A railway man has authored two books on the Raj.
The second one, titled Imperial Bureaucracy, is due to hit the stands before the end of this year.
Set in the twilight of the Raj, it tells the story of cogs in the giant wheel of the empire; of both British and Indian men who were instrumental in running the country
as it inched towards Independence.
The author, Satyaki Nath, is the chief operations manager of Metro Railway. His first book, Nation or the Empire: Indian Civilians at the Crossroads, chronicles the pioneering sons of the soil who entered the Indian Civil Service (ICS).
Metro Railway is now operational in five corridors, and the combined length of the network is around 75km. When does the man at the operational helm of Calcutta’s transport lifeline find time to write, or do the extensive research that is a prerequisite for books of this scale?
Nath answered by referring to Pakistani scientist Abdus Salam, who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1979.
“Salam had gone to an international conference. He went missing. A frantic search finally traced him to a mosque where he was praying. He had said he needed peace of mind to do science. Similarly, I need peace of mind for what I do. Writing gives me that peace of mind,” Nath told this newspaper.
His second book was formally launched in August this year.
Revisiting a turbulent and momentous slice of history, Nath has interspersed the book with delightful anecdotes.
In life, Nath is passionate about football and believes in the Vedanta philosophy
of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda.