Review: Thackeray Mansion by Sankar

Celebrated Bengali novelist Sankar’s Thackeray Mansion offers a mosaic of the peoples and cultures that make up Calcutta: Open

There is a young man, not exactly adrift, but looking to find a footing in the city. Not wide-eyed, nor yet hardened by knowingness, but still sensitive to the shape of experience. Amol Palekar might play him on screen, or Farooq Sheikh. And there is the restless, bad-tempered metropolis, not unkind really, only impatient in her hurry; she could be Calcutta or she could be Bombay. What does this city make of this young man? And how does he wrap and mould this great, irascible city around him? They are adversaries, comrades, partners—the young man and the city; neither is left unaffected by the other.