Professor Rehman Sobhan turns 86 today. Born in Kolkata into an illustrious family, with connections to the Nawab family of Dhaka from his mother's side and a reputed Murshidabad family from his father's side, Sobhan had no business to be a champion of the poor and the downtrodden. His father was trained at Sandhurst and held a senior post at the Police Department in Kolkata, yet in his maturity Rehman Sobhan stood firmly on the side of the oppressed. Educated at St. Paul's at Darjeeling, where he divided his time between sports and debate excelling in both, it is hard to believe now that once he was a long-distance runner. After finishing college at the Aitchison College, Lahore, he went to Cambridge University where he studied with Joan Robinson and others on the left, who shaped his intellectual orientation. His circle of friends at Cambridge included Amartya Sen, Mahbubul Haque, and Manmohan Singh. Sobhan was elected the president of Majlish, the South Asian students' association, and hosted the Indian Prime Minister and Cambridge alumnus Pandit Nehru.