Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay

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Bibhutibhushan Bandhopadhyay

Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay (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 story of the road), incorporated (along with Aparajito, the sequel) into the memorable film trilogy by Satyajit Ray.

1 Life
2 Critical Acclaim
3 Works
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Life

Bibhutibhushan was born on 12 September 1894 at his maternal uncle's house in Ghoshpara-Muratipur village, in the 24 Parganas of Bengal (now in West Bengal, India). His father, Mahananda Bandyopadhyay, was a Sanskrit scholar and a Kathak, one who tells stories for a living.

Bibhutibhushan's early days were spent in abject poverty. Nevertheless, he fought his way to complete his undergraduate degree in history, 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 had married in the meantime, but his wife, Gouri Devi, died in childbirth after only a year of conjugal life. The tragic theme of death and loneliness is a recurrent factor in Bibhutibhushan's early writings.

Before he became a writer, Bibhutibhushan 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.

At the age of forty six, Bibhutibhushan married Rama Chattopadhayay. Their only son Taradas was born in 1947.

Bibhutibhushan 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.

On 1 November, 1950, Bibhutibhushan died of a heart attack while staying at Ghatshila. He was fifty-six.

[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, as the Apu Trilogy is considered to be among the finest films in the history of cinema. However, the unavailability of a proper translation of Pather Panchali makes it an issue hard for the English-speaking audience to resolve: the available translation is a truncated version of the novel. 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].

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.

Bibhutibhusan was an outstanding creator of adventure literature for adoloscent children. His Chander Pahar, Hira Manik Jwale and Maraner Donka Baje are adventure stories with young Bengali protagonists who visit exotic places like African jungles, the Richtersveldt mountains, Kalahari Desert, the ruins of ancient Hindu imperial cities in Indochinese islands, China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. His adventure stories build on the adventure spirit of children and also explores the adventurous nature of his own and his intimate love of nature and the whole world's people, places and cultures.