Sandipan Chattopadhyay was an Indian Bengali writer. His 1961 book "Kritadas Kritadasi" changed the landscape of Bengali fiction and made his name. A staunch anti-establishment figure and a supporter of creative freedom, Sandipan for some time refused association with the big Bengali publishing houses. He was one of the pioneers of the Hungryalism Movement হাংরি আন্দোলন, also known as the Hungry generation, during 1961–65, though he, along with Binoy Majumdar, Shakti Chattopadhyay quit the movement over literary differences with fellow members Malay Roy Choudhury, Subimal Basak, Tridib Mitra and Samir Roychoudhury. He was awarded the Sahitya Academy award for his book Ami O Banabihari. He died after a prolonged respiratory illness in December 2005. Some of his best known writings include Cholerar Dingulite Prem, "Shaper Chocker Bhitor Diye", Kukur Samparke Duto Ekta Katha Ja Ami Jani, "Seishab Dinratri", Hiroshima, My Love, Astitva Atithi Tumi and Esho Nipabane.
Literary career
Sandipan's first publication was a book of short stories, ‘Kritadash Kritadashi’ ; his second collection of short stories ‘Shamabeto Protiddwandi o Anyanyo’ was published after a hiatus of nine years. In the late 1960s he initiated a series of self-published works, including ‘Biplab O Rajmohon ’, ‘Shomen Paliter Boibahik ’ and ‘25she Boishakher Shurjo ’. Called ‘the prince of little magazines’ by friend and fellow poet Shakti Chattopadhyay, Sandipan's novel ‘Ekhon Amar Kono Ashukh Nei’ was published in the annual Anandabazar Patrika in 1977, after which his novels and short stories were published by big houses such as Protikhhon and Ajkal. Soon after the publication of his early masterpiece ‘Bijoner Raktomangsho’, when everyone started to compare him with Albert Camus, Sandipan declared, he had not read Camus. However, he called himself ‘Camus-kator’ after reading him later. His other favourite European writers were Franz Kafka and Jean Genet. Poet Shankha Ghosh called him the ‘only contemporary European-minded Bengali author’. Fellow writer Shyamal Gangopadhyay jokingly said that Sandipan always wrote great French in Bengali and also considered his novel Hiroshima, My Love to be the first truly international novel written in the language. . An avid admirer of Kamalkumar Majumdar and his inheritance of a Bankimi brand of Bengali modernity as different from the Tagorian model on the one hand and someone steeped into the European avant garde on the other, Sandipan’s aesthetics has within it, an ambivalent dialogue between the indigenous and the Western. While he held himself as a true Indian writer on the ground of writing in the vernacular, he also expressed his wish of undergoing his own funeral journey not with a Gita, but a copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses on his chest. Sandipan joined Ajkal as an employee in the 1980s and his novels became a regular feature in the Pujo-shankhyas of Ajkal from then on until his death. As the Ajkal edition of his complete novels testifies, he received two of the most coveted awards of the literary establishment — Bankim Purashkar in 1995 and Shahityo Academy Purashkar in 2002. As representative of an aggressively experimental postmodernist avant-garde, Sandipan Chattopadhyay alternated between the mainstream and the parallelstream, the establishment and the anti-establishment, blurring their distinctions in the process.
Career in Newspaper
Sandipan Chattopadhyay worked as an editorial assistant with Aajkaal Daily from its inception in 1981. There, he pioneered the publishing of images and letters to the editor. He continued his association with Aajkaal until his death. He published several works of fiction for this paper's Sarod edition, which later became best-selling novels.
Sandipan was the seventh child of Upendranath Chattopadhyay and Narayani Chattopadhyay. In 1965 he married Rina Chattopadhyay. Trina Chattopadhyay, their only child, was born in 1966.
