India, May 31 -- A village barber's son who migrated with his family from erstwhile East Pakistan to India in 1967 revisits his childhood. When his father set up a hair salon in the local weekly market near their new home, it fell to the boy to seek out customers. But the father was keenly aware that only an education could offer his boy a way out of the penury that had been their lot. School was brutal on the son, who was always shown his "place", the last bench, where he sat alone. His only refuge was his ailing mother, with whom he sometimes forayed into the woods. After her passing, he found another constant companion: Bhombol, the dog that followed him around like a shadow. The Last Bench is a poignant childhood memoir about what it means to be invisible in an unequal society, about the exchanges between man and nature, and most of all about what it means to lose those whose mere absence changes everything....