Shivani’s memoir of her schoolgirl days in Santiniketan is a nostalgic tribute blended with humour

Shivani is the nom de plume of one of India’s finest writers, Gaura Pant. For anglophone readers, it is thanks to Shivani’s daughters – celebrated journalist Mrinal Pande and exceptional translator Ira Pande – that a host of her works is available to read. The latest of these is Shivani’s fabled recollections of the time she spent in Shantiniketan during her schooldays, when founder Rabindranath Tagore was alive and on the premises: Amader Shantiniketan, translated by Ira Pande.

First published in the 1960s by New Age Publishers, Calcutta, the book did not receive a great deal of publicity or exposure, as the translator’s introduction reveals. As Shivani wrote by hand and handed the original manuscript over to the publisher, what remained was only the published version to be used as the basis for future editions and translations.

As the original work was rather slim, Pande has added another section, where the author pays tribute to her friends from her schooldays, among whom are the director Satyajit Ray and Jayanti, Shivani’s sister, whom Tagore called “Bharat Mata”.

In Tagore’s company

In her early teens, Shivani was sent to Shantiniketan along with her siblings, where the “classes were not closed in within walls that shut out the outer world, nor did…

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