Purbo Paschim is another book that absolutely has to be mentioned when one is talking about Gangopadhyay’s works. His book Moner Manush which has been now adapted into a film talks about the eclectic life of Lalan Fakir – a Sufi saint who graced the soil of Bengal with his soul-touching music. He won the Sahitya Akademi for the beautiful polemics he presented in this book. It goes into grotesque details of Indigo imperialism and soldiers being forced to use cartridges greased with pig and beef fat. Gangopadhyay talks about the newly developed cracks in society whereby the influence of Nawabs was slowly diminishing. His chapters are filled with famous personalities like Derozio, Vidhyasagar, Michael Madhusudhan Dutta among others. His book provides the vast gamut of developments in Bengal during the 19th century. His seminal text Sei Somoy deals with the period in Bengal leading up to the Revolt of 1857. Sunil Gangopadhyay absolutely nailed this. It is an extremely difficult job to write historical fiction as one needs to be well researched to properly etch out the fictional story in the said historical backdrop. However, his most notable contribution is that he weaved stories of Bengali history through his literary lens.
Sunil Gangopadhyay even finds a mention in one of Ginsberg’s poems named September on Jessore Road. Many might not be privy to the fact that Sunil Gangopadhyay shared a few moments of camaraderie with the famous American beat generation poet, Allen Ginsberg.
Allen Ginsberg with Sunil Gangopadhyay at Kolkata(Tumblr) This penchant would take him to faraway lands to solve the concerned mystery. Just like Satyajit Ray had Feluda, Sharadindu Bandhopadhyay had Byomkesh, Sunil Gangopadhyay had Kakababu – a retired archaeologist who had a penchant for mystery solving. It is a pretty normal trend among the cabal of Bengali authors to have a detective character series incorporated into their literary corpus. After that, his master’s pen would go onto grace many famous publications.Ī Bengali kid’s childhood is incomplete without stories of the infamous Kakababu. In as early as 1953 he along with his friends plunged into the whirlpool world of literature by starting a poetry magazine called Krittibash – a magazine that was interested in publishing young poets with a unique voice. He was Bengal's most loved novelist, historian, and poet. There is no dearth of writers from Bengali but none managed to write historical fiction as well as Sunil Gangopadhyay. Died on 23rd October 2012 A recent picture of Sunil Gangopadhyay(ThisDay.app)
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