The fairly intimate launch of Anjana Dutt’s memoir, My Family, Leopards and My Litchi Tree rekindled memories, making the evening at The Saturday Club nostalgic and celebratory. The multi-hyphenate Dutt’s launch was attended by yesteryear diva Moon Moon Sen and thespian Sumit Lai Roy who were equally enamoured by Dutt’s documentation of events from her life in chapters that conjured vivid memories of their childhood as well. It reminded Sen of her time spent with her family in Santiniketan and made her drift to ‘her Calcutta’ which has changed so much.

“Her earlier books were different and more serious and this is more comfortable and it did take me back to the occasion when my grandparents came to Calcutta from Bangladesh and settled in a maatir bari in Santiniketan. They were a big family... I remember holes in the wall from where snakes would come out and dida would just go about her business undistributed, cooking.... All those flavours and memories of maachher chutney, dadu going for walks... came rushing to me when I started reading her book,” said a nostalgic Sen draped in a lovely blue bandhej sari.

While Anjana’s generation revisited their past, the younger generation surely got a taste of their parents' and grandparents’ idyllic childhood which is now taken over by smartphones and other new technology. “So when I started writing the stories and published a few on Facebook, to my pleasure and surprise, I found a lot of people on my list resonated with it. I spoke about a life that does not exist any longer. The old people relived their childhood while the younger children wondered at the simple pleasures that we enjoyed,” said Dutt, who is a poet, writer, filmmaker, graphic designer, and photographer, filling the venue with more stories that paint the picture of a carefree, relaxed and much-desired life.