Subrata Kumar Das — To me he is an international writer village. While writing about him happily, I want to be rooted first.
My father wrote Yatrapala. Wrote Ashtakgan. Wrote folk and religious songs. First of all, I knew my father as a living writer. At a very young age I saw Akshay Das, the lyric poet of our village. I did not understand him then. I did not recognize Kabial Vijay Sarkar in that raw childhood.
After many years I discovered that there is a writer very close to me, established calligrapher, researcher. I knew him first as a bright and handsome young man. I knew he was a brilliant student of our Kamarkhali High School. Later he passed BA Honors and MA in English Language and Literature from Rajshahi University and taught in a well-established college in Dhaka. And Subrata Kumar Das of this brilliant old man.
I have done live programs from Banglavision and RTV for several years at the Ekush Book Fair and proudly featured author Subrata Kumar Das.
First of all, it should be said that not only plants, vegetables and crops are produced from the soil, sometimes writers, poets and great people are also born from the characteristic soil or land.
Madhumati Garai Chandana Phuleswari Baroi Snehomayi Mamtamoyi Matri Nadi. How many virtuous people have been born from the alluvial towns of Padma’s tributary rivers.
Kamarkhali is where the Garai river ends and the new name of the river is Madhumati. The river is also rich in literature with port ganj, railway station and blacksmith industry famous for jute trade.
Let’s talk about the history of Kamarkhali, but now let’s talk about Subrata Kumar Das. Subrata was the son of Vaishnava parents. Who is Vaishnava? Is Subrata Kumar Das a Vaishnava? Didn’t he also grow up in Vaishnavism from the home environment? Or he may have drifted away from the fluency of that expression at some point. Even if he is not an initiated Vaishnava, he cannot be called a Vaishnava.
Guru used to come to the house of writer Subrata Kumar Das. We call Guru Gosai. I also heard from the mouth of a Gosai –
“Ya Devi Sarvabhuteshu Vishnumayeti Shabdita”
That goddess is present in Vishnumaya.
Sharanagata, Deen, Arta — All the arti of sharanagata are known as this goddess, who is part of Narayana, who gives salvation. Shakta, Shaiva, Ganapatya, whatever we say, all are Vaishnavas.
Who is Vaishnava? The Lord said—
Trinadapi Sunichen
Tarorapi is tolerant
Amanin gives value
Kirtanya Sada Hari.
He who can be lower than a grass, who has endurance like a tree, who can respect Amani and always chants Harinam Kirtan is a Vaishnava.
The only reason for mentioning these words here is that Subrata Kumar Das is a calligrapher manifesting in spirit in the form of a Vaishnava, although not a bejeweled Vaishnava with a tilak on his forehead.
Sahitya is the root of the word hit or sahit. Literary for good. Literature to light, to awaken human consciousness, literature to enlighten. And the literal meaning of the word Sahitya is also found in the writings and personal life of the Vaishnavism writer Subrata Kumar Das.
West of Madhukhali Upazila town of Faridpur district, there is a historic village on the banks of Chandana river. The name of that village is Korkadi. We are the people of Narkona, a village north of Korkadi. I used to hear Korakdi from mouth to mouth. As a child, I used to go to Korkidi to see boats. During the dry season, I used to walk from the village across Bhatikhal to Bagbari by Korkadi to fetch Kartik Tagore.
I used to hear the reputation of Korkadi village from my grandparents. I used to hear that all the zamindars of this village i.e. Sanyal family have gone to India. They were landlords, bigots — I used to hear all this. And I used to listen to a woman of this village Neelima Sanyal read Akashbani news. However, I later found out that this is not true. But I never knew there were some learned writers in Korkadi village.
Subrata Kumar Das presented Korkadi in front of everyone anew one day. He also published festival gathering seminars on the heritage culture literature of this village. I came to know from his writings — Korkadi village was once known as second Calcutta. It was thanks to him that I found Pandit Avantikumar Sanyal in many languages including French. I learned — Bankimchandra Lahiri, author of Mahabharata-Manjari, was a man of this village. Not only the writer, Avni Lahiri was the leader of Tevaga movement in this village.
I was also inspired by the book Korkadi Ek Gram written and edited by Subrata Kumar Das. It seems that my authorship also has the roots and inspiration of Chandana Phuleswari river and Korkadi.
Subrata Kumar Das did not become a writer by accident. He is the descendant of the brightest and most learned geniuses of a prosperous town in the western part of Faridpur district. He grew up within the structured institutional education of the society and the state but he grew up informally holding and nurturing the lost decadent traditions.
From the preparatory period of the Riddha writers. For the full moon also every time the moon has to be prepared from the second. Rootless algae writers only know how to freeze, in low currents they want to express themselves by freezing and blocking the flow of water, and even when the water bouquet increases, they are washed away in the womb of time.
Subrata Kumar Das’ writer’s mind was formed from his childhood.
As mentioned earlier, five years after Subrata, I attended the same school, Kamarkhali High School. Two high school teachers were also literate. Especially today we remember our head teacher Abdur Razzak with deep respect. Razzak was a student of English literature. As a result, Subrata and I got a bit of a world class in literature in our teenage years.
The outside of Dhaka University is very spread, its inside is very difficult to grasp. Compared to that, the Department of Literature, Fine Arts and Music of Rajshahi University is a bit hermit. Nivritanivas library in Rajshahi and easy association of teachers helped Subrata Kumar Das to become a writer. As a result, even after coming to Dhaka, he did not want to be a writer himself, but wanted to be a writer’s servant and a servant of education and literature.
Since the year 2000, the internet has been expanding in Dhaka little by little. We still don’t have e-mail id. Our knowledge about websites is still very limited. At that time i.e. in 2003 Subrata Kumar Das did an outstanding work online. The website was inaugurated at the Language Institute of Dhaka University. The first bilingual website about Bangladeshi novels and literature is – bdnovels.org – By doing these service works, your writing time is reduced. But Subrata Kumar Das has in his mind the Vaishnava line of renunciation, the vow of service, his vow he must fulfill.
Similarly, he worked on the centenary of Kazi Nazrul Islam. During the Nazrul centenary, Subrata Kumar Das continued to publish. The list of books published by Subrata Kumar Das till 2012 suggests that he is not a writer of thick marks and scales.
Nazrul’s ‘Bandhanhara’ (2000), Bengali Fiction: Magical Reality and Others (2002), Ten Essays on Nazrul (2003), Some Novelists of Bangladesh (2005), Context: Education and Literature (2005), My Mahabharata (2010), Rabindranath: Little-Known, Unknown (2011), Agranthit Mozaffar Hossain (ed. 2011), Korkadi A Village (ed. 2011), Japan in Sekal Bengali Periodicals (2012), Rabindranath: Teaching English (2012), Rabindranath and Mahabharata (2012), Japan Emigration (2012 ed.).
In 1913, a total of twenty-eight people were nominated for the Nobel Prize. This information was not known to me, not knowing that the names of French writers Pierre Lati and Ernest Lévis were on that list that year. Rabindranath’s Nobel victory became more glorious after knowing these facts. This is one way to get to know Rabindranath more deeply, and one of the creators of this path is author researcher Subrata Kumar Das.
After reading his book ‘Rabindranath Kam-Jana, Akhena’, it seemed that he told the unknown. “The poet’s life has begun. Broken hearted evening music. Along with it is Bouthakurani’s hut. The painful emotion began to change with the episode Prabhat Sangeet. It was as if the poet suddenly regained the joy of the universe. Nirjhar’s dream is shattered.”
Subrata Kumar Das’s language is simple, dynamic, beautiful. His writing is not about the subject. Everything is understandable. The joy of reading is in his word for word. None of his writings are dull and informative. The joy of knowing can be swept away with the author. I don’t have the patience to search through hundreds of books. The writer Subrata Kumar Das brought that patience to life in his writings. The book ‘Rabindranath Kom-Jana , Akhena’ is a delight not only for the Rabindra fan but also for the general reader.
2013 AD. When I was in Dhaka, Gunbangla television was almost out of reach. I was a little restless; I did not know when Subrata’s family moved to Canada. The day I was sure that he was no longer in the country, the hot air was blowing in my chest for a while. I did not get close to Subrata in Dhaka but sometimes we talked for some reason. I used to get some strength from the thought of having a native elder above my head. I was very upset that day. Just one year later, i.e. in October 2014, I also became a forced migrant.
Subrata Kumar Das is in Canada and I am in France. He didn’t seem too far from me considering that there is French language literature practice in Canada too. Contacted in 2015. We then left Paris for Ales. Sri Chaitanya Dev first mailed the book to Alice’s house.
I was immersed in extreme death thoughts. My wife has started chemotherapy. Can’t sleep, read Sri Chaitanya Dev all night.
Therefore, of course, I will become a monk.
I will bow down to me as a monk.
Not everyone knows that watching Sri Chaitanya become a monk was not pleasant. I also learned anew from the book of Subrata Kumar Das. I was comforted. I discovered that Mahaprabhu is not only a monk, he is a monk soldier. He is like Siddhartha, Gautama Buddha. Asceticism means taking a vow of renunciation. The hero sacrifices, the devotee sacrifices tears.
Sri Chaitanyadeva by Subrata Kumar Das is not just a biography but a treatise. I did not know that there are hundreds of thousands of works on Mahaprabhu. I know – Subrata Kumar Das is a very hardworking writer. He is an honest writer. He doesn’t want to write anything unfinished. He keeps searching until he reaches a clear conclusion.
Reading the bibliography of Sri Chaitanyadeva also made me respect the author more.
A heart as hard as a rock
Seh Shuni Goli Goli.
After reading Sri Chaitanyadev, my anxiety decreased a lot. The accumulation in the chest became lighter than the stone. Caitanyadeva seems to have been made universal. Shree Chaitanya Dev became a book of knowledge for all readers only for devotees.
The author wrote that he could not be imaginative. But he did not lack his expression. Without devotion, without thought and thought, no composition becomes excellent.
I have not read all the books of Subrata Kumar Das, but I have been able to read a lot of his life. If you want to know the writer deeply, you need to understand his life and work. No writer is isolated from the light and darkness of his personal life. Subrata Kumar Das also did not completely separate the brilliance and joy of his personal life from his writings. Read his interview book ‘Uts to Parbas’ to know the twists and turns of his life.
Debanjana Mukherjee Bhowmik’s talk has written a different autobiography. Devanjana has uttered the extreme and absolute truth from the mouth of the author in the simple and wise questions of the discussion.
Subrata Kumar Das, a Sahitya Sevak organizer activist and conductor, is easily identified from the sources in the book Paravas.
The author talks about freedom fighter Razakar Albadar Alshams and the refugees of the 1970s and of course the various aspects of home and exile. There is analysis in his speech, puns are also very subtle.
Got Subrataka anew during Corona. We got him as a near relative and benefactor by adding simple people to live events. But like me during the Corona period, he also got to know friends as well as strangers. Parabasa from the source, he said – “People who were friends before the corona virus, have become enemies during the corona virus. I mean what a painful existence he is.”
The words rang like a big pain in my soul. Subrata’s personal suffering in the anxiety of Corona also made me think, the truth of his life is not a lie in my life too.
Subrata Kumar Das’s book Kannada Literature Dissociated Thoughts is still not well read. I think it is inappropriate to write something without reading his My Mahabharata a few more times. What else can I write about the book Nazrul-Veeksha, some learned person has written about other books and the life of the author. I only expressed my love and respect.
A pen-wielding writer turning sixty moves not only towards a new birthday, but towards a new and varied range of delightful works. I will be getting more and more from his writings. He will be forever cherished by writers and readers as a reliable truth-seeker with confidence. My regards to Subrata Kumar Das.
