It was an early February morning in 2013. I stood before a quiet, modest house in Ghatsila, Jharkhand. Whitewashed walls, a red tiled roof, green shutters, a verandah with a locked iron gate. A house that looked ordinary — but held within it the extraordinary. This was Gouri Kunjo, the home of eminent author Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay (12 September 1894 – 1 November 1950).
It was here, in these rooms, that he wrote Pather
Panchali (Song of the Little Road, 1929). A novel that gave us not just a
story, but an entire world. Apu and Durga — their joys, their hunger, their
wonder at the simplest things — all first came alive within these very walls.
Later, Satyajit Ray would immortalize them on screen, twenty-six years later.
But the seed was planted here, in the silence of Ghatsila, in the solitude of a
writer deeply attuned to the rhythms of rural Bengal.
When I visited, I wondered — what was it like in 1929?
Rural Ghatsila, where literature and life blended so seamlessly that even
cracked walls seemed to whisper fragments of prose. Ghatsila’s green silence
outside; inside, the hum of memory and pen scratching paper. Perhaps it was in
this very verandah that he paused, looked out, and dreamt of Nishchindipur.
Today, when I think of Pather Panchali, or watch Ray’s
Apu Trilogy, I rarely stop to think of the room where it all began. And so, on
his birth anniversary, I felt compelled to share.
Photo: Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay with wife Rama Bandyopadhyay (Photo Courtesy: Trinankur Bandyopadhyay).
