Kobi kobi bhab, chhonder nai obhab; Image Source: Goodreads

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If you ask anyone, residing in or out of India, to give an example of a quintessential Bengali, he or she would sarcastically say, *‘Maachh* (fish), *bhaat* (rice), *roshogolla* (rasgulla, the most popular sweet of West Bengal)’. And if you are a romantic and don’t know the perfect accent, you might end up saying, *‘Ami tomake bhalobashi’* (in English, I love you). Neither the Bengalis look like a fish, nor do they want to hear a line of expression that’s sounding like a tough cough. 

To acknowledge the culture rightly, you must dive into its vast treasure of literature. And, let me warn you, Tagore isn’t the epitome of Bengali literature. He can be called the inordinate banyan- to know the course, one needs to study the forms and curves of every minor poet and composer.  To enrich those needful insights, here’s an anecdote of a prodigious Bengali poet, who’s known to be a literary coeval of **Rabindranath Tagore.** He is called ‘the Renaissance man’. He is **Buddhadeva Bose.**

As the opening line, I would like to start the anecdote with a riveting fact about Buddhadeva Bose. He is an alumnus of the University of Dhaka, a student of English language and literature. He and his fellow friend from the University of Delhi, Nurul Momen, who’s popularly known as the *Natyaguru*, achieved unbelievably highest points in the first **Binet Intelligence Test**- later known as the IQ Test. This distinction score remained unsurpassed till 2007.

> The legend inaugurated his career by being a very simple and ordinary private tutor. When he was a student, he was a part of a prominent literary magazine of the time, *‘Kallol’.* It was so impactful that the movement of the modernist literary of the 1930s is cited to be the *Kallol* era. He was the editor of *Progoti* (1926).
> 

He was married to **Pratibha Basu**, a distinguished figure in the world of literature herself. **Meenakshi Dutta, Damayanti Basu Singh and Suddhashil Basu** are their three blessed children.

From a tutor, he rose to the rank of a professor at Surendranath College (University of Calcutta). 1956 gifted him with a unique opportunity. He established **the Department of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University**- offering a chance to further voyage to other universities of the United States as a guest lecturer.

> His most notable benefaction in Bengali literature was the editorship and first-hand curation of an esteemed Bengali magazine called *Kavita* (Poetry) for 25 years.
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He was just a boy of seventeen when his first collection of poetry ***Bandir Bandana*** was published. In a world where we lose our artistic sides in the rush hour of our jobs, his hectic career couldn’t diminish his spirit of composing. His devotion is reflected even in the name of his home at Calcutta, **‘Kavita Bhavan’** or the House of Poetry. After reaching the age of eighteen, his first novel ***SaDa*** extended for the speculation of the avid readers. 

More than 40 novels underscored his name as the writer, and more than 160 titles had been stamped under his designation. ***Tithidore*** (1949) is the most acclaimed f all his novels. Though 200 of his books are published, some yet remain to be curtained from the world. Clearly, if his job as a professor was his livelihood, writing was his sigh of relief.

He isn’t only a writer or an editor, but an authoritative critic as well. We know about the life of Buddhadeva Bose, now, let’s try to imagine and create his figurine from the vision of his admirers. **Amit Chaudhuri,** a prominent novelist has said, *“Before Sontag, Bose, in Bengali, but remarkably early on in English too (with Bose’s **An Acre of Green Grass,** 1948), was excavating a form neither scholarly-academic nor akin to reportage. He moves between memory and critical thought in a way that’s common to European moderns, yet many of them were still to be discovered in English when he was writing.”*

In her lecture delivered at the invitation of Sahitya Akademi, December 11, 2008, **Ketaki Kushari Dyson** mentioned, *“He was a distinguished editor-publisher, a central figure in the post-Tagore modernist movement in Bengal who helped to change directions, a passionate literary polemicist, a great letter-writer, someone who helped to launch the careers of several of his contemporaries and of many younger writers, a creative literary translator who inspired others, and although an intellectually inclined writer and a critic of great acumen, a writer of children also. His entire life, from childhood to his last day, was packed with literary activity bursting at the seams. He was exemplary in his total dedication to his literary vocation, his detailed understanding of what the vocation meant, and his enormous stamina in pursuing it on a daily basis. He lived and breathed literature through good and bad times.”*

***Tithidore*** is spiraled into a family drama while ***Raat Bhorey Brishti*** (Rain through the Night) and ***Golap Keno Kaalo*** (Why the Rose Is Black) are said to be a concentrate in the genre of psychological analysis. He is the literary figure who has journeyed through major circumstantial changes in the world- from the Great Depression to two World Wars, the rise of Fascism to the fall of the British realm, the erupting struggles of independence in India to the traumatic Partition, and the Famine of 1943 to the Great Calcutta Killing of 1946. All these political and social events have left their imprints in Bose’s writings. He even covered the gushing of Naxalites and the birth of Bangladesh.

However, his letters to his dear children remain an exemplary example of his fondness towards them, regardless of his childhood as an orphan. Damayanti, his daughter, is the sole agent who brought a tide of the revival of her father’s works in this modern generation, where those will be held as valuables and grab the attention that they deserve.

“The most versatile literary figure in Bengali after Rabindranath Tagore, someone about whom it could be said that Tagore’s mantle had come to rest on his shoulders”