The Barua line.
I didn't earn this name. The people who made it mean anything were filmmakers, folk singers, naturalists and people who gave their lives to elephants — not rulers in any sense I take pride in.
I keep their stories here to keep what they gave legible — and to stay a little worthy of carrying it forward. Conservation, folk culture, storytelling: the threads I work with now were theirs first.
Travelled alone to Europe in 1938. Chronicled Rajbangshi folk music, kept a naturalist's museum, and left the aristocracy to stand with the marginalised.
India's first woman mahout. Gave her life to understanding and protecting wild elephants.
Built the house and the family's conscience. A patron of Goalpariya folk culture who brought a Muslim folk master into the palace to teach his grandchildren, against the orthodoxy of his day.
Addressed as Raja; one of the great elephant men of his time. Much of his quieter work for the region survives only in family memory.
A legend of early Indian cinema. His 1935 Devdas set the template every later version has chased.
Carried the Bhawaiya of the riverlands — Goalpariya folk song — to the whole country.
The part nobody wrote down
Some of the best of this family never made it into any record. My father remembers a generation of quiet work — the patronage of artists the rest of society wouldn't touch, the help given without a ledger — that exists only in stories told over tea. I'm writing them down before they're gone.
My mother's side
For all the Barua stories, half of who I am comes from somewhere with no palace and no archive — a harder, quieter story of getting by and getting up. I haven't written it yet. It might be the one that matters most.
Matiabag · the breeze house
The house they built fell into neglect for decades. It's being restored now into a museum — an old thing, carefully brought forward. As good a description of what I'm trying to do as any.