| Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay বিভূতিভূষণ বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায় |
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Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay |
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| Born | 12 September 1894 Ghoshpara-Muratipur village, Bengal, British India |
| Died | 1 November 1950 (aged 55) Ghatshila, Bihar, India |
| Occupation | Writer, novelist |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Ethnicity | Bengali Hindu |
Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay (Bengali: বিভূতিভূষণ বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়, (listen: ) (12 September 1894 - 1 November 1950) was one of the most famous Bengali novelist and writer of modern Bengali literature. His best known work, is the autobiographical novel, Pather Panchali (The Song of the Road), adapted (along with Aparajito, the sequel) into the memorable Apu Trilogy films, directed by Satyajit Ray.
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Bandopadhyay was born in Kalyani, Muratipur village (Under Kanchapara Gram Panchayet), in the district of Nadia in undivided Bengal, British India at his maternal uncle's house in a Hindu Brahmin family. His father, Mahananda Bandyopadhyay, was a Sanskrit scholar and a kathak, a person who tells stories for a living. His home was near Gopalnagar police station in Bongaon, North Twenty Four Parganas (location 23'41+88'46). He studied at Bongaon High School, one of the oldest institutions in British controlled India. Incidentally, he also taught at this school at the beginning of his working life. His Pather Panchali, Adarsha Hindu Hotel, Ichhamati, Bipiner Sansar and a few others were all set in Bongaon. Ichhamati reflects on the life of rural society on the banks of river Ichhamati in undivided southern Bengal. The story of indigo planters and plantation life, rural communities and the divers castes and their societal roles in early last century of Bengal have been captured in vivid detail. Relationships have been sensitively portrayed in their subtlest nuances. Soul stirring descriptions of nature in the smallest details and unselfconscious but poetic portrayal of the flora and fauna on the banks of Ichhamati are the added features of this magnificent creation. There are a lot of dialogues which bring up deep spiritual thought, advaita vedanta in particular. Peppered with a few characters who show the hypocrisy of the brahminical order which dictated the social and religious life of rural Bengal under a deeply stratified caste system, the novel is an invaluable and otherwise inadequately documented time capsule.
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 at childbirth after only a year of their marriage. The tragic theme of her death and his loneliness is a recurrent motif in his early writings.
At 46, Bibhutibhushan married Rama Chattopadhyay. Their only son, Taradas, was born in 1947.
Bandopadhyay, before becoming a writer, took up various jobs to make ends meet. He taught at a school, became a secretary, and managed an estate. Finally, in 1921, he published his first short story, "Upekshita," in Probashi, which one of the leading literary magazines of Bengal. 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 received critical attention. With Pather Panchali, Bibhutibhushan quickly became 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 enjoyed writing while surrounded by the wilderness.
Pather Panchali is considered to be Bibhutibhushan's masterpiece. It has been included in the CBSE 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 normal characters from the countryside.
Bandopadhyay died on 1 November 1950, of a heart attack while staying at Ghatshila.[3]
Complete list of novels: