Book Excerpt: The Maker of Eternity A Memoir Across Empire, War and Home by Suresh Chandra Guha and Rajyashree Dutt

An exclusive excerpt from The Maker of Eternity A Memoir Across Empire, War and Home by Suresh Chandra Guha and Rajyashree Dutt (Speaking Tiger, 2026)

‘Dadu was unlike any retired man I’ve ever met. He was busier than anyone else. Most vegetables we got from the garden he planted and nurtured. Likewise with the fruit. He tended his garden and since it was so large and varied, it took an enormous amount of time.’

When I read this I thought of Jubilee Garden in Gauhati, where the Oriya gardener had nurtured Dadu’s love for plants, and told the young, impressionable boy that he had seen fairies dancing among the flowers on full-moon nights. Dadu had believed him, and longed to share that dream. Maybe he did get to see the fairies.

Gitasree says: ‘In all of this, he never went a day without reading the papers, listening to the news and cricket or football commentaries on the radio and reading a book. He lived by very strict principles. He had assisted in the freedom movement. He never really said much about it. However he would not wear anything but khadi—a short-sleeved kurta and dhoti—on which he carried out repairs himself till they couldn’t be worn anymore. He hated taking assistance and didn’t until he was compelled to. Though he had a firm belief in God, and had a Guru, I never saw him performing any of the rituals associated with organised religion.

‘He was a man who commanded respect; a simple man in his habits but not simple in anything else. His mind was as sharp as a person one-third his age. His keen intellect and understanding, ability to read people and situations, common sense as well as an extraordinary ability to handle anything that came his way set him apart.

‘He had been a refugee twice, encountered immense hardship, but never did we hear a word of complaint, a grumble or even regret. I think all he missed were the books he had to leave behind.’

I talked to Gitasree about the memoirs. She clearly remembers him sitting at the table in the verandah and writing, writing, writing, every day.

‘What did he refer to?’ I asked. ‘Did he have a diary? Notes?’

‘No,’ she said.

I was stunned.

Think about it: my grandfather had no access to the world as we have today. His life was spent in an era where his only sources were the radio, newspapers, and conversations with other people. Yet his canvas is painted with detailed, sometimes almost cinematic accounts of people and places and events. How did he do it? How did he remember, in such detail, all that he describes in his memoirs—the people, the places, the history and political upheavals, the vivid scenes of mayhem and destruction, the death-defying walk home?

I spent a lot of time fact-checking through the book, and you know what? The professor was right 99.9 per cent of the time.

It seems strange to me that in his memoir we do not get to meet his wife or children. Dadu was short, stocky and bullet-headed, while my grandmother was like a porcelain doll—petite and pretty with a peaches-and-cream complexion. They had three daughters and a son. He does briefly talk about his son with some pride, and he talks about my father, his son-in-law, who was a pillar of strength for him. But the others don’t get a mention.

I have to admit, I was never close to my grandfather. To me he was a grim figure who did not have much time for this snotty-nosed granddaughter. I heard that he had a fabulous sense of humour and was much loved by his students. I used to take that with a pinch of salt. I used to think it was his fault that he had not got out of Burma when he could.

And then I read this manuscript—and all my judgemental ideas were busted. He suffered a stroke in 1983 and passed away on 19 December that year. I wish he were here today so I could apologise to him, and tell him that I am proud to have had a grandfather like him: an ordinary man who lived such an extraordinary life, making his eternity with the bag of tools he was given.

Excerpted with permissions from the author and the publishers of The Maker of Eternity A Memoir Across Empire, War and Home by Suresh Chandra Guha and Rajyashree Dutt (Speaking Tiger, 2026)

About the Book

A rare, first-hand memoir that moves across Bengal, Burma, Punjab and the Northeast, offering an intimate, ground-level account of the seismic events that shaped twentieth-century South Asia—told with clarity, wit and deep human insight.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, a boy growing up in Bengal could not have imagined the world he would live through: empire and revolution, war and displacement, independence and Partition.

In this extraordinary memoir, translated from the original Bengali by his granddaughter, Rajyashree Dutt, Suresh Chandra Guha recounts a life that travelled across continents and crises. From his childhood in rural Bengal and student days in Calcutta, he journeys to colonial Burma as a young professor—only to flee the Japanese invasion during the Second World War. Later, in Rawalpindi, he once again finds himself caught in the violence of 1947 and forced to rebuild his life from nothing.

Rich with stories of teachers, revolutionaries, saints, students and travellers, The Maker of Eternity captures the everyday textures of a vanished world while tracing the upheavals that shaped modern South Asia.

At once intimate and epic, this is the unforgettable story of an ordinary man who lived an extraordinary century.

About the Author

Suresh Chandra Guha (b. 1899) grew up in Bengal and Assam and studied at Cotton College, Gauhati, and Presidency College, Calcutta, where he completed a master’s degree in organic chemistry. He taught at Judson College, Rangoon (1923–41), and Gordon College, Rawalpindi (1942–47), before joining St Edmund’s College, Shillong, where he remained until his retirement in 1964. He later settled in Krishnanagar, West Bengal.

About The Translator

Rajyashree Dutt is a writer, editor and theatre practitioner based in Goa. She has worked in the non-fiction sector for over three decades and has edited Chicken Soup for the Indian Couple’s Soul. Her short fiction has appeared in titles from the Chicken Soup series, and she is a two-time prize-winner at the Fundação Oriente Short Stories Competition. She writes plays for her work as a theatre teacher and is currently developing a handbook of original scripts. She has also translated Upendrakishore Roychowdhury’s Toontooni stories.