Popular Bengali novelist Bimal Mitra passed away on this day. He also wrote in Hindi. His best-known work is Shaheb Bibi Golam, which was made into both Bengali and Hindi films.
Mitra was a railways employee. His experience of life in Chakradharpur Division, now in Jharkhand, made its way into his fiction. He resigned from the railways in 1950, in his late 30s, and became a full-time writer. He was a prolific writer. His novels were expansive sagas of individual lives caught up in a world of enormous social and political change.
Shaheb Bibi Golam, the Hindi version of which was acted in and produced by Guru Dutt, is a story set against a decadent feudal society and revolves around “Chhoto Bou” (played by Meena Kumari in the Hindi version), a woman married into a zamindar family who yearns for love, romance and the fullness of life, which elude her. Mitra’s other famous novels include Asami Hajir and Kori Diye Kinlam. His books were translated into many Indian languages.