A confident state of mind

“Unlike the prevalent opinion, I think PhD helped me get a life. My personal life had been traumatic; through PhD, I managed to get distracted and focus on the work at hand.

Throughout my academic journey, I have had low self-esteem. Having studied in a purely Bengali medium school, I always felt I wasn’t good in English; I thought everyone around me was right and I was the only one wrong! Of course, it wasn’t true and I came to that realization much later in life.

I never envisioned myself doing a PhD and just like my friends, after high school, I decided to appear for the entrance examinations for Jadavpur University and Presidency College. I still remember this interesting question in the Presidency’s examination where we were asked to write about a conversation with a celebrity on a historical event. I can’t recall the details of what I exactly wrote, but I described how I would talk with Priyanka Chopra and explain the subject of history to her! Presidency taught me to love History.

After I enrolled myself in a Master’s program in the same college (then University), I had the opportunity to work with one of our professors on ‘Chandimangal,’ a medieval Bengali poem and ‘Patachitra,’ a form of painting, which focused on the Naya village of Midnapore. It allowed me to travel to remote areas of Bengal and learn about its history. I was utterly…