Author Samares Mazumdar, who had announced his arrival on the Bengali literary scene with the novel Dour, died at 5.45pm on Monday. He was 79.
He is survived by two daughters, Doel and Parama.
Apollo hospital, where he was admitted on April 25, said Mazumdar had suffered a stroke as well as a speech and swallowing impairment (bulbar palsy), which led to respiratory failure. He had a history of COPD.
Mazumdar was born in Jalpaiguri district and grew up in tea gardens where his grandfather was a manager. The river Angrabhasa that flowed by made its way into several of his works.
While Dour fetched him Ananda Purashkar in 1982, he is best known for his political trilogy — Uttaradhikar, Kalbela and Kalpurush — which is infused with the environs of north Bengal.
The turbulence of the Naxalite years in Bengal, the ideals and beliefs of youths like Animesh Mitra, the central figure of Kalbela, who got sucked into the vortex of the movement, found poignant utterance through his pen and was recognised by the Sahitya Akademi award in 1983.
Tero Parbon, the first teleserial on Doordarshan to attain cult popularity in Bengal (in the 1980s), was also based on his work. “He was involved in every creative decision, including casting, and would often have creative arguments with my father (Jochhon Dastidar, whose company Sonex produced it),” recalled actress Kheyali Dastidar.
“I knew Samares since the early 1960s when his passion was theatre. He used to act on stage and on television and directed plays, too. A few years on, he quit his income tax job and took to writing full-time. Sagarda (Sagarmoy Ghosh, the editor of Desh) asked him to write a novel and he produced that extraordinary piece of work, Dour.... He was a master storyteller with a lucid style and a great eye for detail,” said author Sirshendu Mukherjee.
Mazumdar had created the sleuth Arjun. His other significant works include Satkahon, Unish Bish, Taka Poysha, Ferari, Gorbhodharini, Haramir Hatbaksho and Tirthajatri.
His body will be kept at his Shyampukur Street home in Shyambazar for admirers to pay homage to from 9am to 11am on Tuesday.