One of my deepest regrets as a journalist is that I did not accept his late wife Surama Ghatak’s proposal to translate her two/three Bengali memoirs of her husband Ritwik Ghatak. She sent two books to me, which subsequently went into several editions but I could not keep her request. The book, simply called Ritwik, has a brilliant sketch of Ghatak done by none other than Hiran Mitra, the famous artist. The book went into several editions over the years and was dedicated to “the youth of the nation.”

Surama Ghatak mentions in her preface to the second edition that Ghatak, when he was around 28/29 years old, had written a thesis on The Cultural Front which remained untraced for a long time till the ex CM of West Bengal, the late Buddhadev Bhattacharya informed her that three people had the original mss. It carried the signature and address of Ghatak in the end. She expressed the hope that some time in the future, it might be taken up by some publisher for posterity. But no one knows whether it has been published or not.

Ritwik Kumar Ghatak was born on November 4, 1925 at Jindabazar in Dhaka. He and his twin sister Prateeti, were the youngest of nine children.i The other children were – Manish, Sudhish, Tapati, Sampreeti, Brototi, Ashish Chandra and Lokesh Chandra.ii His father, Rai Bahadur Suresh Chandra Ghatak was a Deputy Magistrate. Their lifestyle was a fusion of the West and the East. Ghatak’s niece, Mahasweta Devi, noted author and activist for tribal communities in West Bengal and Bihar recalls how she, Bhaba (Ritwik) and Bhabi (Ritwik’s twin sister), would form a small group.

Mother Nature roused in him a passion for wider horizons. As a child, Ghatak was interested in drawing and music. Abanindranath Tagore held a great attraction. Raj Kahini, Buro Angla remained a permanent source of joy. Surama Ghatak said, “He would read out these stories endlessly to our son Ritaban and both reader and listener would be so overwhelmed that tears would roll down their cheeks.” Five paintings by Gaganendranath Tagore fascinated him. Other writers whose works moved him deeply were – Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay, Tarashankar Bandopadhyay and Manik Bandopadhyay besides the works of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Abraham Lincoln and Lenin.

Ustad Allauddin Khan taught him the universal language of music. Western classical masterpieces that fascinated him were Beethoven’s Choral, Violin Concerto, Leonora and Moonlight, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, Nutcracker Suite, Sleeping Beauty and Hamlet, Paul Robeson’s Ole Man River, Old Folk At Home, Poor Old Joe and Songs My Mother Taught Me. Among Indian music composers, the music of S.D. Burman and Abbasuddin influenced him deeply. The poetic works of Rabindranath Tagore and Sukanta Bhattacharya made an impact. Ghatak used Sukanta’s poem Cheel in Bari Theke Paliye and his 1946 in Komal Gandhar.

Ghatak married Surama who was imprisoned as a political prisoner for two years. They met around 1953 and Surama had joined the IPTA when it was almost on the verge of being disintegrated. They married in 1955 and had three children, none of who, however, took to films as a vocation. It is a measure of Ghatak’s artistic caliber that he turned an essentially provincial experience into an expression of universal validity.

Childhood Days

Ghatak led a lively childhood in East Bengal, with its lush green carpet of enchantment, its turbulent rivers, its fish, its mango groves, its fine-grained rice devoured with pungent fish curry. Memories of this heavenly childhood haunted him all........

© Mathrubhumi English