This story is from January 4, 2019

Literary world mourns as Dibyendu Palit dies at 79

Literary world mourns as Dibyendu Palit dies at 79
Dibyendu Palit
KOLKATA: Sahitya Akademi award winner Dibyendu Palit passed away at a private hospital in Jadavpur on Thursday morning. He was 79. Palit had been suffering from breathing distress for some time which aggravated on Wednesday, when he was taken to the Jadavpur hospital.
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Palit’s death, just a few days after the demise of Nirendranath Chakraborty, has shocked the world of Bengali literature.
With the passing away of stalwarts like them, an era of Bengali writing is gradually drawing to a close.
Palit was known as “the executive writer” among his contemporaries, because of the management positions he has held all his working life, alongside writing. His writer
friends admired him for his smartness and stylish approach to both life and writing.
Palit was born in Bhagalpur and completed his school and college education there. After his father’s death, he shifted to Kolkata in search of a job. However, much before that he started writing stories in Bengali, which also got regularly published in different magazines of the city. His first story, ‘Chhandapatan’, was published in 1955 and received critical acclaim. He was just 20 when his first novel, ‘Sindhu Barowan’ was published. In Kolkata, he decided to pursue higher studies and got admitted to the comparative literature department at the Jadavpur University.

Palit wrote many short stories, novels, essays and even reportage during his entire career. City life and its complexities were the theme of most of his works. ‘Gharbari’, ‘Dheu’, ‘Shonali Jibon’, ‘Sahajoddha’, ‘Amra’ and ‘Anubhab’ are some of his most-read novels. Among his most-loved short stories are, ‘Jetlag’, ‘Gavaskar’, ‘Hindu’, ‘Jatiya Pataka’, ‘Trata’ and ‘Brazil’.
In 1998, Palit won the Sahitya Akademi award. He also won the Ramkumar Bhuwalka award and the Bankim Purashkar.
“With the passing of Palit, an age of Bengali writing comes to an end. I feel this especially because Palit’s demise comes close on the heels of the passing away of Nirendranath Chakraborty. Palit was an unusual writer, he could turn almost anything into a story,” said writer Sanjib Chattopadhyay, who spent some working years with Palit.
Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay was distraught with grief because he was one of Palit’s closest pals. “We took pride in each other and were never jealous of each other’s progress. Palit was a very close friend perhaps because both of us came to the city from small towns,” he said adding that Palit was an extremely disciplined writer whose style was somewhat grim though he was jovial in real life beneath his serious garb. “I would always ask him to bring in some humour in his writings and he promised to start that, but that didn’t happen,” said an emotional Mukhopadhyay.
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