No. 11 · Filed 9 September 2026

Memoirs & field notes · Est. 1943

The collected memoirs

Dr Scion Sarma — chemist of the laboratory, the chemical trade and the tea leaf — recalls a life's work one story at a time. Each memoir is set with its plates, read aloud, and talked over in Odia and Bengali.

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A morning still life on a scrubbed wooden table at a window, potted geraniums and ferns on the sill and brick terraces soft beyond. A wide white bone-china teacup with a thin golden rim stands on its saucer, filled with clear amber tea, steam rising; its bone-china lid rests tilted ajar on the rim. Beside it, a complete transparent glass teapot — glass lid, handle and spout — holds golden tea in which whole tea leaves have unfolded and drift fully open. A scatter of dry, wiry dark leaves lies on the table near the pot. No people, no milk, no sugar.

The LeafKolkata — 1 January 2018

In Search of Fresh Darjeeling Tea

In 2018, a cup of Darjeeling — no milk, no sugar, the whole leaves unfolding in a glass teapot — made a convert of an English coffee-drinker at my son's breakfast table in London. His search for a reliable supply led me to my friend Tapan, once of the Tea Board of India in London, who burst into laughter: the last person to ask him that question was His Highness Prince Philip, in the garden of Buckingham Palace.

Read aloud · 8 min

The ledger

Eleven memoirs, a life in fragments

PortraitsThe silent murder of the kendu leaf agitationIn January 1956, the students of Cuttack launched a spirited agitation demanding the inclusion of Seraikela and Kharsawan in the then State of Orissa. On one fateful day, the police dispersed the demonstrators with tear gas and opened fire. Sunil De was killed. He was no political activist, but merely an onlooker like us. The agitation eventually faded as political priorities changed. Yet Sunil De's death remains a poignant reminder of the price ordinary people sometimes pay in public movements, while political agendas shift like sands with time.Cuttack · Read aloud · 8 min · Discussion in Odia and Bengali

PortraitsThe Banjo that Defended JusticeIn December 1963, a shortcut across the Park Circus Maidan on the way to a Calcutta hospital led him into a crowd around a makeshift stage, where a tall, lanky foreigner with a long-necked banjo — a name he heard that day for the first time — had a sea of young Calcuttans singing "We Shall Overcome."Calcutta · Read aloud · 5 min

The LaboratoryMy introduction to the chemistry of blissIn 1964, at IIT Kharagpur, a research fellow overdosed on bhang at a Holi celebration. His research guide, Dr Achintya Kamal Sen, instead of rebuking him for his absence from the laboratory the next day, introduced him thoroughly to the newly isolated active component of the leaf that causes hallucinations. A lesson that lingered and culminated in a meeting with the inventor of anandamide, the body's own molecule that causes bliss, three decades later.Kharagpur · Read aloud · 15 min · Discussion in Bengali

PortraitsThe dogfight over KharagpurOn the morning of 7 September 1965, a research fellow walking back from the library at IIT Kharagpur looked up to see one jet in furious pursuit of another — and the following Sunday sat down to lunch at Kalaikunda with the Hunter pilot who had taken on four Pakistani Sabres, split from his wingman against every rule of air combat, and kept the bombs off the campus.Kharagpur · Read aloud · 14 min

The LaboratoryThe forgotten achievementAt the Chemistry Laboratory at IIT Kharagpur, a young researcher displayed extraordinary courage and ingenuity by designing and fabricating his own high-pressure equipment and then risking his life to conduct its first trial. He mastered a difficult frontier of experimental chemistry, yet circumstances took him away from the laboratory. The experiment survived in my memory, but the researcher who dared to perform it was largely forgotten.Kharagpur · Read aloud · 15 min

PortraitsDhyan Chand in CuttackIn January 1969, early in a coaching assignment that had brought him to Cuttack, Major Dhyan Chand — the Wizard of Hockey — sat all but unrecognised on a college wall, watching the sports day, until an old student of the college knew his face and had the legend brought to the dais.Cuttack · Read aloud · 14 min

In TransitA helpful subordinateOn the Kalka Mail out of Old Delhi Railway Station, in the autumn of 1971, a Sikh intelligence officer in mufti recounts how a disobedient subordinate spared him a humiliation — and hands a chemist, a week into his first job in industry, the management lesson of a lifetime.On the Kalka Mail · Read aloud · 7 min · Discussion in Odia and Bengali

In TransitWhen even strangers were trustedAt Meenambakkam Airport in May 1973, a security guard hands a passing stranger the key to his bicycle and directions to a proper Tamil meal — an ordinary kindness from the days when even strangers were trusted, and a return three days later, toy in hand, that ends in the worst way.Meenambakkam Airport · Read aloud · 4 min

In TransitThe Blue MercedesAt the Ashoka Hotel in 1978, the Minister is held up in a Cabinet meeting, an impatient former President wants to know the extent of the delay, and the Association's Secretary rushed to the Parliament House — in a Managing Director's blue Mercedes-Benz limousine that swings open the heavy gates of the Parliament House no entry pass could.New Delhi · Read aloud · 6 min

PortraitsBhogirath, the dahibara makerRaghu Dahibara's death carries a chemist back fifty years to the Cuttack school gate — and to a blind octogenarian who can still explain, in his own way, why the taste will not come back.Cuttack · Read aloud · 6 min · Discussion in Odia

The LeafIn Search of Fresh Darjeeling TeaIn 2018, a cup of Darjeeling — no milk, no sugar, the whole leaves unfolding in a glass teapot — made a convert of an English coffee-drinker at my son's breakfast table in London. His search for a reliable supply led me to my friend Tapan, once of the Tea Board of India in London, who burst into laughter: the last person to ask him that question was His Highness Prince Philip, in the garden of Buckingham Palace.The current lead · Kolkata · Read aloud · 8 min

বিজ্ঞান ও কাব্য · science and poetry

The Laboratory (2)The Leaf (1)Portraits (5)In Transit (3)

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