Literary legends in Bengal have generally come in threes. In the 19th century, the names that burst upon the scene were Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Rabindranath Tagore and Sarat Chandra Chatterjee. However, Bankim arrived slightly earlier than the other two who were contemporaries and had a great regard for each other although their literary styles and social objectives were wholly different.

Then came the post-Independence era dominated by Tarashankar Bandopadhyay, Bibhutibhushan Badopadhyay and Manik Bandopadhyay, who left a lasting impression with classics that reflected their own minds.

Cultural exponents

Just when the literary world was wondering whether a vacuum would prevail after the passing away of the three stalwarts, the late 1960s and early 1970s threw up three names — Samaresh Basu, Sankar (Manikshankar Mukherjee) and Sunil Gangopadhyay. Of the three, Samaresh has died but the other two remain the most vocal exponents of Bengal’s culture and identity.

Sunil is, at this point, the most visible face of the Bengali literature not because there is a consensus that his writing is head and shoulders above all others but because he has kept himself in the headlines.

There have been many examples of individuals becoming the media’s favourites for random causes. Sunil loves the adulation he has received for concerns ranging from the most appropriate venue for the Kolkata Book Fair to the need for incorporating Bengali in all official documents, road signs and hoardings.

Radicals’ idol

That is not all. Just as he had found an idol in the poet Alan Ginsberg in the 1960s and had found local resonances of the beat generation, Sunil himself has become an idol of radical poets who have discovered voices of protest, intermixed with romance rooted in the turbulent climate of the city in which they live.

Sunil is, if anything, a poet who represents the spirit of Kolkata. He has been through the political upheavals the city has witnessed since the 1960s.

Although his work has reflected the trauma of the times and the personal anguish over the rapid degeneration of the social fabric, he has, over the years, steadfastly distanced himself from political affiliations.

The anger he expresses is more of the personal kind — a moral and conscientious resistance to the evils, which have bedeviled the lives of the educated young and left a trail of disillusionment and despair. This found an immediate reflection in the experience of thousands of youth coming out of colleges and finding no support system in society they consider being their own.

Much of this was an integral part of the poetry that Sunil composed to raise the level of social consciousness. He had started a magazine called Krittibash, which became the voice of the radical young and the rallying point of poets who were not afraid to express themselves. Sunil himself often struck at the very roots of well-established conventions of social and moral conduct that made him not only an idol among the radicals but also a matter of curiosity for everyone else.

Thinking poet

All this assumed a more electrifying dimension when he moved from poetry to his first novel, Atmaprakash. Readers discovered that he was not only a thinking poet who could create violent ripples but also produce prose that was remarkably lucid and communicated effectively to all sections of society. This was confirmed when his novels began to be translated into English and a few of them were seen as ideal material for films.

Satyajit Ray has never been known to have made back-to-back films with stories by the same author. It happened with Sunil Gangopadhyay when Ray made Aranyer Dinratri and Pratidwandi in quick succession.

Both reflected the frustrations of the young with remarkable insights. Pratidwandi was based in the restless city that was witnessing an upheaval on account of the despair arising from unemployment, corruption and callousness. The protagonist was a young man with brilliant academic record but with little hope of survival in the city in which he lived.

Yet he was not the born rebel that his generation made him out to be. He was more of a romantic at heart, finding solace in the wonders of nature after the mockery of an interview in a corporate house that found the normally sober young intellectual turning into desperate protester.

Aranyer Dinratri shifted to a forest where four youth sink the disillusionments through experiences they may have wanted to forget after returning from their boisterous holiday to a civilised society. Sunil had gone on record as having said that he was disappointed with the changes that Ray had made to his novel but the fact remained that the film was one of the most sought-after works by the master as a reflection of the young urban experience that the Western had found particularly curious. Many years later, Goutam Ghose produced a sequel called Abar Aranye in which Sunil was the co-writer of the screenplay. Sadly, this film proved to be something of a non-starter and confirmed that novels and screenplays are distinct entities.

Tale teller

Sunil has seldom ventured into screenplay writing after that but he remains the most popular name in the world of short stories and poems. There are a very few examples of writers excelling in prose and poetry with the same kind of facility that Sunil brought to his works. Buddhadev Bose was perhaps the only other name that comes to mind in Bengal. To that can be added the skill with which Sunil can recite his poems with the passion that revealed the inner strength of his ideas.

The most striking example is the recitation he does of the fictional character called Neera with whom he — assuming the pen-name of Nillohit — has a romantic association. The woman is part of the decay and degradation that he experiences in Kolkata and which is reflected in the terminal illness from which she suffers.

When Sunil mounted the stage recently to take part in a song-and-recitation programme dedicated to the legend of Neera, he was accompanied by veteran actor and reciter Soumitra Chatterjee. Both are known to share not just artistic ideas but ideological affiliations in these days when intellectuals are divided on socio-political lines. Yet as reciters it was anyone’s guess who performed better.

Now at the ripe age of 75, he is chairman of the Sahitya Akademi after he has won several prestigious awards from the same organisation and many others for the craftsmanship of his prose and the clarity of his social and cultural ideas. Many may say that with age, he has lost something of the literary and investigative fervour that produced a classic like Sei Samay (Those Times) that delved into the 19th century Bengal renaissance and came up with striking insights in which fact blended with fiction to create a meaningful and memorable document.

Classic prose

Much the same energy was witnessed in Purba-Paschim (East and West) which was a raw depiction of the tragic fallout of the Partition seen through the eyes of three generations of Bengalis in West Bengal, what is now Bangladesh and elsewhere that has conglomerations of the Bengali diaspora. The third classic was Pratham Alo (First Light), a historical fiction which created a stir because it sought to bring personalities down from their lofty pedestal and treat them as people of flesh and blood.

This is the power of Sunil’s work. He doesn’t shy away from the truth. Nor does he move away from commitments that may not fetch him instant approval. One of these was his commitment to children’s literature. He created Kakababu, a crippled adventurist who sets out with his nephew and friend to see the world with eyes that appealed to children.

It was serialised in the children’s magazine called Anandamela and made a substantial collection of nearly 35 novels at a time when he was more popularly associated with Desh and was the first choice of publishers who brought out Puja specials. But the truth that he was perpetually in search of could be traced to his long association with Anandabazar Patrika. He continued to do duty for the paper even as he became Bengal’s most prolific writer of fiction and poetry with a bibliography running into more than 200 books that included essays, travelogues and, perhaps the most popular genre, short stories.

Social concerns

There is just little regret that Sunil is no longer the magic prose composer he once was and has diluted his interests with other social concerns. He considered his stint as Kolkata’s Sheriff more inconsequential than anything else he has done. At the same time, today he is seen to be a champion of socio-political causes that may not have stirred him when he was immersed in the classics that have earned him a permanent place in the galaxy of great Bengalis. What people say may not bother the quintessential bhadralok who speaks with a disarming clarity and charm, stands firmly by his convictions, puts his audience at ease with his engaging wit and preserves a sense of humour — often at his own expense. His critics do not bother him because the literary fraternity he belongs to, in Bengal and beyond, knows too well that he is part of a legacy that has done him proud.

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