The Indian P.E.N.
The Hungry Generation
The Hungry Generation Movement in Bengali literature, which took Calcutta
by surprise in 1961, and became instantaneously known through TIME
magazine, has withstood all odds, and is now a historical and cultural
force to reckon with. The movement has grown to uncontrollable
proportions. All sorts of groups have emerged at various places in West Bengal claiming to be of Hungry Strain.
The
major Hungry Generation writers and poets are in their late forties
now: Subimal, Malay, Basudeb, Subhas, Saileswar, Pradip and others. They
have always been at the receiving end from the media due to their
uncompromising stand. Except for Debi Ray, who broke with the Hungries
quite early, none of them are invited to participate in the national or
regional TV and radio programmes, official
workshops/seminars/recitals/readings.
The
Hungry writers, better known as the Hungry Generation, are immensely
popular among students and young writers today, as they are considered
the voice of conscience in a Bengali society shattered by internecine
political struggles of the post-partition years. Interesting, though,
the Hungry Generation writers, poets and artists do not function as a
group any more. But they remain the only avant garde figures in
Bengali literature, always experimenting, always questioning, expressing
themselves in ultimate terms. “The Movement”, as the renowned critic Dr
Uttam Das has said, “is an important event in the history of Bengal”.
Malay Roychoudhury(b. 1939), the towering avant garde
poet who pioneered the Hungry movement in Bengali literature, is a
legend by himself. Still uncompromising, and therefore not supported by
the Bengali media, all his collections have so far been published by his
friends and relatives. Despite being hailed by TIME magazine as an
outstanding poet, he remains as controversial as he was in 1961 when he
entered the literary scene in Calcutta
with a whiff of liberated form, and an uninhibited approach towards
expression of Indian thought concerning self and society, love and
destruction, politics and despair.
Malay
had given up writing sometime in 1966 after some of his friends has
betrayed and testified against him. But he returned with a vengeance in
1983, and took the Bengali scene by storm. His poems have been
translated into almost all Indian languages as well as into Spanish,
German, French, Russian and Italian. He has translated Ginsberg, Lorca
and Neruda into Bengali. Malay’s collection of verse includes Shoytaner Mukh, Jakham, Kabita Sankalan, and the recently published collection revealing violence, fear and agony, in Medhar Batanukul Ghungur.
Although once the leader of the fierce Hungry Generation movement, Malay now lives the life of a recluse in Bombay.
The poets of the younger generation look at him with awe and
inspiration. We feel he is the ultimate representative of his kind of
poetry.
(Courtesy: Prof Nissim Ezekiel, Editor, The Indian P.E.N., Mumbai, 1987)
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