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Fiction: When filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak and poet Binoy Majumdar were admitted to the same asylum
An excerpt from ‘Letters from the Asylum: A Novel of Art, Madness and Memory’, by Maitreyee Chowdhury. Majumdar was born on September 17, 1934.
As is the case with all good books, I was left in a vacuum of sorts, after reading Binoy so intimately. While Hashpatale Lekha Kobita Guchho was very different from his first book, it offered a lucid narration of life inside the asylum, of the smallness a person was reduced to inside it, and also the range of ups and downs that made up a poet’s mind. In fact, this somehow felt more personal than Fire Esho Chakka. I wondered, what was I to do with my time now that the book was no longer on my bedside?
A week later, on a whim, I decided to visit Thakurnagar, Binoy’s ancestral home. Thakurnagar is a town situated on the Bangladesh border, quite close to the Ichamati river, about four hours away from Kolkata. In spite of the fact that it is a small town, politically speaking, the area had gained prominence over the past few years, thanks to the Matua community who formed an important chunk of voters that every political party had their eyes on.
I had first heard about Thakurnagar through my office earlier this year when I was asked to go there on an assignment. After partition, the Matua sect, belonging to the Namoshudra community, had settled in the Nadia district of West Bengal, and the areas surrounding the North and South 24 Paraganas. In the past few years their political importance had grown tremendously.