Writers don't so much write about their own lives as create them, Barthes said; it's an oddly modern idea. Bengalis, similarly, had to make their own… - Amit Chaudhuri

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Writers don't so much write about their own lives as create them, Barthes said; it's an oddly modern idea. Bengalis, similarly, had to make their own history. They did it in houses, tenements, and in neighbourhoods connected by stifling alleys that are no wider than a small room ... And this is why I feel, even now, that the most revealing places in Calcutta are not the museums or the great monuments ... but the houses and lanes in which people live.