Surprisingly memories of childhood adventures stay with you longer than ones that are more recent. Sometimes just a single childhood episode grips you and you can live in it as and when you want. The reader journeys in time with the author to share his exploratory childhood. These are the times when the sugar industry was an important contributor to India’s industrial development.
With Khokan just a year old, Puran Dutt relinquishes his job – in East Bengal now finally Bangladesh, and takes up a new assignment in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh. The 1947 partition of the country necessitated this move as continuing at Gopalpur, Rajshahi (Bangladesh) would have been perilous.. The managing agents of North Bengal Sugar Mills have been thoroughly impressed by Puran Dutt’s engineering acumen and his zeal and understanding of sugar manufacture. They suggested that he take on the responsibility of their new acquisition – Raza Sugar Factory, Rampur, Uttar Pradesh.
It is in Rampur that Khokan escapes death not once but on three separate occasions – from drowning, from being burnt alive, and from an affliction.