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).
Nayantara Sahgal, an educated, widely-travelled member of the Indian elite of the 1940s, is the daughter of the classic scholar Ranjit Sitaram Pandit, and former ambassador to the United Nations Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, niece of India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and cousin of India's third prime minister Indira Gandhi.[1]
The title Prison and Chocolate Cake comes from an incident in the early 1930s[2][3] which Sahgal describes as her earliest political memory, one day at tea when she was age three.[4] Chocolate cake was a treat that day as usually they would have bread and butter.[5] When her elder sister Lekha asked their mother why police had arrived at their home during tea, their mother "explained that they had come to take Papu [their father] to prison, but that it was nothing to worry about, that he wanted to go. So we kissed him goodbye and watched him leave; talking cheerfully to the policeman".[4] Describing the incident as "far from unpleasant", she recounts in the book that "We ate our chocolate cake and, in our infant minds, prison became in some mysterious way, associated with chocolate cake".[2][4] The book is the first of Sahgal's autobiographies, one of two of her early works based on her childhood memories covering the years 1943 to 1948.[3][6] It was written during the winter of 1952–53 when she was 25, married, and having two young children.[7]
Prison and Chocolate Cake was first published in 1954 by Victor Gollancz Ltd (London),[8] and by Alfred A. Knopf (New York).[9] Both versions have over 200 pages beginning with a dedication to Sahgal's parents.[8][9] There is a preface, contents page, a listing of the eight illustrations in the book, and a glossary.[8][9] The Alfred A. Knopf edition has an additional index and a section on who is who in the book.[9] The book has 20 chapters and regularly interspersed are footnotes with explanations, some cited with references.[8][9] It was translated into Hindi,[10] and French in 1957.[11]