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Jack Neale at One Hundred

By Dr Hirak Sen
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  I am grateful to my friend Roger Hobbs for sending me the photographs of Jack Neale’s hundredth birthday party, held on 16 January 2026, somewhere in England. I am far away in Kolkata, yet the digital photographs travelled in a trice. They stopped me for a while. Jack Neale, displaying the note from the King and Queen, with Joan To see a man at one hundred is a rare and fine thing. To see Jack at one hundred is finer still. The framed note from the King and Queen says it plainly and says enough. He earned it. In one photograph, Jack is with Joan. She looks wonderful. There is ease in them both, the kind that comes from years lived well together. In another, Jack is with his daughter, Susan, and his brother, aged one hundred and two. It is a family at peace. That settles the matter entirely. Longevity, it seems, runs deep in the Neales. Jack, his daughter, Susan, and his 102-year-old brother I first met Jack in 1965. I was a young PhD scholar then, finding my way in the Structural...
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DECEMBER IS THE CRUELEST MONTH

By Dr Hirak Sen
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 T. S. Eliot begins The Waste Land with the austere provocation, “April is the cruellest month.” I have carried that line with me for decades. Eliot remains my favourite poet, and this poem my most revisited text, each reading yielding fresh meanings, like sediment stirred by a returning tide. Yet poetry, for all its authority, must sometimes yield to place. Where I live, in Kolkata, and across much of India, it is not April that deserves Eliot’s epithet. It is December. Here, December is the cruelest month. In December, the sky sinks low, like a heavy lid. Atmospheric inversion traps air near the Earth's surface, allowing pollution to settle and stagnate. Smoke lingers. Dust drifts but never disperses. Visibility dims, as though the city were seen through breath on glass. The air thickens, turns coarse, almost chewable. Cold does not cleanse. It constricts. To breathe becomes an effort, and then a risk. Kolkata's Air Pollution in December - photo courtesy https://bit.l...
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THE SOLILOQUY OF A WEEPING STADIUM - Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan

By Dr Hirak Sen
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 Tonight I speak in a voice unsteady and low. For on the thirteenth day of December, in the year 2025, I was wounded. Not by time, not by weather, but suddenly and grievously, in a manner I had never foreseen. Lionel Messi, the luminous pilgrim of the game, had stepped upon my soil, and the multitude poured into me like a river in spate, swollen by longing and devotion. When my galleries brim with bodies and breath, when human pulse becomes my rhythm and their murmur my wind, I am most alive. I was built for this communion. They are my purpose, my animating force, the breath within my concrete lungs. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu, and West Bengal Governor Uma Shankar Dikshit inspect a model of the stadium in 1984 I am no ordinary amphitheatre. I was imagined with patience, shaped with reflection, raised with reverence. Concrete and steel are my skeleton and veins. In the 1980s, ships crossed seas from South Korea bearing cement for my making. R...
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The Times of India Story on My Contribution to the Design and Construction of Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan

By Dr Hirak Sen
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The Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan was refurbished during the period 2015-2017 to prepare it to host many matches, including the final and semi-final of the FIFA U17 2017. I was a member of the committee that oversaw that refurbishment.  Earlier, during the period 1978-1987, my firm, H K Sen and Associates, in collaboration with another consulting firm and other institutions, prepared the design for the three-tier stadium and managed its construction to ensure quality.   The Times of India, Kolkata Edition, dated 7th October 2017, published a three-quarter page story on my contribution to the design and construction of VYBK. Here is that story. 
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Farewell to a Friend

By Dr Hirak Sen
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Today, we bid farewell to Dipak Dutta , a cherished companion whose friendship graced my life for over four decades. In the quiet hours of this morning, he left us from his hospital bed, leaving behind not only memories but a legacy of joy, camaraderie, and integrity.  Dipak and I - Calcutta Club Nababarsha Evening 1991 Dipak was more than a neighbor and a friend—he was a man of substance. A distinguished chartered accountant , a passionate golfer , and above all, a consummate social being who brought people together with ease and grace. His leadership as Past President of the Calcutta Club remains etched in history, not merely for the title he held, but for the spirit of fellowship he embodied.  I recall that unforgettable evening vividly, decades ago, when Dipak triumphed in the presidential election of the Calcutta Club. Clad in a lemon-yellow T-shirt, he stood at the men’s bar, radiant with cheer, offering drinks with a smile that lit up the room. That moment captured the...
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Reflections on the Short Life of Srijoni Mitra (Chini) By Dr. Hirak Sen - Date: February 9, 2025

By Dr Hirak Sen
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  [Note 1 - regarding the delay in publication: I wrote this piece during the three weeks ending March 5, 2024, shortly after Srijoni passed away on February 9, 2024. However, Srijoni’s mother, Nayan, asked me to postpone its publication until she has time to process the event's impact. Accordingly, I withheld the publication. Today, February 9, 2025, on Chini’s first death anniversary, Nayan asked to publish it. So, here it is].     [Note 2: This piece contains hyper/video links. It reads better on a laptop]. Overarching attributes: I will remember Srijoni Mitra -- or Chini, to me and her other family members, friends, and classmates -- as a young person with multiple attributes. She possessed an unbounded curiosity, innate empathy, inherent socializing skills, self-effacing leadership qualities, and courage to be resolutely herself. I will remember her ingrained abilities to sing, dance, and write poems. Simultaneously, she excelled in karate. She studied behav...
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Fifty years of membership of the Institution of Civil Engineers, London

By Dr Hirak Sen
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Figure 1 The library of the Institution of Civil Engineers - I sat here for  my membership qualifying examination in 1970 - photo by my wife Kalpana Sen, 2014 Fifty years ago, in the spring of 1970, I sat for the membership qualifying examination of the Institution of Civil Engineers London. I sat in the library of the Institution, at this table, and on this chair. Since then, the Institution will have refurbished the furniture. But this is where I sat and took my examination Figure 1 . On that occasion, I was the only candidate for the membership qualifying examination. I sat in one of the corners of the vast library. Aside from me, there were a couple of women who worked there. I could not see them but could only hear their infrequent whispers, and the silence suited me fine.   Having earned my PhD in structural engineering at Imperial College London, the previous year, I had fulfilled the educational base requirements for membership. (Then the Institution did not recognis...
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