Malay Roychoudhury : Hungryalist Legend & Pioneer Anti-Establishment in Bengal : Abhijit Pal

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, memoi...

Posted by Michael Limnios Blues Network on February 4, 2019 at 6:30pm "Throughout the world, poetry and music have been forerunners in challenging the mindsets of people. Irrespective of the genre and language both music and poetry have constantly motivated people into thinking differently, into rising in revolt against mediocre or oppressive thought processes." Maitreyee B Chowdhury: Bangalore Blues Maitreyee B Chowdhury is a Bangalore based poet and writer. She has three books to her credit- ‘Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen: Bengali Cinema’s First Couple’ and ‘Where Even the Present is Ancient: Benaras’. In the year 2013, ‘Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen: Bengali Cinema’s First Couple’ was nominated for the Crossword Book Awards, 2013 (Non Fiction category). Maitreyee is organiser of Bengaluru Poetry Festival, and poetry and fiction editor of The Bangalore Review, a literary journal. Maitreyee’s writi...