Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee: Poet and playwright who found his corner at Nandan among books
Times of India | 10 August 2024
The room in Nandan where Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee used to spend his evenings KOLKATA: Once office work concluded in the evening, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee would spend a couple of hours at Nandan. That was the time when he would devote to translating Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky or watching a film before returning to his two-bedroom Palm Avenue flat.
Many contend that despite being a politician, Bhattacharjee was a poet at heart who inherited this affinity for arts from his upbringing.Bhattacharjee was raised in a joint family at Shyampukur. His uncle was poet Sukanta Bhattacharya. The other uncle, Rakhal Bhattacharya, was a seasoned sports journalist.
Bhattacharjee often channelled his creative energy into writing. Like many other followers of the Marxist ideology, he was particularly fond of two Latin American writers — Pablo Neruda and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Academic Pabitra Sarkar recalled his Bengali translation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ‘Clandestine in Chile’. Despite his hectic schedule, he found time to author quite a few books. Among them, many recollect works like ‘Phire Dekha’, ‘Swarger Mukhe Mahabishrinkhala’, ‘Nazi Germanyr Jonmo O Mrityu’.
Veteran playwright Ashok Mukhopadhyay, who was four years his senior at Sailendra Sarkar Vidyalaya, said: “He grew up at a time when Kolkata was witness to a cultural renaissance of sorts. Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Ritwik Ghatak were making films. Sombhu Mitra, Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay and Utpal Dutt were staging plays. That milieu had a profound impact on him.”
Playwriting — both original and adaptations — was his forte. “As a 20-year-old in Presidency, Buddhadeb wrote a Bengali adaptation of Clifford Odets’ ‘Waiting for Lefty’. It was titled ‘Bijoyer Opekkhay’. It was produced by a local theatre group,” said Mukhopadhyay. Subsequently, at least three of his plays were staged by eminent groups. Two of them, ‘Dusshomoy’ and ‘Poka’, were immensely popular. In 2000, Bhattacharjee wrote another adaptation. This time, he chose Kafka’s novella, ‘Metamorphosis’. It was called ‘Poka’.
His greater contribution to the cultural landscape was the inauguration of the Kolkata Film Festival in 1995. “He ensured that prominent international filmmakers visited the festival,” said film scholar Sanjay Mukhopadhyay.
Nandan was his favourite ever since its inauguration by Satyajit Ray. Many remember that in 1993, when he abruptly resigned from Jyoti Basu’s govt, he used to spend most of his evenings at Nandan. The last time Bhattacharjee was prominently seen at Nandan was during the Kolkata Film Festival inauguration in 2010.