7. Road to the Past

Kavita Puri goes to India to meet some of the last survivors of the 1943 Bengal famine. She looks for traces of how war and famine impacted Kolkata and then travels from the city along the road to where the story of famine begins.

Kavita goes deep into the countryside and the jungle in West Bengal to find people who lived through that devastating time more than 80 years ago. These are voices that are almost never recorded and have never been broadcast before. For the past year and a half Kavita has been asking why there is no memorial to the three million people who died. But then in the Bengal jungle she finally finds it – it’s not what she expected.

Presenter : Kavita Puri Series Producer: Ant Adeane Editor: Emma Rippon Sound design and mix: Eloise Whitmore Production Coordinator: Brenda Brown

With thanks to Manoshi Barua for her translation work and to her, Bhasker Patel, Moazzem Hossain and Jesmin Ahmed for voicing up the Bengali-language interviews.