narratives of three generations of urban middle-class - eTheses ...

hadrasamaj’s constuction of Rabindranath Tagore as their symbolic capital and its
critique. Focus was also laid on their production and engagement with contemporary
music, poetry, satirical songs of love, and films on heterosexual and homosexual
relationships, its contextual reception and academic critiques of these narratives of
multi-textuality. Particularly they were interviewed to narrate on the questions and
themes that were gradually generating from within subjects’ narratives and from within
my cultural field of ethnography. In lieu of their professional capacity of detailed
engagement with these questions, knowledge was generated about their cultivated
perceptions on urban middle-class’ nature of ‘readership’ which then also informed
various research questions for exploration.
Of these 10 men, Anindyo Chatterjee and Chandril Bhattacharya are song writers of a
Bengali music band and political and literary critics; Rituparno Ghosh is a film maker
and actor; Alokanannda Roy is a dancer and theatre person; couple, Gauri Ghosh and
Partha Ghosh are poem reciters; Suchitra Bhattacharya, Pabitra Sakar and Ronjon
Bondopadhaya are novel writers; Moinaka Basu is a film critic and academician;
Prasanta Ray, Abhijit Mitra, and Shibaji Bondopaddhayay are academicians and cultural
critics.
The 28 women and the 28 men from ordinary field were selected through a method of
purposive sampling to ensure a strong bond of trust, friendship and familiarity with the
subjects. Sixty percent of this research sample was already known to me with some of
whom I shared a personal warm rapport in the capacity of their being friends, parents
and grandparents of friends, neighbours, teachers, family friends and well wishers. This
condition of sharing a dynamic of intimacy with my subjects was important as an
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