(The Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay family originated in the Panitar village near Basirhat, located in the North 24 Parganas district of modern-day West Bengal. Bandyopadhyay's great-grandfather, who was an Ayurvedic physician, eventually settled in Barrackpore village.)
'Pather Panchali' was originally called Durer Bari. The novel that makes it to any list of the top five influential novels in Bengali had a different title when pen was first put to paper in 1924.
There are diaries where the author first wrote the character sketches in English.
“Apu has been described there as ‘a citizen of the cosmos’ and the underlying ethos behind the novel as ‘philosophy of wonderment’ and ‘ananda’".
Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s immortal work is turning 100, and a month-long exhibition has been planned at the Kolkata Centre for Creativity from March 24 for the occasion.
Trinankur Banerjee opens a briefcase used by his grandfather Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay to carry his manuscripts.
(snap Sudeshna Banerjee -- The Telegraph)
The author’s younger grandson, Trinankur Banerjee, curator of the show, came across the original title last week while sifting through manuscripts in preparation for the exhibition.
“Pather Panchali started getting serialised in Bichitra magazine in 1928 and was published as a book the year after.
But Bibhutibhushan had been writing it for a long time.
There are three drafts. My parents possibly did not read it all as my grandfather’s handwriting was terrible,” Trinankur said.
Story plot :
Horihor Roy, an impoverished Brahmin, lives in the village of Nischindipur. Indir Thakrun, an old widowed woman, who had nobody to look after her, takes shelter in the house of Horihor, to whom she is distantly related. Horihor's wife Shorbojoya, an ill-tempered lady, cannot bear the sight of the old woman. She is therefore given a tumble-down thatched hut to live in. However, Durga, Shorbojoya's six-year-old daughter, is very fond of Indir Thakrun and stays with her for hours to listen to fairy-tales.[5]
After some time, Shorbojoya gives birth to a son. Shorbojoya is jealous of Indir Thakrun as she thinks that Durga is more fond of the old woman than of her mother. Indir Thakrun is mercilessly turned out of the hut for a trifling reason. The helpless old woman implores for shelter in her dying moments but she is heartlessly refused; she passes away in a rice-barn. ....
Trinankur likens his grandfather’s writing to a Swiss clock. “You get to see only the clock face while the mechanism stays hidden. Bibhutibhushan, too, was showing only the finished product, hiding the inner craft. When we study his plan, which we will put on display, we realise the novel is based on his philosophy of life. There is a structure within — a scaffold of philosophy held together by the straws of technique, over which he put on the clay coat of language.”
The exhibition will be divided into three chapters: his life, literature and philosophy. Surprisingly, in a country unmindful about archiving, the family has preserved a wealth of artefacts to illustrate each stage of his life. There are even the syringes and the stethoscope used in his treatment.
“Bibhutibhushan died at the age of 56 in Ghatshila. He was treated by his brother, whom he had put through medical college despite financial hardship. So when some folks in Calcutta blamed him for ‘killing his elder brother’, it broke him. Within a week, he was found dead on the bank of the Subarnarekha, having consumed carbolic acid. The family — two young widows and a three-year-old, my father — was left at sea. They decide to shift from the site of the tragedy,” Trinankur said.
This is the juncture where Bibhutibhushan’s personal effects could have slipped through the cracks of time. But they did not, thanks to his wife and Trinankur’s grandmother, Rama, and more specifically, a dream that she had. “When she was packing to return to her paternal home in Barrackpore, she dreamt of her late husband urging her to take his books and papers with her,” he said.
Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay (12 September 1894 – 1 November 1950)
There will also be on sale Bibhutibhushan memorabilia designed by Trinankur: T-shirts, coasters, wall clocks and the like.
Discussions, storytelling sessions and film screenings will be part of the exhibition, which will be on till April 19 except Sundays, reports 'The Telegraph'.
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| Bibhutibhusan's House Gouri Kunja at Ghatshila |
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