67-year-old widow stands in queue with marriage cert
Times of India | 25 January 2026
Kolkata: On Sunday afternoon, 67-year-old widow Basabi Chakraborty stood in an SIR hearing queue with her Sept 1983 marriage certificate to show proof of her marriage to poet Bhaskar Chakraborty, with poet Joy Goswami listed as one of the three witnesses. The late poet always used his pseudonym while writing and maintained it in his official documents.
Both Basabi and her only daughter, Praiti, received a hearing notice to provide documents for her father due to a mismatch in his name. Bhaskar Chakraborty, who died in 2005, was born as Bishnumoy Chakraborty, but all his official documents, including the 2002 SIR roll, reflected his pseudonym, Bhaskar. The poet wanted to be known as Bhaskar.
Basabi and Praiti, Baranagar residents, were called for the hearing at Baranagar Narendranath Vidyalaya. Around 2 pm, Praiti and her mother reached the centre with Basabi carrying the marriage certificate and the only affidavit Bhaskar made before he died. This affidavit clearly says Bishnumoy Chakraborty and Bhaskar Chakraborty are the same person.
"My husband was very careless about these things, especially documents. In his family, every man had a name with ‘Pada', which my husband and his younger brother didn't like. My husband changed his name to Bhaskar while his brother changed his name to Chandan. My brother-in-law changed his name in all his major documents, including the Madhyamik admit card, but my husband didn't do that," she said, adding that they faced bank account-related issues after his death in 2005.
Not only Bhaskar, it was a common practice at that time for several authors and poets in Bengal to use pseudonyms for their work.
Praiti, who teaches psychology at a college in N Kolkata and is pursuing her PhD, said, "I knew that I would get a hearing call. It is quite logical, because how would they know these 2 persons are the same? I submitted my Madhyamik admit card before, so today they took a copy of the affidavit made by my father, which they considered a major document."
Basabi said, "Several people in the queue received hearing calls for minor spelling mistakes in their names or surnames, and in our case the 2 names are completely different. We knew we would have to face this and I had submitted a declaration stating both are the same person to the BLO while submitting the enumeration form." Though Basabi brought the 1983 marriage certificate, which bears Joy Goswami's signature, it was not required by the EC officials. Incidentally, Goswami and his daughter also received hearing notices recently due to "unmapping".