independence to her life as wife of a subdivisional I.C.S. officer in Patuakhali, District Barisal. Visits to District Headquarters introduced her to the company of British and Indian Memsahibs and left her disenchanted with the social assumptions of the Raj. Transfer to Calcutta enabled her to see changes brought about by the War, the 1943 Famine and, finally, Independence. She and her family, Hindus, were uprooted from their homeland by the Partition of Bengal.
