It was on 1 June 2026, in the little Scottish village of Dirleton, a few hours away from the home of the Nobel Prize-nominated Esperanto poet, William Auld, that I received news of the untimely passing of the celebrated linguist, Esperantist and polymath, Probal Dasgupta. Professor Dasgupta had been fond of joking about most everything and I had initially believed that this too was some sort of joke.

For someone who had spent most of his life studying constructed languages, the idea of constructing his own death would certainly have amused him. The flood of social media posts and the exchange of messages among Esperantists and linguists from across the world soon confirmed that this was no joke. Probal Dasgupta passed away in his sleep in the early hours of June 1, at the age of 72, leaving behind unfinished conversations with those who loved and admired him. Born in Calcutta in 1953 to academic parents, Probal Dasgupta’s earliest years were spent in Ithaca, New York.

His father, the late Arun Kumar Dasgupta, was a historian, primarily of the Dutch colonial world and had taught history at Presidency College, Calcutta and at Burdwan University. In 1957, he began his doctoral study at Cornell University’s Faculty of History. His partner, the social psychologist Manashi Dasgupta, and their five-year-old son (then called Mukur, who was later to change his own name to Probal in consultation with his parents) followed him to Cornell. In 1962, Arun Kumar Dasgupta submitted a thesis entitled ‘Acheh in Indonesian Trade and Politics: 1600–1641,’ which studied the altering political attitudes of western Indonesian kings in response to the arrival of the English and Dutch to early 17th Century Indonesia.

Probal Babu’s own memories of this time were filled with wonder at his father’s ability to decipher the characteristic handwriting of 17th Century Dutchmen — a feat beyond the standard printed Dutch that he also learned at this time — in order to consult letters sent to the Netherlands by Dutch sailors from Indonesia and preserved at the Hague. While he was admiring of his historian father, much of Probal Babu’s time in Ithaca was spent in the company of his mother, Manashi Dasgupta.

Her own doctoral thesis at Cornell, ‘Some Determinants of the Judgement of Interestingness’ focused on intended and received aspects of human communication and desirability. In Probal Babu’s words, Manashi proposed ‘that we imagine narratives about people we meet; perceiving a half-story that leaves us intrigued – and interested in the........

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