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zahid-z-hasan-blog · 6 years

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Humayun Ahmed; A new era of Bengali literature.

Kutubpur, a small village in Netrokona district. 13 November, 1948, police officer Foyzur Rahman and his wife Ayesha Foyez was celebrating one of his best days in life. They have become the parents of their first baby boy. They named the baby Humayun. Who knew then one day that tiny little baby boy Humayun will become the ‘Probad Purush’ of Bengali literature, Humayun Ahmed.

I am little bit confused at this point. Because I am thinking about his introduction. How should I introduce him? As a writer? Or a filmmaker? Or a dramatist, screenwriter, songwriter or teacher? He was the most talented writer of modern Bengali literature. He wrote over 200 fiction and non-fiction books and surprising but true that all of those were bestsellers in Bangladesh. There is a magic in his books that attracts people like magnets. As a result, he won the Bangla Academy Literary Award and the Ekushey Padak award for his contribution to Bengali literature. Personally I am a huge fan of his writing and I have read almost all the books he wrote.

Anyways, I am not going to write his biography here. I will write about some contributions to Bengali literature which our generation should know. The first thing he did that he created new readers of Bengali literature. He usually used very simple but heart touching words and wrote his novels mostly on real life plots. The most amazing thing about his writing is storytelling. He used to write his novels in a storytelling mode. That made his novels attractive and easy to understand. Humayun Ahmed made an evolution of the language of Bengali drama. Bengali drama language was influenced by west Bengal accent. He introduced the usage of local language in Bengali dramas. He also revived some almost dead Bengali cultures like songs of Ukil Munshi, Ghetu songs and songs of Hason Raja. He used Ukil Munshi’s song in his cinema ‘Srabon Megher Din’.To make Hason Raja’s song, he took a great initiative. He made a drama serial which name was ‘Aj Robibar’. He played Hason Raja’s song at the end of every episode of the drama. He made a cinema named ‘Ghetuputro Komola’ that reminds us that there was a culture called Ghetu Gaan.

Humayun Ahmed died on July 19, 2012 at the age of 63. What he gave to Bengali literature before his death is a treasure. He will be remembered always.

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zahid-z-hasan-blog · 6 years

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Hungryalist Movement; A battle for the Freedom of Writing.

Writers of Hungry generation: Saileswar Ghose, Malay Roy Choudhury and Subhas Ghose, Basudeb Dasgupta, David Garcia and Subimal Basak. (from the top left moving clockwise)

The first basic need of a human being is food. Then clothing, habitation, education and treatment. Since the beginning of creation, people around the different parts of the world are fighting for different basic needs. But the most interesting thing is that we Bengalis have a great history of fighting for the freedom of writing in a new different way to express inner thoughts. Doesn’t it sound interesting? It was early sixties. The story is about a group of young Bengali poets who started thinking that Bengali literature was just living on the influence of foreign culture. So they started writing in different Bengali metaphoric words. But the government took stand against them and their writings. That was the beginning of a new movement.

Yes, I’m talking about the Hungryalist movement which is better known as the Hungry Generation. It was a literary movement in Bengal. This movement was started in 1961 by the famous Hungryalist quartet- Malay Roy Choudhury, Samir Roy Choudhury, Shakti Chattopadhyay and Debi Roy (alias Haradhon Dhara). The movement was officially launched in November 1961 from the residence of Malay Roy Choudhury and his brother Samir Roy Choudhury in Patna. For this reason, Malay Roy Choudhury is considered as the creator of Hungryalist movement. Malay Roy Choudhury took the word ‘Hungry’ from Geoffrey Chaucer's poetic line "In Sowre Hungry Tyme". The main theme of the movement was Oswald Spengler’s idea of History. Besides the mentioned four poets, Utpal Kumar Basu, Binoy Majumdar, Sandipan Chattopadhyay, Basudeb Dasgupta, Falguni Roy, Subhash Ghosh, Tridib Mitra, Alo Mitra, Ramananda Chattopadhyay, Anil Karanjai, Saileswar Ghosh, Karunanidhan Mukhopadhyay, and Subho Acharya were among the other leading writers and artists of the movement. The movement lasted from 1961 to 1965. On September 2, 1964, government issued arrest warrants against 11 of the Hungry poets. The charges included anti-establishment view of writing, obscenity in literature and subversive conspiracy against the state. At last, all the charges were framed against Malay Roy Choudhury for his poem ‘Stark Electric Jesus’. He was jailed by the lower court but after that High Court released him.

Actually, post-independence Bengal was facing a terrible time after the unpleasant era of the partition. A certain group of people was taking most of the social facilities. And the result of that is rising poverty, hunger and death. These mismanagements gave birth of a young brigade among the middle-class Bengalis who went against the government not with any weapons, but with their blunt blow of pen and paper mingling into poetry. That gave rise to avant-garde Hungryalist movement in Bengal. The movement gave a shake to the roots of the Bengali literary and cultural establishment in India as well. It changed the total literary atmosphere of Bengal. It influenced Hindi, Marathi, Assamese and Urdu literatures too. The Hungry poets significantly brought a change in the language and vocabulary used in the literature of Indian sub-continent. The Hungryalists wanted to give a knock to the reader’s mind that was filled with dark colonial ideas. And they could do that very successfully. That’s why it became the most controversial topic of that time. Later the ultra-leftist student movement by the Naxalists was also influenced by the Hungry generation. It is still remembered as one of the greatest literary movements in the world.

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#hungryalist_movement #hungry_generation #Bengali_literature #malay_roy_choudhury #shakti_chattopadhyay

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