A book talk by Chandana Dey: Kotia to Ketaki: At Home, Away from Home

In this t​alk, the speaker will present her book Kotia to Ketaki: At Home, Away from Home (Writers Workshop, Kolkata, September 2025).​ 

The book consists of two parts. The first is the memoir My Life, written by the speaker’s Russian-born grandmother, Ketaki Sarkar (née Kotia Jonas). Born in 1907 in an upper-middle-class Russian-Jewish family, she narrates her experiences of the Russian Revolution, Civil War, and Famine. After moving to Lithuania and Switzerland, Kotia met and married a Bengali physician Nitai De Sarkar. In 1934, they relocate to India, where Rabindranath Tagore renamed her “Ketaki” at Santiniketan. The second part of the book offers historical context on Jonas’ family from the mid-nineteenth century. Spanning Russia, Lithuania, Switzerland, and India, the book explores themes of cultural identity, displacement, women’s education, and liberation movements.​​

Chandana Dey studied modern Indian History from Jawaharlal Nehru University and International Affairs in the School of Advanced Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University. She has worked in the field of editing and publishing with an independent publishing house in New Delhi. She worked as the Coordinator of the AHIMSA social development programme in ten villages situated around Santiniketan, West Bengal for a quarter of a century. Kotia to Ketaki: At Home, Away from Home is her first book.​​