Hungryalists and the Beatniks: Malay Roychoudhury Interviewed Part-2
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"The Hungryalists" reviewed by Madhavi S Mahadevan in New Indian Express
The Hungryalists: The Poets Who Sparked a Revolution By: Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury Publisher: Penguin Viking Pages: 272; Price: `599 Oh, I’ll die! I’ll die! I’ll die! My skin is in blazing furore I do not know what I’ll do, where I’ll go, Oh I’m sick I’ll kick all Arts in the butt and go away, Shubha. Thus begins Malay Roy Choudhury’s Bengali poem Prachanda Boidyutik Chhutar (Stark Electric Jesus). Appearing in a pamphlet in 1964, its publication resulted in arrest warrants being issued against the poet and 11 others, members of a Kolkata-based poets’ collective—the Hungry Generation. And the charges? Conspiracy against the state and literary obscenity. Who were these radicals, where did they come from and what happened to them is the substance of Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury’s non-fiction book, The Hungryalists: The Poets Who Sparked a Revolution. Well-researched, it draws on journals, memoirs,