Samir Roychoudhury

Samir Roychoudhury (1933), one of the founding fathers of the Hungry Generation 1961-1965 (also known as Hungryalism or Hungrealism},was born at Panihati, West Bengal, India in a family of artists, sculptors, photographers and musicians. His grandfather Lakshminarayan, doyen of the Sabarna Choudhury clan of Uttarpara, heard learned drawing and bromide-paper photography from John Lockwood Kipling, father of Rudyard Kipling, who was Curator at the Lahore Museum (now in Pakistan), and thereafter established the first mobile photography-cum-painting company in India in the mid-1880s. The company was later taken over by Samir's father Ranjit.

Seeds of Hungryalism

Samir's father established a permanent photography-cum-painting shop at Patna, Bihar in 1886, the city from which Samir, along with his younger brother Malay Roychoudhury, Shakti Chattopadhyay and Debi Ray, had launched the Hungryalist movement in November 1961. Samir's uncle Pramod was Keper of Paintings and Sculpture at the Patna Museum. Pramod's daughters, Sabitri and Dharitri were accomplished veena players and classical singers. Dharitri was a painter as well. Samir's mother Amita Banerjee came from a family where her father Kishorimohan Banerjee was a post-graduate and an assistant of Ronald Ross, Nobel prize winner for discovering the causes of malaria. Right from childhood Samir was thus in the company of people who could groom for his later literary achievements.

Krittibas Phase

Samir studied at City College, Calcutta, where he found as his classmates, Dipak Majumdar, Sunil Gangopadhyay and Ananda Bagchi, who were preparing to start an exclusive poetry magazine, named "Krittibas" (1953). Samir became an active member of the group. Sunil Gangopadhyay's first collection of poems "Eka Ebong Koyekjan" was funded and published by Samir. However, when Dipak Majumdar left "Krittibas", Samir along with Sandipan Chattopadhyay, Ananda Bagchi and Utpalkumar Basu were eased out of the group, although Samir had edited the Phanishwarnath Renu issue of the magazine. Samir left the group and took up a job of marine fisheries expert in a ship which most of the time was in the Arabian Sea, an experience which was later beneficial for Hungryalist inputs. His first poetry collection "Jharnar Pashey Shuye Aachhi" (Sleeping Beside An Waterfall) was premised on the blueness of experience of this marine period.

Among the People

From marine Samir shifted to inland fisheries, which gave him an opportunity to become a part of the poorest boatmen, fishermen and fishnet-knitters families of rural and riverine India. For three decades he travelled extensively in such tribal areas as Chaibasa, Dumka, Daltonganj, Bhagalpur, Muzaffarpur, Darbhanga etc places. These places were the centres where the Hungryalist poets, writers and painters gathered and engaged in creative happenings which has become a part of Bengali literary folklore. During this period Samir emerged as one of the original thinkers, a school of thought later termed as "Adhunantika" by the famous linguist Dr Prabal Dasgupta. Young writers, poets and artists as well as film makers visited him during his tribal sojourn. Among the visitors were Octavio Paz, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Gary Snyder, Rajkamal Choudhury, Phanishwarnath Renu, Dharmavir Bharati, Santoshkumar Ghosh, S H Vatsayan Ajneya, Falguni Ray, Basudeb Dasgupta, Subo Acharya, Tridib Mitra, Alo Mitra etc. Shakti Chattopadhyay stayed with him at Chibasa for more than two years.

Creative work

Samir has been creative off and on. After his first collection of poems he published "Aamar Vietnam" a collection of poems, though not bases on Vietnam, but premised on the sensitivity of a person who lives in a different world and is regularly bombarded by war-news which are shockingly inhuman. Then after a decade his third collection of poems "Janowar" (The Animal) was published written in a different vein. Among the Hungryalists, he is considered to be a master of word formation and language-plasticity. He shifted his base permanently to Calcutta (Kolkata) in the beginning of 1990s and started his own magazine aptly called HAOWA#49 or Unapanchash Vayu in Sanskrit which is a state of unknown mind. He also started Haowa#49 Publications for which his Hungryalist brother Malay Roychoudhury joined as Creative Consultant. HAOWA#49 magazine virtually changed the avant garde literary scene. People who were once critical of the Hungry Generation movement, and even denigrated the Hungryalists, started respecting Samir Roychoudhury and Malay Roychoudhury. Post-graduate thesis have been written on the two bothers, considered to have upwelled fresh mindwaves in an otherwise stagnant creative pool.

Adhunantika controversy

Samir wrote several treatises on "Adhunantika" aspects of our Indian, especially Bengali society, that have impacted post-colonial mindset, and obviously arts, literature and culture. Critics have claimed that "Adhunantika" is "Postmodern" version of Hungryalism, and that postmodern features in Bengali creative writing had emerged way back in 1960s when the Hungry Generation movement was launched with freely distributed weekly bulletins which could have been published by any participant of the movement. Samir introduced an Indianised version of postmodernism which was being called, apart from Adhunantika, Uttaradhunika, Uttar-Adhunika, Bitadhunika, Bhashabadal, Atichetana, Adhunikottarvad etc. Hungryalism got a new valuation with these concepts, and the newer generation of poets, writers and thikners got an alternative platform. Samir edited, since 1990, books on Ecofeminism, Postcolonialism, Postmodernism, Complexity, Hybridity and The Other. He edited Postmodern Bengali Poetry (2001) and Postmodern Bengali Short Stories (2002) which included writings from Bangladesh as well as entire India. Earlier only upper-caste writers from West Bengal used to have prime of place in such collections. Samir changed it all; he invited poems and short stories from all strata of, not only West Bengal, but entire India and Bangladesh. A new word Bahirbanga was coined by him for diasporic Bengalis.

Sources

Hungry Shruti & Shastravirodhi Andolan by Dr Uttam Das. Published by Mahadiganta Publishers, Kolkata, India. (1986)

Van Tulsi Ki Gandh by Phanishwarnath Renu. Published by Rajkamal Prakashan, Delhi, India. (1984)

Salted Feathers edited by Dick Bakken. Portland, Oregan, USA. (Hungry Issue 1967)

Intrepid edited by Carl Weissner. Buffalo, NY, USA. (Hungry Issue 1968)

Encyclopedia in Assamese (Vol VII) edited by Rajen Saikia. Published by Assam Sahitya Sabha, Jorhat, Assam, India. (2007)

E-Kaler Gadya Padya Andoloner Dalil by Satya Guha. Published by Adhuna, Kolkata, India. (1970)

External links

* [http://www.kaurab.com/english/bengali poetry/ Hungry-Generation Introduction to Hungryalist Movement along-with photographs of the participants] .
* [http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry-generation Hungryalist movement in brief] .
* [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,830799,00.html TIME magazine news on the Hungry Generation movement] .
* [http://library.northwestern.edu/spec/pdf/hungrygeneration.pdf Hungry Generation Archive] .
* [http://www.kaurab.com/english/bengali-poetry/malay.html Samir's younger brother's particulars] .
* [http://hungryalistgeneration.blogspot.com Compilation of articles on Hungry Generation written by eminent Academicians] .
* [http://thewastepaper.blogspot.com Hungryalist Influence on Allen Ginsberg] .
* [http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakti_Chattopadhyay Particulars of Hungryalist poet Shakti Chattopadhyay] .
* [http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandipan_Chattopadhyay Particulars of Hungryalist novelist Sandipan Chattopadhyay] .
* [http://lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/findaids/mccordh.htm Papers of Prof Howard McCord who had introduced Hungryalists to US readers] .
* [http://www.lib.uconn.edu/DoddCenter/ASC/findaids/sanders/MSS 19780002.html Court documents relating to Prosecution of Hungryalists] .
* [http.www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajkamal_Choudhary Particulars of Samir's associate Rajkamal Choudhary] .