Everyone's story is essentially connected to the history of a place, whether they are the descendants of people who were written about or those who were forgotten. In this book, there are many such descendants who recall titbits about their ancestors, illustrious or not. One man spoke about how his grandfather, a renowned Parliamentarian in the country's first cabinet, pointed out to the then prime minister of India that there was a grievous error in the way the national emblem was replicated and how the latter turned down a request for a correction claiming that it would cost too much money. Another woman talked about how her great grandmother, a poor villager, was sent off by the British East India Company to work in sugarcane plantations as a bonded, indentured labourer in faraway Guyana.

Their voices enrich the narrative beyond measure and if there is just one valuable thing in this story of Bengal, it is this. They provide the individual fingerprints of a story that is otherwise much-documented, much-thumbed.