Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Samarendra Sen Gupta: A touch of surrealism

Samarendra Sen Gupta is one of the leading contemporary poets in India. He is a prolific poet and his poems are intellectually of outstanding quality. Most of his poems have a great touch of modernity. Recently he visited Dhaka on the occasion of the National Poetry Festival where he shared his views with this correspondent.

Gupta was born in Dhaka in 1935 and spent the first 16 years of his life in Dhaka before moving to Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1951. He was a student of Pirenonath High School (now Nawabpur High School). He passed his matriculation in 1951 from the same institute and migrated to Calcutta the same year. After settling in Calcutta, he became involved with the left leaning party.

Gupta remembers Dacca's (now Dhaka) life. “During the time, Dhaka 's life was very vivid and colourful. The city was expanded focusing on Old Dhaka. The population of Dacca was not large. We lived in a big house in Purana Paltan. The house had a touch of aristocracy. The rose garden in our house was famous in the city at that time. Lots of scholarly persons used to come to our house, especially for the garden. My father was the registrar of Dhaka University. We had quite a few eminent neighbours like Jasimuddin, Mohitlal Majumdar, Ramesh Chandra Mazumdar and more. Most of the people who lived in our area were Hindus. Most of them occupied with Dhaka University.

Full report here  Daily Star

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