Sunil Gangopadhyay was born on 7 September 1934. He was an Indian poet and novelist. Sunil Gangopadhyay born in Faridpur, Bangladesh, Sunil Gangopadhyay acquired his Master’s degree in Bengali from the University of Calcutta; in 1953 he with a small number of his friends started a Bengali poetry magazine Krittibas. After that he wrote for many various publications.
Sunil Gangopadhyay made the Bengali fictional character Kakababu and wrote a series of novels on this character which became important in Indian children’s literature. He acknowledged Sahitya Akademi reward in 1985 for his novel Those Days (Sei Samaya). Sunil Gangopadhyay used the pen names Nil Lohit, Sanatan Pathak, and Nil Upadhyay.
Sunil Gangopadhyay studied at the Surendranath College, Dum Dum Motijheel College, City College, and Kolkata – all affiliated with the University of Calcutta. Thereafter, he acquired his Master’s degree in Bengali from the University of Calcutta in 1954.
He married Swati Bandopadhyay on 26 February 1967. Their only son, Souvik, who stays in Boston, was born on 20 November 1967.
Sunil Gangopadhyay was the founder editor of Krittibas, an important poetry magazine taking place for publishing from 1953, which became a platform for a new age group of poets investigating with lots of new forms in poetic themes, rhythms, and words.
Author of well over 200 books, Sunil Gangopadhyay was a high-volume writer who has surpassed in various genres but announces poetry to be his “first love”. His Nikhilesh and Neera series of poems (some of which have been translated as For You, Neera and Murmur in the Woods) have been tremendously popular.
As in poetry, Sunil Gangopadhyay was known for his exclusive stylishness in text. His first novel was Atmaprakash and it was also the first writing from a new comer in literature circulated in the admired magazine- Desh in 1965. It was judgmentally applauded but some hullabaloo ascended for its destructive and ‘obscene’ style. Sunil Gangopadhyay said that he was scared of this novel and went missing from Calcutta for a few days. Satyajit Ray supposed to create a film on it but it wasn’t conceivable for some reasons. The central character of ‘Atmaprakash’ is a young man of core-calcutta’- Sunil Gangopadhyay, who clues a bohemian life-style. The novel had stimulus from ‘ On the road’ by Jack Kerouac, the beat generation writer.
His historical fiction Sei Somoy (translated into English by Aruna Chakravorty as Those Days) established the Indian Sahitya Akademi award in 1985. Sei Somoy endures to be a best seller more than two decade when its first publication. The same is accurate for Prathama Alo (also translated recently by Aruna Chakravorty as First Light), another best-selling chronological fiction and Purbo-Paschim, a raw representation of the barrier and its repercussion seen through the eyes of three generations of Bengalis in West Bengal, Bangladesh and somewhere else. He is also the conqueror of the Bankim Puraskar (1982), and the Ananda Puraskar (twice, in 1972 and 1989).
Sunil Gangopadhyay wrote in lots of other genres counting travelogues, children’s fiction, short stories, features, and essays.
Though Sunil Gangopadhyay wrote all types of children’s fiction, one character created by him that stands out beyond the rest, was Kakababu, the crippled adventurist, escorted by his young mature nephew Santu, and his friend Jojo. Since 1974, Sunil Gangopadhyay wrote over 35 novels of this widespread series, most of which seemed in Anandamela magazine.
Sunil Gangopadhyay died at 2:05 AM on 23 October 2012 at his South Kolkata house, following a heart attack. He was suffering from prostate cancer for some time and went to Mumbai for treatment. He gives back to Kolkata on the day of Mahalaya. Sunil Gangopadhyay‘s body was incinerated on 25 October at Keoratola crematorium, Kolkata.
Source: Wikipedia
