From the biography: When Jagadish Chandra Bose’s father put his young son under an ex-pirate’s care

Bose’s father was the District Magistrate of Faridpur in the Bengal Presidency. His residence was burnt down by a gang of dacoits to avenge the capture and imprisonment of their leader. The Elder Bose then moved with his family to a larger and better fortified place, very close to a creek. The mighty Padma River releases a stream westward, which takes the shape of a sickle and circumambulates the town of Faridpur before flowing south.

The little Bose developed a friendship with this stream that flowed under an old wooden bridge at the end of the large meadow in front of their house. Every evening he would go and sit at the edge of the pool observing the moving water, circling an obstruction at one place and gushing rapidly through a narrow channel formed between two fallen tree trunks at another. When the darkness thickened and the din and bustle became silent, he could hear many words in the burble song of the water.

While re-enacting scenes that he had seen in the jatras, the open-air musical dramas performed at local village fairs, he would mimic:

‘River, where do you come from?’
‘The matted hair of Shiva.’
‘And where do you go, River?’
‘To the feet of Shiva.’

This was young Bose’s...

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