But much of my childhood was, in fact, spent in Dhaka, and I began my formal education there, at St. Gregory's School.
But the idea that I should be a teacher and a researcher of some sort did not vary over the years.
Calcutta itself, despite its immensely rich intellectual and cultural life, provided many constant reminders of the proximity of unbearable economic misery, and not even an elite college could ignore its continuous and close presence.
During three childhood years (between the ages of 3 and 6) I was in Mandalay in Burma, where my father was a visiting professor.
From the mid-1970s, I also started work on the causation and prevention of famines.
However, I soon moved to Santiniketan, and it was mainly in Tagore's school that my educational attitudes were formed.
I have not had any serious non-academic job.
I left Delhi, in 1971, shortly after Collective Choice and Social Welfare was published in 1970.
I loved that breadth, and also the fact that in interpreting Indian civilization itself, its cultural diversity was much emphasized.
I was born in a University campus and seem to have lived all my life in one campus or another.
Indeed, I went on to write a number of papers in philosophy, particularly in epistemology, ethics and political philosophy.
It is also very engaging - and a delight - to go back to Bangladesh as often as I can, which is not only my old home, but also where some of my closest friends and collaborators live and work.
My family is from Dhaka - now the capital of Bangladesh.
People's identities as Indians, as Asians, or as members of the human race, seemed to give way - quite suddenly - to sectarian identification with Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh communities.
Social choice theory related importantly to a more widespread interest in aggregation in economic assessment and policy making (related to poverty, inequality, unemployment, real national income, living standards).
The curriculum of the school did not neglect India's cultural, analytical and scientific heritage, but was very involved also with the rest of the world.
The educational excellence of Presidency College was captivating. My interest in economics was amply rewarded by quite outstanding teaching.
The Prize Fellowship gave me four years of freedom to do anything I liked (no questions asked), and I took the radical decision of studying philosophy in that period.
The progress of the pure theory of social choice with an expanded informational base was, in this sense, quite crucial for my applied work as well.
The student community of Presidency College was also politically most active.
When the Nobel award came my way, it also gave me an opportunity to do something immediate and practical about my old obsessions, including literacy, basic health care and gender equity, aimed specifically at India and Bangladesh.
While I am interested both in economics and in philosophy, the union of my interests in the two fields far exceeds their intersection.
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