Writing about the place where you grew up is a bit like writing about your mum. If you are too effusive, people shake their heads: “The boy loves his mother”. If you try and be more objective, they again shake their heads: “There’s obviously some issue there”. What does it mean to photograph Bengal? What makes Bengal Bengal? There are, of course, answers. A land that stretches from the high mountains to the sea. A land of poets. Of romantics, of rebels. A land of festivals, baro mashe tero parbon, as we say in Bangla. Dignity amidst decay. Decay amidst great beauty. Like most clichés, there’s a nugget of truth in each. It’s true that many of us wrote poetry at some point in our lives, with mixed success — or unmixed unsuccess. It’s true that many of us flirted with revolutionary ideologies, sometimes without being able to separate between our desire for change in the world and a yearning for redemption from the deadening mundaneness of our lives. So did our parents, and their parents.…