SHYAMAL KUMAR SEN Vs. SANJUKTA MUKHERJEE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Life in the Sen family of 29, Ballygunge Place was no different in the 1960s through the end of the century than in many other Bengali families in the then Calcutta: two daughters of the family were married off and the son went abroad in the hope of greener pastures. Paramesh Chandra Sen retired as a middle-level employee in the Refugee Rehabilitation Department of the State Government. His wife Kalindi was with Life Insurance Corporation of India and signed off as a Development Officer. The paltry salary of Paramesh and the reasonable commission that Kalindi earned was supplemented by the rental income from an outhouse or annexe in the ancestral property at Ballygunge. The family was not affluent, but life was not difficult for parents Sens as they brought up their son and three daughters.

(2.) By the time eldest son Shyamal left the country to try his luck in England in 1966, daughters Debjani and Sanjukta had already been married off for more than five years and Paramesh had retired from his meagre government service with apparently no pension in those days. Eldest daughter Debjani moved out of the Ballygunge Place house after her marriage, spent a few years with her husband in Kalyani and returned to the paternal house, husband in tow, within a few months of Shyamal having left for England. Second daughter Sanjukta moved out of the paternal home after her marriage, but lived close by at 92, Ballygunge Place with her husband's family. Sanjukta's husband, Partha, was a childhood friend of Shyamal. Tragedy struck the Sen family when the youngest daughter died in a road accident in 1968, only a few days before she was to be married.

(3.) Shyamal, who claimed to have reached England with only a few pounds in his pocket, found himself a job, dutifully came back to India to collect his bride and returned to the Blighty where his wife found a good job and in 1975 Shyamal's elder child, a daughter, was born in England and mother Kalindi spent some time in England to help out the young parents. In due course, a son was born to Shyamal - both the children are apparently doctors in England - and the initial infrequent visits to the homeland changed and Shyamal would make regular visits to his parents thereafter.