I had joined the Communist Party in pursuit of an ideal, the building of a new society, Sidney and Beatrice Webb termed it a new civilisation in which the evils of the capitalist system would disappear and, more importantly, a new and better human being would evolve. Thus propelled, aged 19, Kaul goes underground in 1941. He works with the Calcutta Port union, helping to organize a successful strike for 80 days by the time he is 25; he spends 1951-53 in jail when the Party is declared illegal, emerging to become the secretary of the District Committee. Kaul marries a fellow communist, Manikuntala Sen, who was the Deputy Leader of the Communist Group in the West Bengal s State Assembly. The China-India, War, the revelations of the Soviet Union s Twentieth Congress where Khrushchev exposes the reality that lay behind Stalin s rule, and the corruption and lowering of ideals with the Party itself made both Kaul and Sen leave the Party in 1963, without a career, income or savings. He goes on to build a new career in public relations with Indian Oxygen, where once again, he wishes to help the corporate world factor in social responsibility, to committed economic journalism with his stint as editor of Capital, and finally, in his eighties, back to the education of workers in the Gandhi Labour Foundation that was led by Kanti Mehta, whom he knew as a rival trade union organizer in the 1950s. Kaul provides an insider s view of the communist movement and the Communist Party, invaluable for understanding both their trajectories and the history. He presents path-breaking memoirs, offering a critique of his life and times and showing what an individual can do to induce meaningful change.