Malay Roychoudhury, The Stud Bull of Bengali Poetry, drawn by Kausik Sarkar


 

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Malay Roychoudhury Interviewed by Zinia Mitra and Jaydeep Sarangi

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  The Hungryalist Movement in Bengal : A Conversation with Malay Roychoudhury----  Zinia Mitra and Jaydeep Sarangi  Abstract Malay Roychoudhury (1939) is an Indian Bengali poet, playwright, short story writer, essayist and novelist who founded the Hungryalist movement in the 1960s which changed the course of avant-garde Bengali literature and painting.  His best-known poetry collections are Medhar Batanukul Ghungur, Jakham and Matha Ketey Pathachhi Jatno korey Rekho; and his novels Dubjaley Jetuku Proshwas and Naamgandho. He has written more than hundred books. He was given the Sahitya Academy award, the Indian government's highest honour in the field, in 2003 for translating Dharamvir Bharati's Hindi fiction Suraj Ka Satwan Ghora. However, he declined to accept this award and others.  This interview has been executed by the exchange of e mails with the activist-author.   Q.    Allen Ginsberg in a BBC interview spells out his religious an...
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The Hungryalists : Book Review

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  Souradeep Roy reviews The Hungryalists: The Poets Who Sparked a Revolution   by Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury;  Penguin India; Pages 187; Price: Rs 599 The Hungryalists  by Maitreyee Bhattcharjee Chowdhury is the first book in English on a generation of writers in the 1960s who called themselves the Hungryalists. They self-proclaimed themselves to be “anti-establishment”writers and wrote mostly in Bengali Some of their publications, which were bulletins, were also published in English and Hindi. In the “Epilogue”, Bhattacharjee acknowledges that the Hungry Generation never made a comeback in Bengali literature, but “recent years have seen a better understanding of the movement.” While interest in the poets has certainly piqued in recent years -- and this book is certainly a result of that--, readers will be left with more questions than answers after reading the book. One reason for the recent interest in the Hungralist is a renewed interest in the Beat Generat...
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Interview with Malay Roychopudhury

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  Interview with Malay Roychoudhury, Poet of Hungryalism Mar 23, 2023 By  Evan Kennedy January 30, 2023, Mumbai In the early ’60s, Bengali poet Malay Roychoudhury co-founded Hungryalism, an artistic movement in reaction to literary and political authority. The former British Indian Empire at the time continued to face upheaval and sectarian violence following the Partition of 1947, which created the independent countries of Pakistan and India, displacing approximately 15 million people. In 1963, Roychoudhury hosted Allen Ginsberg in Patna, India, after which the Hungryalists translated their own poems for small magazines in the United States, including  City Lights Journal  (Numbers 1–3, 1963–1966), where I first encountered them. One year after Ginsberg’s visit, Roychoudhury was arrested with ten comrades and charged with obscenity. The Hungry Generation, at least in the eyes of the law, was disbanded. I joke that I’m barely monolingual. Reading the Hungryalists, I ...
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