The Tree Within: Octavio Paz’s Years in India
Date: 27 November 2025
Time: 5:30 - 7:00 PM
Venue: KCC, Library
As part of AMI Arts Festival 2025, KCC Library presents Indranil Chakravarty for a reading and conversation on his latest book The Tree Within: Octavio Paz’s Years in India with Prof. Samik Bandyopadhyay and orator Chandril Bhattacharya.
Drawing on multilingual archives, declassified diplomatic files, letters, and interviews, Chakravarty reconstructs the Mexican Nobel laureate’s profound engagement with India. Paz’s tenure as ambassador in the 1960s was a period of transformation—marked by intellectual friendships, encounters with Indian philosophy, and a love he called his “second birth.” This intimate portrait blends biography, cultural history, and literary criticism to illuminate the deep exchanges between India and the world.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Indranil Chakravarty has taught film history and screenwriting over two decades at film institutes in India and abroad, and has made several documentaries. After a BSc from Presidency College in Calcutta, he studied film direction at Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV (EICTV) in Havana, and earned PhD in film from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. He has published extensively in international research journals about biopics, literary biography and cosmopolitanism. His earlier book publications include The New Latin American Cinema, India’s Audiovisual Market: An Analysis, and one in Spanish titled, Redescubriendo a Tagore (about the Tagore discourse in Spanish-language literatures). Currently, he is a Homi Bhabha Fellow.
Samik Bandyopadhyay (b. 1940, Calcutta) is a distinguished editor and critic of film, theatre, literature, and art. A graduate of the University of Calcutta with an MA in English, he taught at Rabindra Bharati University before joining Oxford University Press (1973–82). Choosing independent scholarship and tutoring, he continued editing with Seagull and Thema, shaping modern Indian cultural criticism.
ABOUT THE BOOK
The Tree Within is the enchanting story of Octavio Paz’s passionate love-affair with India where he served as Mexico’s ambassador in the 1960s. Immersing himself in the country’s rich cultural life and contemplative traditions, Paz travelled widely, forged deep friendships with some of India’s finest minds, and produced several of his most inspired poetry and essays. It was here that he met the love of his life and experienced what he called his ‘second birth’. In this richly textured and erudite work, Chakravarty reconstructs the inner journey of the poet by delving into multilingual archives, declassified diplomatic files, personal letters, and intimate interviews. Blending biography, cultural history, and literary criticism, The Tree Within is a luminous testament to the enduring alchemy between India and the world through one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.
