nandana dev sen is in kolkata at a time when the city and its neighbouring districts are reeling under the impact of the third covid wave but for the actorauthoractivist this is a homecoming worth the long long wait and anguish while her mother nabaneeta dev sens birth anniversary today is an occasion for her to revisit her intense and impactful poems about love loss longing and identity this visit has also taken her to the sunderbans where she is working with children orphaned by the pandemic and cyclones in a freewheeling chat with ct nandana talks about some of the most difficult and delightful memories of her wonder years and her exceptional bond with kolkata excerptstell us a bit about your work for child protection and what takes you to the sunderbansi am spearheading a programme with a child rights ngo to protect the most vulnerable children of my beloved bengal orphaned by covid and the cyclones we had started with a plan to take care of 200 orphans and needed 72 lakh to protect them for a year until we were able to place them in a safe environment i was touched by the incredibly strong response to this initiative because of which we crossed 1 crore and raised over 50 lakh more as a result 315 kids can be now supported through this programme thanks to the generosity of many organisations and individuals i have just come back from spending two wonderful days in the sunderbans playing with the most resilient children reading aloud to them speaking with youth leaders consulting with the affected families and the gram panchayats in the three decades of my work as an activist for child protection i have always worked on the ground so it is great to be back at the grassroots level once again after this enforced period of longdistance advocacyyour trip to kolkata this time is also to celebrate your mothers bengali poems some of which you have translated you have talked about how nabaneeta in her prose could laugh at herself whereas in her poetry she was unafraid to cry could you elaborate on this aspect of nabaneetas writingmy mother had left kolkata as an incredibly glamorous person a brilliant student on her way to harvard engaged to someone on the brink of becoming a star she was the darling of kolkata her parents were super celebrities literary luminaries close to tagore both my parents were in fact named by rabindranath ma had already published a celebrated book of poems she was also a visual artist who had a lot of admirers when she came back a few years later with two young children and a marriage that was disintegrating she tried to put the pieces of her life together it was a scandal even in her circle of liberal openly radical progressive friends no one really knew anyone who was divorced upon her return poetry took an even more central and visceral place in her