The first time I saw the river Diana was in 1986, and after all these years, I still don't know for whom it was named. That Sunday, in 1986, we were four young and happy people on the river bank. My newly married husband held my hand and helped me descend to the river while his bachelor friends looked away discreetly. 'Mohan, the married man!' they must have been wanting to yell, like a character in V.S.Naipul's A House For Mr. Biswas, but they were too sweet to rib him in front of me.
Sandeep Ghosh was new in the Dooars, like me, but he and Saumitro Sen were old friends, as were Saumitro and Mohan, my husband. Soon we were all talking like old friends, that day at the riverside, and we all sang together in the car on our way back. The song, 'Yeh Dil Na Hota Bechaara' by Kishore Kumar.
The reason for singing that song : we had just started getting Doordarshan in the Dooars, and were happily looking forward to watching the film 'Jewel Theif ', which features the song, that night.
