Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay

Novelist

Date of Birth	:	15 Sep, 1876
Date of Death	:	16 Jan, 1938
Place of Birth	:	Debanandapur, Bandel, India
Profession	:	Novelist
Nationality	:	Indian

Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay (also spelled as Sarat Chandra Chatterjee and Saratchandra Chatterji; 15 September 1876 – 16 January 1938), was a Bengali novelist and short story writer of the early 20th century. Most of his works deal with the lifestyle, tragedy, and struggle of the village people and the contemporary social practices that prevailed in Bengal. He remains the most popular, translated, and adapted Indian author of all time.

Early life

Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay was born on 15 September 1876, in a Bengali Brahmin family in Debanandapur, a small village in Hooghly, West Bengal. His father Matilal and his mother Bhuvanmohini had five children—two daughters (Anila and Sushila) and three sons (Sarat Chandra, Prabhas Chandra, and Prakash Chandra). Sarat Chandra was their second child.

Birthplace of Sarat Chandra in Debanandapur, Hooghly

Sarat Chandra's grandfather was a very wealthy man but he lost everything. In the Preface of his monumental book, Srikanta quotes him:

"My childhood and youth were passed in great poverty. I received almost no education for want of means. From my father, I inherited nothing except, as I believe, his restless spirit and his keen interest in literature. The first made me a tramp and sent me out tramping the whole of India quite early, and the second made me a dreamer all my life. Father was a great scholar, and he had tried his hand at stories and novels, dramas and poems, in short, every branch of literature, but never could finish anything. I do have not his work now—somehow it got lost, but I remember poring over those incomplete mss. over and over again in my childhood, and many a night I kept awake regretting their incompleteness and thinking what might have been their conclusion if finished. Probably this led to my writing short stories when I was barely seventeen."

Poverty forced the family to live for long periods in Bhuvanmohini's father Kedarnath Gangopadhyay's home in Bhagalpur, Bihar.

Sarat Chandra was a daring, adventure-loving boy. His education began at an informal village school [pathsala] and later he joined Hooghly Branch High School. He was a good student and got a double promotion that enabled him to skip a grade.[8] He passed his Entrance Examination (public examination at the end of Class X) in 1894. He entered Tejnarayan Jubilee College. He tutored a relative's children who paid his tuition in return. After two years' study, he could not take his F.A. (First Arts) public examination as he could not pay the twenty rupees examination fee.

After dropping out of formal studies, he spent much of his time interacting with friends, acting in plays, and in playing sports and games. He wrote several of his famous works during this period. And then he stopped writing: "But I soon gave up the habit as useless, and almost forgot in the long years that followed that I could even write a sentence in my boyhood."

On their wife's death, Matilal left the house of his in-laws and moved the family to a mud house in Bhagalpur. Sometime later, Sarat Chandra left home in the guise of a sannyasin (monk) and wandered from place to place. Little is known about what he did during this period. On getting the news of his father's death, Sarat Chandra did his shraddha (memorial service), deposited his family with a friend and relatives, and went to Calcutta (today's Kolkata) to try out his luck.

Life in Calcutta and Burma

In Calcutta, Sarat Chandra worked for six months translating Hindi paper books into English for an advocate. In January 1903, he went to Burma. He held sundry jobs in Rangoon and Pegu. He eventually found work in Burma Public Works Accounts Office in Rangoon.

Most of his stay in Rangoon was in a neighbourhood where mistris (manual workers, mechanics, craftsmen, artisans) lived. He freely mixed with them. He wrote their job applications, mediated conflicts, gave them homeopathic medicine for free, even gave monetary help. The mistris had great respect for him.

Sarat Chandra’s neighbour downstairs was a Bengali mistri who had arranged his daughter’s marriage to an alcoholic. The daughter Shanti Chakrabarty begged him to rescue her. Sarat Chandra married her and they had a child. He was devastated when his wife and one-year old son passed away from plague in Rangoon. Sometime later, a Bengali mistri friend Krishna Das Adhikari, requested him to marry his teenage daughter. Sarat Chandra eventually agreed. He renamed his wife Hironmoyee and taught her to read and write. She outlived him by 23 years. They did not have any children.

During his stay in Rangoon, Sarat Chandra read widely, painted, and was into music. And he resumed writing after a gap of about eighteen years: "Some of my old acquaintances started a little magazine, but no one of note would condescend to contribute to it, as it was so small and insignificant. When almost hopeless, some of them suddenly remembered me, and after much persuasion they succeeded in extracting from me a promise to write for it. This was in the year 1913. I promised most unwillingly—perhaps only to put them off till I had returned to Rangoon and could forget all about it. But sheer volume and force of their letters and telegrams compelled me at last to think seriously about writing again. I sent them a short story, for their magazine Jamuna. This became at once extremely popular and made me famous in one day. Since then I have been writing regularly. In Bengal perhaps I am the only fortunate writer who has not had to struggle."[1]

In 1916, he resigned from his job due to ill health and moved to Calcutta.

House of Chattopadhyay

Main article: Sarat Chandra Kuthi

After returning from Burma, Chattopadhyay stayed for 11 years in Baje Shibpur, Howrah. Then he made a house in the village of Samta, in 1923, where he spent the later twelve years of his life as a novelist. His house is known as Sarat Chandra Kuthi. The two-storied Burmese style house was also home to Sarat Chandra's brother, Swami Vedananda, who was a disciple at Belur Math. His and his brother's samadhi are within the house's compound. Trees like bamboo and guava planted by the renowned author still stand tall in the gardens of the house.