Playing with Fuzziness and Ambiguity in Patterns—Challenges and Achievements

Abstract

I was born in Calcutta on September 13, 1950, the second of five siblings, to a very ordinary family of modest means. My father started as a clerk in Sree Saraswaty Press (a private concern at that time, now an undertaking of the Government of West Bengal) in Calcutta and retired, as far as I can remember, in 1978, as an accountant earning five hundred rupees per month. So I was well aware of the hurdles I would have to face in completing school education, let alone higher studies. I am extremely fortunate in that my parents supported me wholeheartedly in my pursuit of a Ph.D. degree, making great personal sacrifices in the process. I studied in four different schools. While the first three are in central Calcutta, the last one, Ariadaha Kalachand High School, is located in the northern suburbs of the city. I studied there for about four years and passed the Higher Secondary Examination from that school in 1966. Of those crucial four years, I spent three in my mamar-bari (house of maternal grandparents), as my parents’ new residence, after relocating from central Calcutta, was rather inconveniently located for a safe daily commute. While the relocation from school to school and from an urban residence to a suburban one was primarily due to financial constraints, they did cause some amount of cultural, social, and environmental shock.