Reboti Mohan Dutta Choudhury’s most recent visit to Gauripur, almost against the advice of his physician (he had suffered a stroke sometime ago.) was prompted not just by an overwhelming nostalgia. Though he did relish helpings of dhekia saak, a favourite dish prepared in his honour by relatives, there were weightier matters to take care of — the institution of three awards for HSLC students of his alma mater, the PC Institution of Gauripur in memory of his parents and brother-in-law with the cash amount he was honoured with when bagging the Assam Valley Literary Award early this year.

"For a long time now I have had this desire to do something to pay tribute to my parents Ramani Mohan Dutta Choudhury and Amiyalata Dutta Choudhury. You see, just six days before my matriculation exam, Father passed away. It was a great shock for the family. At that critical juncture, if my elder brother-in-law, the late Nirode Chandra Chowdhury, had not stepped in as the saviour, our family would have certainly disintegrated. I owe him a debt I can never repay in this lifetime. By the time I was doing my BSc, Father’s income had all been spent. I was ready to abandon my studies and start working to save my large family consisting of my widowed mother and several young brothers and sisters. But Bhindeo would have none of that. He insisted I proceed to Calcutta for my post graduate studies. Today, I remember my brother-in-law with the same reverence as I do my late parents. Therefore, with the amount I was bestowed with in the Assam Valley Literary Award, I have instituted a trust to award three cash prizes for meritorious students of my alma mater P C Institution of Gauripur. The Ramani Mohan Dutta Choudhury prize will henceforth be awarded to the student who stands first in the HSLC exam. The Nirode Chandra Choudhury prize will go to the student scoring the highest marks in Assamese and the Amiyalata Dutta Chouhury prize will be awarded to the one who scores the highest marks in Mathematics. At present the Higher Secondary results of PC Institution are rather dismal. Prizes will be awarded to them when their results improve in the coming years."

The writer has had a chequered career, engaging himself in a wide variety of jobs, from being a contractor, a Mathematics teacher in Cotton College (1947-48), a few months as a journalist in The Assam Tribune (1955), even a stint as Assistant Manager at the Korangani tea-garden. He joined the Assam Engineering College in the Mathematics faculty in 1957 and retired as professor in 1982. "My father was a contractor. I too took to working as one. I didn’t like doing it though I did earn some money. I was thoroughly disgusted by it all. But in retrospect, I am indebted to those varied experiences because they not only continue to provide endless fodder for my writing, but has also liberated me totally from the limitations of my middle class upbringing. Those years spent among the silent, toiling labourers exerted a powerful influence upon me. Let me give you two examples. At one time I was working at Agomoni. One day, I was supervising the loading of a truck. Jitan, a somewhat saturnine labourer was engaged to lift stone chips, he asked me permission to leave for home as his little son was ailing. Concerned, I sent him home at once. Shortly afterwards, he was back at the site, working silently. The mohori informed me that Jitan’s son had died. When I saw the impassive father working as if nothing had happened, I felt he was a cruel, inhuman fellow. But later, I realised that for impoverished souls like him, mourning at home for this terrible loss was a luxury he could not afford. Then, there is another incident that comes to mind. A tea garden labourer came to me with an urgent request. He needed a tarpauline for a function he was holding at home. I pretended to be hurt as he had not invited me. He was amazed. Would I really go if he invited me? Why not? I asked. I wished I declined his eager invitation. He went to great lengths to manage a reception worthy of me, borrowing a chair and table from his neighbours, rushing off to procure eight rosogollas for me. Those sweetmeats alone must have cost him a month’s wages.

Born in 1924 at Gauripur, Reboti Mohan Dutta Chou-dhury graduated from Carmicheal College, Rongpur (now in Bangladesh). In 1946 he received his Masters Degree in Pure Mathematics from Calcutta University. His first novel Madhupur Aru Tarangini (1971) was followed by other memorable works such as Agomonir ghat, Anhatguri, Abichenna, Prachir, Godhuli and Anusandhan. It was is in the realm of short stories that Sheelabhadra was to reveal his true creative genius. Collections like Bastab, Bir-Sainik, Tarua Kadam, Sheelabhadrar Kurita Galpa, Mezaz, Pratiksha, Uttaran and numerous others made him an undisputed master in this genre, winning him a huge fan following across the state.

Defending his choice of the literary genre that he has used with such power and felicity, he says "I am a storyteller and today’s environment is suitable for the short story. I say this because modern life has ceased to have any continuity. There is no direct progression from one point to the other in a straight line. Instead, what I see in lives around are unconnected and scattered events making up a chaotic whole." Today, Sheelabhadra’s popularity shows no signs of waning. Anthologies of his short stories continue to appear regularly, one of the latest being Madhupurar Madhukar compiled and edited by journalist Munin Bayan.

Interestingly, Sheelabhadra’s better half Smt Nalini Dutta Choudhury enjoys the unique privilege of getting to read every story that flows from her famous husband’s pen the moment the ink has dried. She is also his fiercest critic, bluntly telling him when she is not happy with the story. This inevitably leads to quite a domestic storm. Then, when things have quietened down, the writer realises that she has been right after all, intuitively grasping the weakness of his plot, or the flaws in his narration. After all, she has been a voracious reader from her childhood. Smt Dutta Choudhury refuses to acknowledge that Sheelabhadra’s dependence on her critical feedback is a special achievement for her. "Reading his work and commenting on it is just like any of my other duties at home," she smiles "of course I do take care to run the home smoothly so that he is not unduly disturbed."

I venture to ask him if he agrees with the belief that only Indian writers have the privilege of looking on life from a cultural and philosophical point of view and not merely a psychological one, unlike European authors who do not have a rich continuity of tradition like we do. "Whatever be the legacy, our modern literary training is from western writers whom we had access to through the use of English as a medium of instruction in our educational institutions. In my writing particularly, I have used expressions and idioms, which, though transmitted through the Assamese language, resemble the techniques of western writing. You may call it my weakness. I have been a voracious reader all my life, with my favourite authors being Chekov, Maupassant, Stein-beck, Dostoevsky, Maugham, Milan Kundera and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In my youth I was overwhelmed by the works of Bengali literary grants Bibhuti Bhushan and Tara-shankar. Prof Upen Sharma once opined there are shades of Saul Bellow in my writing. Bellow’s Herzog and Mr Sandler’s Planet are among my favourites. In truth, I have no qualms about admitting that many great authors have inspired and influenced me. Have you noticed, Bellow’s heroes are always old people. Going back to your question about the legacy Indian writers are supposedly blessed with, Aurobindo was a great admirer of Kalidas. But even he admitted that nothing could equal the sheer grandeur of the Greek tragedies."

When one writes a story, poem or novel, the ideal listener is the writer himself. Writing and reading are solitary, asocial acts, acts which fall outside the perimeter of ones obligations and privileges within the shared assumptions of the community. Does that give a writer freedom, especially freedom from ideological pressures?

"Freedom is not something to be given", asserts Dutta Choudhury. "A committed writer writes what he thinks he should write. Nobody can claim Leo Tolstoy was a leftist writer. He was free from that ideology. Yet Lenin has the highest praise for Tolstoy. In his classic magnum opuses like War and Peace, Anna Karenina he paints a vivid picture of Russia in those days to show the need for change, but he did not present any agenda to bring about such reforms. That is why his characters are so natural, unlike the cardboard cut-out figures created by his contemporaries. Even Chekov was derided by Lenin as a pamphleteer. Ideally, a writer should only be an observer, a passive recipient of experiences. As a writer and human being, I am constantly a witness to the social and moral degradation taking place around me. So I simply write what I see, but mind you, only as a passive observer, a dispassionate chronicler. It is not my job to search for answers or pass judgements. Even a soccer or cricket game needs spectators, doesn’t it? I am not implying that man and society’s identity crisis does not worry me. It does, and very much so. As a student of Mathematics I understand that this crisis is a result of time. But, as a writer, I harbour no illusions about my ability to hold back or stem the tide that has led to the degradation of values. If anybody refutes the truth of my observations, I can only say that many a time, truth is what one wants to believe."

More often than not, writers are extremely touchy about their work and bristle with indignation when so much as a mildly unflattering review appears in print. Over the years, Sheelabhadra has been refreshingly candid about his creative limitations and appears quite unruffled by the fact that critics of Assam continue to marginalise him even after his impressive ouevre of creative work. "My humility is due to my link with world literature," he explains quietly. "When I have known of the heights literature can achieve, I realise exactly where I stand as a writer and that helps me to shed my complacence and my ego. An Assamese poet who has since then been assured of a hallowed place in our literature was once told that his work reflected the influence of Tagore. The poet vehemently denied having read Tagore at all. Such conceit is laughable." It is shocking that a writer of Sheelabhadra’s stature has been cold shouldered by the Asam Sahitya Sabha, the premier literary organisation of the state, for decades altogether, does that bother him?

"Well", we smiles in wry amusement. "That lapse seems to have been taken care of. Since the last two or three years, they have started to send me an invitation letter for the annual Sahitya Sabha session. While the conventional literary group doesn’t pay me any attention, young upcoming writers do keep in touch with me".

"By the by, let me relate a particular instance of how the Sahitya Sabha has dealt with writers like me. In 1992 they honoured me with the Kalaguru Bishnu Prasad Rabha award. I saw the announcement only in The Assam Tribune. They did not send me any letter but informed that prize-winners should proceed to Goreswar, where the annual session of the Sabha was taking place, to collect their prizes. It sounded as if, we the prize winners were young schoolchildren! Furious, I shot off a letter to the press, declining to accept the award. That very year, I happened to be honoured with the Bharatiya Bhasa Parishad award for my book Dayitta Aru Anyanya Galpa. There was a formal, carefully worded letter informing me about it — "We shall be grateful if you kindly accept this humble token of appreciation." They took care of all the nittygritties of my visit to Kolkata to receive the award. Their considerateness and meticulous planning, as well as the sobriety and dignity of the reception accorded to me was truly memorable."

Over the years, Sheelbhadra’s creative efforts have been to seize the passing moment of a society caught up in a dizzying whirl of transformation and freeze it to a piece of highly original literary work. In the process, his work is not only imbibed with a sharply discernible "local flavour" but has also attained a measure of universality that appeals to a far wider readership than would otherwise have been possible. A case in point is the novel Anusandhan which powerfully evokes the restlessness and uncertainty of the modern, urban generation. Translated into Hindi by Bharatiya Gyanpith and titled Jo Mann Tute Apna, the first edition was launched in October 1998 and by April 2000 it was already into its second edition. Though Sheelabhadra is happy about the quality of translation in Hindi and other languages, he has some reservations about the English translations.

The writer spends his days mostly at home, watching the news on television, bonding with his grandchildren, dreaming of the days gone by and the friends who have passed on. He confesses that the "big egos" of his literary contemporaries prevent him from socialising with them. Instead, he is refreshed by his interaction with younger writers like Arupa Patangia Kalita, Phanindra Kumar Dev Chowdhury and Apurba Saikia. He produces a story regularly, generally on request. Inspiration comes from many sources and often "from something very ordinary." He explains "When I return from a city bus trip I have a nucleus of a story ready. My only fear is that I will forget the incident and that is why I worry sometimes."

Courtesy: The Assam Tribune