Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay
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| Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay | |
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| Born | 12 September 1894 Ghoshpara-Muratipur village, Bengal, British India |
| Died | 1 November, 1950 (aged 55) Ghatshila, Jharkhand, India |
| Occupation | writer, novelist |
Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay (12 September 1894 - 1 November 1950) (Bengali: বিভূতিভূষণ বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায় Bibhutibhushon Bôndopaddhae; last name also rendered as Banerjee or Banerji) was a Bengali novelist and writer. His most well known book is the autobiographical novel, Pather Panchali (The Song of The road), incorporated (along with Aparajito, the sequel) into the memorable Apu Trilogy films by Satyajit Ray.
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[edit] Personal life and education
Bandopadhyay was born in Ghoshpara-Muratipur village, in the 24 Parganas of Bengal, British India at his maternal uncle's house. His father, Mahananda Bandyopadhyay, was a Sanskrit scholar and a Kathak, one who tells stories for a living.
His early days were spent in abject poverty. Nevertheless, he fought his way to complete his undergraduate degree in History, at the Surendranath College, Kolkata; although he could not afford to enroll for the postgraduate course at the University of Calcutta. The economic burden of his family rested squarely on his shoulders.
He married Gouri Devi, but she died in childbirth after only a year of their marriage. The tragic theme of death and loneliness is a recurrent factor in his early writings.
At 46, Bibhutibhushan married Rama Chattopadhyay. Their only son, Taradas, was born in 1947.
Bandopadhyay died on 1 November, 1950, of a heart attack while staying at Ghatshila.
[edit] Career
Bandopadhyay, before becoming a writer, took up various jobs to make ends meet. He taught school, became a secretary, managed an estate. Finally, in 1921 he published his first short story, "Upekshita," in Probashi, one of the leading literary magazines of Bengal at that time. However, it was not until 1928, when his first novel, Pather Panchali (also known in English as Song of the Little Road), was published, that Bibhutibhushan got critical attention. With Pather Panchali Bibhutibhushan became, instantly, a prominent name in Bengali literature.
Bandopadhyay had a stout constitution and walked miles in the woods every day. He usually took his notebook with him and loved to write surrounded by the wilderness.
[edit] Critical acclaim
Pather Panchali is considered to be Bibhutibhushan's masterpiece. It has been included in the ICSE syllabus for students choosing to study Bengali. He has 16 novels and over two hundred short stories to his credit.
Humayun Azad opined that the novel is superior to its cinematic rendition. This is not necessarily a commonly held view in the West, as the Apu Trilogy is considered to be among the finest films in the history of cinema, and the unavailability of a complete translation of Pather Panchali into English makes it an issue hard for the English-speaking audience to resolve: the available translation (by T. W. Clark and Tarapada Mukherji) is a truncated version of the novel. However, in the Bengali-speaking world, the stature of the novel is not seriously in doubt. Martin Seymour-Smith, in his Guide to Modern World Literature (1973), calls Bandopadhyay (he uses the form Banerji) "perhaps the best of all modern Indian novelists" and says "probably nothing in twentieth-century Indian literature, in prose or poetry, comes to the level of Pather Panchali" [1].
Apart from the translation of the truncated text by T. W. Clark and Tarapada Mukherji, Amit Chaudhuri has translated a few excerpts for inclusion in the anthology The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature. In his introduction to these excerpts, Chaudhuri writes: "Unique for its tenderness and poetry ... Pather Panchali rejects both nineteenth-century realism and social realism (the social milieu described in it would have logically lent itself to the latter) for an enquiry into perception and memory." [2]
The complete text of Aparajito, the sequel to Pather Panchali, has been translated into English by Gopa Majumdar.
Bibhutibhushan's works are mostly concerned with the lives of people from rural Bengal. His writings come alive with vibrant and thoroughly normal characters from the countryside.
[edit] Bibliography
Complete list of novels:
- Pather Panchali (Song of the Road)
- Aparajito (Unvanquished; sequel to Pather Panchali)
- Aranyak (In the Forest)
- Adarsha Hindu Hotel
- Ichhamati
- Dristi Pradeep
- Chader Pahar
- Heera Manik Jale
- Debjan
- Bipiner Sangsar
- Anubartan
- Ashani Sanket
- Kedar Raja
- Dampati
- Sundarbane Sat Batsar-Not completed by him
- Dui Bari
- Kajol--Sequel of Aparajito -Completed By His Son Taradas
- Mismider Kabach
- Kosi Pranganeyer Chitthi
[edit] Partial short story collections
- MeghaMallar
- Mauriphool
- Jatrabadol
[edit] Films based on his works
- Pather Panchali (1955)
- Aparajito (1956)
- Apur Sansar (1959)
- Amar Prem (1971) [3]
- Ashani Sanket (1973)
- Alo (2003)
[edit] References
- ^ Guide to Modern World Literature,Martin Seymour-Smith (p. 712)
- ^ The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature, edited by Amit Chaudhuri, (p. 66)
- ^ Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay at the Internet Movie Database
