When Toru Dutt returned to Calcutta in 1873, at age seventeen, she found it challenging to re-integrate with a culture which now seemed like "an unhealthy place both morally and physically speaking" to her Europeanized and Christianized eyes.
Her sister Aru died of consumption in 1872, aged twenty.
Three years after returning to Calcutta, she wrote to her friend Mary Martin: "‘I have not been to one dinner party or any party at all since we left Europe," and "If any friend of my grandmother happens to see me, the first question is, if I am married," both statements expressing a frustration with what she saw as a restrictive and conservative society.
However, she also recognized that Europe could not replace India as her true home.
She took consolation in reinvigorating her studies of Sanskrit with her father, and hearing her mother's stories and songs about India.

Like both of her siblings, Toru Dutt died of consumption at a young age (twenty-one), on 30 August 1877.
When Toru Dutt returned to Calcutta in 1873, at age seventeen, she found it challenging to re-integrate with a culture which now seemed like "an unhealthy place both morally and physically speaking" to her Europeanized and Christianized eyes. Her sister Aru died of consumption in 1872, aged twenty. Three years after returning to Calcutta, she wrote to her friend Mary Martin: "‘I have not been to one dinner party or any party at all since we left Europe," and "If any friend of my grandmother happens to see me, the first question is, if I am married," both statements expressing a frustration with what she saw as a restrictive and conservative society. However, she also recognized that Europe could not replace India as her true home. She took consolation in reinvigorating her studies of Sanskrit with her father, and hearing her mother's stories and songs about India.
Like both of her siblings, Toru Dutt died of consumption at a young age (twenty-one), on 30 August 1877.
Toru Dutt