JUDGMENT :

Sanjib Banerjee, J.

Life in the Sen family of 29, Ballygunge Place was no different in the 1960s through the end of the century than in many other Bengali families in the then Calcutta: two daughters of the family were married off and the son went abroad in the hope of greener pastures. Paramesh Chandra Sen retired as a middle-level employee in the Refugee Rehabilitation Department of the State Government. His wife Kalindi was with Life Insurance Corporation of India and signed off as a Development Officer. The paltry salary of Paramesh and the reasonable commission that Kalindi earned was supplemented by the rental income from an outhouse or annexe in the ancestral property at Ballygunge. The family was not affluent, but life was not difficult for parents Sens as they brought up their son and three daughters.

2. By the time eldest son Shyamal left the country to try his luck in England in 1966, daughters Debjani and Sanjukta had already been married off for more than five years and Paramesh had retired from his meagre government service with apparently no pension in those days. Eldest daughter Debjani moved out of the Ballygunge Place house after her marriage, spent a few