{"id":17743,"date":"2025-04-11T10:24:24","date_gmt":"2025-04-11T04:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vasundharabooks.com\/shop\/uncategorized\/bondhu-my-father-my-friend\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T14:28:55","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T08:58:55","slug":"bondhu-my-father-my-friend","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/vasundharabooks.com\/hi\/shop\/biography\/bondhu-my-father-my-friend\/","title":{"rendered":"Bondhu &#8211; My Father, My Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A behind-the-scenes look at the life of filmmaker Mrinal Sen through the eyes of his son Kunal, who grew up immersed in the world of Indian cinema. \u201cNo one remembers when and why I started calling my father Bondhu. It was a strange way to address a father, as the word means \u2018friend\u2019 in Bengali. . . . As I got older, I became very self-conscious about such an odd name . . . and yet I cannot explain why I could not switch to the more acceptable Baba or something similar.\u201d Just as Kunal Sen, son of actor Gita Sen and filmmaker Mrinal Sen, was approaching adolescence, his father\u2019s cinematic celebrity was reaching new heights. In this memoir, Kunal reflects on growing up in a middle-class household in South Calcutta, where his father\u2019s Marxist beliefs and unrelenting urge \u201cto be challenged and contradicted\u201d often collided with the practical challenges of making a living. Through it all, what emerges is a picture of a family\u2019s unyielding commitment to the craft of cinema, the risks each of its members took, and their endearing sense of humor. Celebrating Mrinal Sen\u2019s birth centenary in 2023, Bondhu takes us on an intimate journey of a son attempting to reconcile his father\u2019s public and private selves.<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":17742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":""},"location":[8232,8231],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[1347],"product_tag":[10159],"class_list":{"0":"post-17743","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"location-jp","7":"location-mum","8":"product_cat-biography","9":"product_tag-updated","10":"pa_bind-paperback","11":"pa_book-author-kunal-sen","12":"pa_isbn-10-180309317x","13":"pa_isbn-13-10952","14":"pa_lang-english","15":"pa_no-pages-8834","16":"pa_pub-year-9225","17":"pa_publisher-seagull-books","19":"first","20":"instock","21":"featured","22":"shipping-taxable","23":"purchasable","24":"product-type-simple"},"locations":[{"id":8232,"name":"Jaipur","slug":"jp","quantity":"0"},{"id":8231,"name":"Mumbai","slug":"mum","quantity":"1"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vasundharabooks.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/17743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vasundharabooks.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vasundharabooks.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vasundharabooks.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17743"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vasundharabooks.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vasundharabooks.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vasundharabooks.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=17743"},{"taxonomy":"product_brand","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vasundharabooks.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_brand?post=17743"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vasundharabooks.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=17743"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vasundharabooks.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=17743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}