Binoy Majumdar

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Binoy Majumdar (Bengali: বিনয় মজুমদার) (1934-2006), a rather obscure and controversial Bengali poet. Binoy received the prestigious Sahitya Academy Award in 2005, amidst senility, ill-health, and years of social reclusion. However Binoy is still largely a figure of obscurity.

1 Biography
2 His work
3 Poetic legacy
4 References

[edit] Biography

Binoy Majumdar was born in Myanmar (erstwhile Burma) on the 17th of September 1934. His family later moved to what is now West Bengal in India. Binoy loved mathematics from his early youth. He completed 'Intermediate' (pre-University) from the Presidency College of the University of Calcutta. Although he graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering graduate from Bengal Engineering College, Calcutta, in 1957, Binoy turned to poetry later in life. He translated a number of science texts from the Russian to Bengali. When Binoy took to writing, the scientific training of systematic observation and enquiry of objects found a place, quite naturally, in his poetry. His first book of verse was Nakshatrer Aloy (in the light of the stars). However, Binoy Majumdar's most famous piece of work to date is Phire esho, Chaka (Come back, O Wheel, 1960), which was written in the format of a diary. The book is dedicated to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, a fellow-Calcuttan and contemporary of Majumdar.

Binoy died in his maternal home in Shimulpur, West Bengal, on December 11, 2006.

[edit] His work

The book, Come back, O Wheel, opens with the lines:

(transliterated)

ekti ujjwal maachh ekbar ure
drishyata sunil, kintu prakrita prastabe swachchha jale
punoray dube gelo - ei smita drishya dekhe niye
bedonar gaarho rashe aapakka raktim holo fal

which, translated, reads:

One bright fish flew once
Only to sink again into the visibly blue, but truly
Transparent water - watching this pleasing sight
The fruit blushed red, ripening in a deep abyss of pain.

The period from 1958-1962 saw Binoy's poetry thrive. Apart from Phire Esho, Chaka, he wrote other books, such as: Nakshatrer Aaloy (In the light of the stars), Eeshwariyo (Godly), Adhikantu (Excessive), Aghraaner Anubhutimala (The emotions of the month of Aghran), Balmikir Kabita (The Poetry of Balmiki). An anthology of Binoy's poems was published by Dey's Publishing House of Calcutta under the name Binoy Majumdarer Srestho Kabita (Selected Poems of Binoy Majumdar) in 1981.

Binoy's poetry has been appreciated by literary critics. He won several awards such as

Rabindra Puraskar,
Sudhindranath Dutta Puraskar,
Krittibas Puraskar etc., and the most notable award being the
Sahitya Academy Award in 2005, just a year before his death.

In the 1980's and 1990's, Binoy was affected by severe mental illness. He tried to commit suicide several times, and stopped writing poetry altogether. Also, the medical treatment he received was inadequate. He moved to the outskirts of Calcutta, in Thakurnagar, and lived with local town folks, a stranger amidst strangers.

Binoy had passed into obscurity in his later years, suffered from senility and lived in social seclusion and neglect. He did not have a family.

Binoy Majumdar breathed his last on the 11th of December 2006, at an age of 72.

[edit] Poetic legacy

Binoy has often been regarded by critics as a true successor of Jibanananda Das, the poet who revolutionized Bengali Poetry in the post-Tagore era. Like Jibanananda, Binoy drew his material from bountiful nature, the fields and the jungles and the rivers and the fauna of Bengal. But Binoy's originality lay in his attempt to relate the various elements of nature to one another through objective logic and scientific enquiry. In this respect, critics refer to the genre of his work as scientific field journal. Binoy Majumdar was bold and revolutionary in the depiction of sexuality in Poetry. He abundantly used vivid imagery which were sensually potent and Freudian in essence. In a series of pieces (Aamar Bhuttay Tel etc.), where he gives an explicit and graphic description of sexual intercourse, Binoy, once again, lays strong emphasis on the physiology of the process, and takes to a journalistic narration.

Binoy has always been somewhat obscure among readers of Bengali Poetry. He was quite ahead of his time in breaking norms of contemporary literature. Some of his poems are difficult to decipher at the first go, and require multiple readings. His writings are unconventional because they often appear as neutral scientific reportage, and not poetry in its usual romaticized self. In this, Binoy readers can perhaps trace back his background as a Mathematician. Binoy builds up all his imagery, nuances, lyricism, and poetic discovery on the skeleton of scientific reasoning and factual observations.