Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s 'Pather Panchali' turns 100, exhibition uncovers early drafts and original title
Telegraph | 24 March 2026
Pather Panchali was originally called Durer Bari. The novel that makes it to any list of the top five influential novels in Bengali had a different title when pen was first put to paper in 1924.
Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s immortal work is turning 100, and a month-long exhibition has been planned at the Kolkata Centre for Creativity from March 24 for the occasion.
The author’s younger grandson, Trinankur Banerjee, curator of the show, came across the original title last week while sifting through manuscripts in preparation for the exhibition. “Pather Panchali started getting serialised in Bichitra magazine in 1928 and was published as a book the year after. But Bibhutibhushan had been writing it for a long time. There are three drafts. My parents possibly did not read it all as my grandfather’s handwriting was terrible,” Trinankur said.
There are also diaries where he first wrote the character sketches in English. “Apu has been described there as ‘a citizen of the cosmos’ and the underlying ethos behind the novel as ‘philosophy of wonderment’ and ‘ananda’,” he said, pointing to the scribblings on the now-laminated frayed pages.
Trinankur likens his grandfather’s writing to a Swiss clock. “You get to see only the clock face while the mechanism stays hidden. Bibhutibhushan, too, was showing only the finished product, hiding the inner craft. When we study his plan, which we will put on display, we realise the novel is based on his philosophy of life. There is a structure within — a scaffold of philosophy held together by the straws of technique, over which he put on the clay coat of language.”
The exhibition will be divided into three chapters: his life, literature and philosophy. Surprisingly, in a country unmindful about archiving, the family has preserved a wealth of artefacts to illustrate each stage of his life. There are even the syringes and the stethoscope used in his treatment.
“Bibhutibhushan died at the age of 56 in Ghatshila. He was treated by his brother, whom he had put through medical college despite financial hardship. So when some folks in Calcutta blamed him for ‘killing his elder brother’, it broke him. Within a week, he was found dead on the bank of the Subarnarekha, having consumed carbolic acid. The family — two young widows and a three-year-old, my father — was left at sea. They decide to shift from the site of the tragedy,” Trinankur said.
This is the juncture where Bibhutibhushan’s personal effects could have slipped through the cracks of time. But they did not, thanks to his wife and Trinankur’s grandmother, Rama, and more specifically, a dream that she had. “When she was packing to return to her paternal home in Barrackpore, she dreamt of her late husband urging her to take his books and papers with her,” he said.
What Rama brought back included a briefcase that the author carried his writing gear in. “Bibhutibhushan wrote Pather Panchali when he was in the employ of Siddheshwar Ghosh, grandson of the north Calcutta aristocrat Khelat Ghosh, and posted at a forested kutchery near Bhagalpur. He would sit amidst nature, writing the drafts of Pather Panchali and Aranyak, which were initially planned as a single entity, using the box as a table,” he said, adding that the image had perpetuated the myth that Nature channelled through his pen effortlessly.
“His life story has not been unpacked as yet. It is time to open the box. He was a simple man, repulsed by excess. We will display one of his shirts. He also collected pebbles and smoked bidi.”
The exhibition, to be inaugurated on Tuesday by Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay and Aparna Sen, will also feature his letters to Rama, his second wife, 30 years junior to him, and the sari in which she first met him to seek his autograph.
There will also be on sale Bibhutibhushan memorabilia designed by Trinankur: T-shirts, coasters, wall clocks and the like.
Discussions, storytelling sessions and film screenings will be part of the exhibition, which will be on till April 19 except Sundays.