Bengali poet Sarat Mukhopadhyay dies at 90

Bengali poet and writer Sarat Mukhopadhyay, a part of the post-Modernist poets' group along with Sunil Gangopadhyay and Shakti Chattopadhyay, died in the early hours of Tuesday after a cardiac arrest.

Sarat Mukhopadhyay often wrote under the pseudonym 'Trishanku' and was renowned for poems such as 'To God' and 'Birajamohan'. He had turned 90 on August 15.

He left behind his only son Sayan Mukhopadhyay. His wife Bijoya Mukhopadhyay, a Sanskrit scholar and poet, had predeceased him.

Mukhopadhyay was one of the post-Modernist poets who stormed into Bengal's and India's literary world with a new grammar and language for poetry, which was both modern and revolutionary at that time. The group broke certain notions by embracing the life of non-conformist subalterns.

He had studied in Glasgow and was a successful chartered accountant and company secretary before he chose to concentrate solely on his literary passion. Besides Chattopadhyay and Ganguly, he was close friends with writers Buddhadeb Guha and Dibyendu Palit.

An anthology of his poems was translated into English with the title The Cat Under the Stairs' by Robert S MacNamara. Mukhopadhyay himself translated a number of Rabindra Tagore's short stories.

A familiar figure in Bengali literary circles, Mukhopadhyay wrote with wry humour and a verbal directness, which combined with a personal response to his surroundings and times, carving out sensitive poetry.