 First US edition, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1954. | |
| Author | Nayantara Sahgal |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Memoir |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf (New York), Victor Gollancz Ltd (London) |
Publication date | 1954 |
| Followed by | A Time to be Happy (1958) |
Prison and Chocolate Cake is the first of two early memoirs by Nayantara Sahgal, first published by Alfred A. Knopf (New York) and Victor Gollancz (London) in 1954, and includes her childhood experiences of her family during the Indian independence movement in the 1930s and '40s. It was written during the winter of 1952–53 when she was 25, married and with two young children.
The title is based on an incident in the early 1930s when Sahgal, at age three, witnessed police arrive to take her father to prison. At the time, the family were having chocolate cake for tea, a treat that day instead of the usual bread and butter. Central to her story are her father, the classic scholar Ranjit Sitaram Pandit, her mother, the former ambassador to the United Nations Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, and her uncle, Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister. Prison sentences for several family members became more frequent and Sahgal's memories of them increasingly unpleasant as she was expected to stay composed and not show her distress. At the age of 12 in 1939, she tried to understand the concept of non-violence at the onset of the Second World War, through letters to her father in Jail. In 1943, she was sent with her sister to the US to complete her education. Whilst there, her father died in prison in India. After completing her studies at Wellesley, she returned to India in 1947 shortly after independence. The book ends with the assassination of Gandhi in 1948.
The book has been used as a source for the study of women in history, and provides insights into how the politics of the 1930s and '40s in India affected the Nehru children. It was followed by A Time to be Happy (1958).