Meet Jadunath Kanwar, aka Jadu. Born 1935 to a farmer couple in a small village in Bihar, far from anything modern, he moved to a city to study, married, had a daughter, and grew into a teacher of history. He witnessed all the tumult of the birth of two countries, many wars, and all the ups and downs of the first seven decades of his own country’s life as a republic.
He fell victim, among millions of others, to Covid-19 in 2020. Amitava Kumar has written a history of a historian, a Fulbright scholar who lived through the making of history, and his legacy, in the form of a daughter. The daughter, Jugnu, has her own space in the book: a trained journalist, her history is different because she tells it herself, giving the reader a very sharp picture of the contrast between what Jadu was to himself and to his own daughter.
Jadu seems destined to succeed. His mother, pregnant with him, survives a cobra bite, delivers him, and, in later years, delivers two more children, both girls, one of whom dies after a mysterious encounter with a “fox”. History appears intertwined with Jadu’s life, sometimes as Jadu’s meetings with the famous: it seems contrived at times.
Jadu meets Tenzing Norgay while a student. Jadu meets JP, the activist. Jadu knows Ramdeo Manjhi and Jagannath Mishra.
The war, with China, of 1962, brings the death of his wife Maya’s brother, his burnt body returned in box packed with ice and wrapped in a flag. The declaration of the Emergency coincides with the.
