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, memoi...
Malay Roychoudhury's Poetry of Dissent : Translated from Bengali to English
Malay Roychoudhury's Poetry of Dissent Translated from Bengali to English. Protest in Poetry ( First stage translation by Mahashweta Bose, finalised by the author ) ) Malay Roychoudhury's Poetry of Dissent Translated from Bengali to English. Nay-Ballad From uncoiled wings of the burning swan after sea of blood was born out of green caterpillar that skin sheared moon from cloud’s underbelly ordered waves to abolish horoscopes on crabs’ breasts . On the evergreen epiglotis of lotus full to the brim the pollen fiddling honey bee waved her double scarf searched for drunk village of pride red beating crowd humming songs sleeping side by side of worried distance . ( Translation of ‘Na-Ballad’. Written on 15 August 1999 ) A Quasi Governmental Report Unarmed military offered prayer...
The Hungryalists : Maitreyee B Chowdhury interviewd by Michael Liminios
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...
A Brief Encounter with the Hungryalist Movement : Kapil Arambam
I wish I was there during the three decades from the Fifties to the Seventies. Those were the days, as I loved, when the whole world was witnessing a literary tsunami, yet of the good kind. No tsunami, but say, a revolution. With Jack Kerouac touring around North America, the Beat Generation was driving all across the globe; then we have the Malay Roy Choudhury & Co, describing in plain words how literature can pinch hard the arses of the authority while producing great works of art; and closer home, the three poets, Yumlembam Ibomcha, Wahengbam Ranjit and Thangjam Ibopishak published the anthology of Shingnaba (Challenge/Resistance) in volumes. In music, the Fifties was archaic yet the rise of Led Zep, the Doors, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd and the other bands in the Sixties was changing the way how we rock and roll literally. Anyways, a few decades down the revolutionary road, now we have a multiverse of art and literature that thrills us, amazes us, and inte...