Work at the VOA was arduous and boring. But I profited a lot from mixing with all sorts of people in America and reading books, journals and periodicals. I planned to write a book on the anti-establishment personalities in the USA and I started to read voraciously. America is a place where one can really grow if one wants to. The intellectual growth that I had in those five years in the USA has stood me in good stead in my later life.
I started to write a monthly feature for Desh: Durer Janla. But I had to adopt a different name to do that for I was told by my colleagues that I could not use my real name if I would write for journals and newspapers as long as I was in the VOA service. I adopted the name Manab Mitra. In addition to my monthly Desh feature I also started to write for Samar Sen’s Frontier. The articles I wrote for Frontier were strictly political while the Desh features were on various subjects. But there was always an anti-US government undertone.
Date:
09-04-09
