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SUBRATA DASGUPTA - SALAAM DERBY COUNTY.....AND STANLEY MATTHEWS

Derby today is a multi-cultural city which embraces ethnicity in all its many facets. Yet it was not always so. Not until the 1960s did Asian immigrants begin to arrive in Derby in really significant numbers. Here Peter Seddon makes the acquaintance of one of the early pioneers - Subrata Dasgupta - whose 1950s childhood in Derby inspired him to write a touching memoir of his early life, one in which Derby County make a surprising but significant appearance.

A photograph of 'Gupta' with his boyhood hero Stanley Matthews features on the cover of his 2006 memoir about his childhood in England. Most of it was spent in Derby, where until the age of 15 he was a pupil at Bemrose Grammar School

Subrata Dasgupta in more mature guise - eminent scholar and critically acclaimed author living in Louisiana, USA

Subrata Dasgupta was born in Calcutta in 1943, the only child of well-educated and refined parents. His doctor father was a specialist surgeon and his mother a singer with a considerable reputation in West Bengal.

When Subrata was six years old, the family took the bold decision to forge a new life far from home. In 1950 they boarded the S.S. Jal Jawahar in Bombay to embark on the three week journey to England.

They spent their first few months in post-war London in a tiny flat, before moving briefly to Nottingham and then to Derby, the place in Subrata's childhood which he was to call home.

Despite the cultural difficulties which he encountered, Dasgupta adapted well. He passed the eleven-plus and went to Bemrose Grammar School, where he became a popular boy known to all as 'Gupta'.

Yet all too soon his Derby childhood came to an abrupt end. In 1958, when Gupta was 15, his parents decided that the family would return to Calcutta.

But Gupta never forgot his Derby childhood, and almost 50 years later, in 2006, his touching memoir of that time was published by Granta Books to great critical acclaim. The book was given the catchy title Salaam Stanley Matthews.

It is not 'a football book' per se, but rather the story of a young life in which Gupta's childhood love of the game forms a running thread. During his few years in Derby he became a committed fan of Derby County, and watched with some dismay as his beloved Rams sunk to the Third Division during the time he followed them.

His reaction to the set-back was typical of all boys the world over. He remained loyal to his home town team but adopted another from football's higher echelons as his 'second team' - a tricky dilemma neatly resolved.

Gupta chose Blackpool, the boys in garish tangerine shirts whose distinctive brand of 'Britishness' readily seduced an impressionable young mind. And of course the 'Seasiders' had a rather useful winger who epitomised the excitement of football in all its glory - Stanley Matthews.

Before his return to India, Gupta experienced a dream encounter. Whilst on holiday in Blackpool he met Stanley Matthews and was photographed with his hero. Naturally he cherished the snap, and it is that very picture which appears on the front cover of Salaam Stanley Matthews.

One reviewer described the book thus:

'It is a charming and rather sad memoir that will mean most to the earliest Asian immigrants into Britain and probably as much to white readers of late middle-age whose childhood and early youth spanned the 50s and early 60s. The author tells a plain but poignant tale of his own childhood through this rather innocent time - at least by today's standards.

Subrata describes a child's world without much serious racism, where he happily made pals with his white school contemporaries, leaving him wistful and sad when he had to say goodbye after his parents decided in his early teens to return to Calcutta.

Their experience had not been an unhappy one but they always detected a reserve in their relations with white friends, and when his father realised that his promotion was being blocked on what we would now call 'race grounds', that was the decisive moment in turning their attention 'back home'. It is a simple, unaffected tale, a little gem in fact.'

The Guardian were more succinct still.

'Subrata Dasgupta's touching memoir is a fascinating recreation of the experience of being a small brown boy in the very white world of England half a century ago'.

So how did the boy from Bemrose Grammar School fare after his brief but formative sojourn in Derby?

Let us judge for ourselves. In 1967 he gained a 1st Class Honours Degree in Metallurgy from the University of Calcutta. He then elected not to remain in India permanently. Nor did he return long-term to England. Once more he travelled afar to a 'new land'. And again - older and more experienced now - he adapted well.

By 1976 he had attained both an M.Sc and PhD in Computer Science at the University of Alberta, Canada. And at the time his memoir was published in 2006 he was Professor of History and Director of the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, USA.

Now a senior scholar there approaching 'retirement age', he is considered one of the most eminent authorities in his field, with 11 books and over 70 academic papers to his name.

As success stories go, that of Subrata Dasgupta is a particularly heartening one - a ready reminder that determination and hard-work are the only passports really required to make one's way in life.

When 'little Gupta' got on the boat to England in 1950 - apprehensive and nervous as he entered the 'unknown' - he knew not a single word of English.

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County:  Derbyshire

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