Falguni Ray

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The Birth of a Legend

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Falguni Ray, the legendary poet of Bengali literature ( a language spoken in India and Bangladesh), was the youngest member of Hungryalist movement (also known as Hungry Generation), inducted into it by"Unmarga" and "Wastepaper" editor Tridib Mitra and his wife Alo Mitra. He was born on June 7th, 1945 and died on May 31st,1981. Among the Hungryalists he was youngest to die. Strangely, it was Falguni Ray who introduced poetry recitals and singing poetry at Burning Ghats ( a site at the bank of a river where Hindus consign their dead to flames).In India, it was a standout period of anti-establishment unrest, rebellion and counter-culture, that had captured the spirit of the Hungryalist movement of which Falguni Ray was the firebrand representative. In Calcutta(KOLKATA), guitarist Carlton Kitto, pop singer Usha Uthup, pianist Morris Menezes and Pam Craine, saxophonist Paul Mallick enthralled Bengali midnights when the Hungryalists, specially Falguni Ray, recited poems at the graveyards and Burning Ghats. [Link:www.kaurab.com/english/bengali poetry/Hungry-Generation.]

Agony & Ecstacy

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Falguni's overdrinking and substance-abuse induced early death made him cult figure among the younger generation of writers and poets in Kolkata and Dhaka. Queer though it may be, or call it poetic destiny, most of the Hungryalists appear to have been devastated by their first-love affair. Although Subimal Basak, Malay Roy Choudhury, Basudeb Dasgupta and Shakti Chattopadhyay recovered from the trauma, Binoy Majumdar and Falguni Ray could not. Reference: Vol 14 and 215 of Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, ohio, USA. [Refer to:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_generation]

Kinetic Images of a Ruined Soul

Falguni Ray had written only one book of poems and prose, Nashto Atmar Television, in 1973, which has been reprinted eleven times after Haowa#49 Publishers traced out all his unpublished works and brought out a compendium in 1998 with a portrait of Falguni drawn by Subimal Basak . In his short career he had written only 42 poems and six fictions. Shormi Pandey has produced a feature film based on Falguni's poetry. His cult status may be gauged from the fact that counterfiet diaries have started appearing in print purported to have been written by him. Reference:"Postmodern Bangla Poetry" (2001), edited by Samir Roychoudhury from Haowa#49 Publishers 24B Northern Park, Kolkata 700070, India.His poems emanate from a spirituality of memory, desire and tolerance, from a vision of love and tenderness. He wrote in a typical Calcuttan Bengali which gave an authenticity to his poems. They are not laced with explicit sex as has been in the poetry of Krittibas group of 1950s. Though he has today turned into a cult hero, the mainstream media could not make him into a marketable icon of radical chic. His protest could not be turned into a branded product. He remains a literary giant of the underground, and his poems a discourse thereof. Falguni Ray lived in his own trance, and refused to meet foreign poets and writers. In fact he even avoided contemporary elderly poets as he thought that talking to them for some time may spoil and corrupt his poetic diction.

Sources

1. Van Tulsi Kee Gandh (1884) by Phanishwarnath Renu. Published by Rajkamal Prakashan, Delhi-2, India

2. Hungry Kimvadanti (1994) by Malay Roy Choudhury. Published by De Books, Kolkata-73, India

3. Falguni Ray Compendium (1998) edited by Samir Roychoudhury. (Contributors: Utpalkumar Basu, Tapodhir Bhattacharya, Arunesh Ghosh, Subimal Basak, Malay Roy Choudhury, Jahar Senmajumdar, Tarapada Acharya, Kinnar Ray, Murshid A.M., Debdas Acharya, Sadhan Chattopadhyay, Manjush Dasgupta, Radheyshyam Ghosh, Makhanlal Pradhan, Rajatendra Mukhupadhyay, Goutam Ghosh Dastidar, Barin Ghoshal, Syed Samiran Ghosh, Jaharlal Bera, Jayanta Bhoumik, Suprio Bagchi, Kalim Khan, Angshuman Kar, Zahirul Hassan, Arabinda Pradhan, Sunanda Moitra, Prabhat Choudhuri and Kajal Sen). Published by Haowa#49 Publishers, Kolkata-70, India

4. Postmodern Bangla Poetry (2001) edited by Samir Roychoudhury. Published by Haowa#49 Publishers, Kolkata-70, India

5. Adhunantik Bangla Kavita (2004) edited by Samir Roychoudhury and Om Nishchal. Published by Parmeshwari Prakashan, Delhi-92, India