From His Bedroom to Katla Fish Curry, Preparations Galore Ahead of Abhijit Banerjee's Visit to Kolkata Home

Kolkata: Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee will come to his paternal home in the city on Tuesday to visit his 83-year-old mother after winning the global award.

Banerjee will be in the city for two days and his mother Nirmala Banerjee, an economist in her own right, is busy overseeing the last minute preparations to welcome him.

She said she is personally preparing the room where her elder son will stay at their home in an apartment.

Banerjee, who was declared to be winner of the Nobel Prize on October 14, is now in New Delhi. He will be at his home on October 23 and leave for the US early next morning, a family member said.

Nirmala Banerjee told reporters that she would be preparing fish items for food to welcome her Nobel laureate son.

"He loves fish and eats fish items whenever he is in Kolkata. I will prepare Katla fish curry and other fish items and some sweet dish," she said.

The family and his friends have decided not to make it a gala affair this time as he will be on a tight schedule. "He will be in the city in December-January and we are planning some big celebrations then," Banerjee's childhood friend Bappa Sen said.

"For now some of us who are his friends have decided to meet him and congratulate him in person," he said.

Kolkata Municipal Corporation Mayor Firhad Hakim will receive Abhijit Banerjee at Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport in the evening. There will be a grand welcome ceremony as hundreds of people are expected to greet Abhijit at the airport.

The state government has put up posters and banners on both the sides of road from Dum Dum Airport to his home in Ballygunge in South Kolkata to welcome him.

Banerjee, an Indian-born American professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has won the Nobel in economics for 2019, jointly with French-American Esther Duflo, his wife and Michael Kremer of Harvard University for "experimental approach to alleviating global poverty".

Banerjee did his schooling at South Point School and had graduated in economics from the famed Presidency College (now University) in the city.

On Saturday he had visited his alma mater Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, where he completed had completed his Masters.