Debesh Roy, 84, who was known for his tome Teesta Parer Brittanto (Life in the banks of Teesta), passed away in Kolkata, due to electrolyte imbalance. Anisujjaman, 83, who was an immensely popular writer in Bengal and a freedom fighter, passed away in Dhaka, a little before Roy’s death.
Mr.Roy was born in north Bengal and was active in the leftist working class movement in north and south West Bengal. An ace novelist, he mostly wrote about north Bengal, where he grew up. Despite writing for several years, he emerged as a major novelist only after the success of Teesta Parer Brittanto , which was based on the lives of people on the banks of the river Teesta, severely constricted due to construction of dams. The work won a Sahitya Akademi award in 1990, and was also adapted into a popular play.
Mr. Roy also authored a popular non-fiction work — an unauthorized biography of a mercurial Bengali Dalit leader, Jogendranath Mondal, who was also the first Law and Kashmir Affairs Minister of Pakistan. The plight of urban middle and lower income communities featured frequently in Mr. Roy’s work, as he later shifted to Kolkata.
Anisujjaman was born in North 24 Paraganas of West Bengal, much before the Partition. He was often described as a writer of Bengal and “a dear friend of Kolkata”. He grew up in Kolkata in the 1940s and worked as a school teacher. He later shifted to Dhaka and worked as a professor at various Bangladesh universities.
Anisujjaman received the highest civilian award of Bangladesh, as well as the Padma Bhushan, one of top civilian awards of India, in 2014. He was also awarded the Ananda Puraskar — a top non-government literature award in West Bengal — twice, in 1993 and 2017.
From 1952, when the language movement in the then East Pakistan had just started, till Bangladesh’s independence in 1971, Anisujjaman actively participated in the liberation movement led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. He resisted all forms of communal and sectarian politics and wrote extensively on the intersection of the Bengali language, literature and the Muslim mind. His book on Bangladesh’s liberation and about the country post its independence was widely appreciated.
