A Decade with Dr. Dilip Chakraborty
The Octogenarian Canadian Bengali Intellectual
In the year 2014, when I first met Dr. Dilip Chakraborty, he was only 77. I was then completing my 50th and it was my maiden year in Canada. Every week I would get opportunities to meet many new people, and successfully utilise my time in networking with them. One day Sujit Kusum Paul, who was by then not yet recognised as a Yeats scholar, rather was a very helpful family friend of ours, told me that he was going to introduce me to a very learned person. The much-coveted introduction took place at our common friend Bimal Chowdhury’s house and I got a gem that has been glittering on my crown through the whole decade of my Canada life.
On the very first meeting, the two features of DilipDa (though SujitDa addresses him as Sir) that attracted me were his strong memory and good sense of humour. During my back home days, I had got the opportunities to interact and associate with many elderly people like DilipDa who had been scholars and professors and writers. Many of them had dazzled us with their memories also. At the same time many of them had good sense of humour as well. So these features were not anything more than extraordinary to me to be a fan of that person.
But I must admit, in my new country Canada, DilipDa was, probably the first person who appeared before me with these two very special qualities that I have always been craving for. But he had many more features inherent that began to pop up gradually.
Most probably from the very next day we started talking over phone and in no time we discovered that we had so many things to share with each other. Surprisingly we began to feel aligned and thus started sharing our capacities, visions and dreams.
At the very outset, he seemed to me a bit formidable character. It was not because he was formidable in the real sense rather it seemed to me that a PhD in English which was obtained around the year I was born should be formidable. But what a miracle, we two crossed the threshold of that age factors in a very short time. Credit to the Omnipresent that during the last decade he has been loving me as his father, and I have been respecting his as my son. I must mention here that my wife Nilima calls him DilipKaku and happily he addresses her as his daughter.
The best feature of that about-to-be-octogenarian person was his voracious reading habit. Even at that age he could start reading anything and everything and he could finish that book indiscriminately. He didn’t push away books written by a twenty seven years younger writer which is a common phenomenon for most of the elderly intellectuals I had met in Bangladesh. He doesn’t hesitate to appreciate the works of a person at his son’s age. He doesn’t delay to pay a heed what a person of his grand-student’s age utters.
I cannot recall what day DilipDa first visited my house, but I can recall that it was June 6 of the year 2014 Nilima and I paid our first visit to his Brampton house. During those days, I didn’t drive, but we didn’t enjoy any less visiting there even taking by the public transport. It was because we succeeded in making a bond which helped us bring ourselves out of the general egocentric attitude.
I can very well remember the nights he would stay at my small house. We had hundreds of things to share and care, so many people to meet and greet, so many places to visit and revisit together. During the years between 2014 and 2017 he had visited us so many times – at least once in three months. He had to stop doing that when ShipraBoudi (the PhD and BEd degree holder wife of DilipDa) was strictly prohibited not to be allowed to sleep alone at night for medical grounds. Spending time with DilipDa in my family was very significant in developing affection between us – to place the elderly man in a fatherly place, not only in a social milieu but at a personal level also.
Since our first meeting, many a times the question had hovered over my head why, a person who is more than a scholar, who can cite stanzas from many books of world literature, who can recite poems from memory written in English, Sanskrit and Hindi, let alone Bengali, does have no book to his credit! Has no one under the sun ever drawn his attention to this? And so I took the initiative to encourage him in writing a book. The whole year 2015 he passed through in executing my dream – making a manuscript – an autobiographical novel. It was possibly the most literary year for Dr. Dilip Chakraborty.
In May of that year the Bangladesh Theatre organised RobiMela, a festival to celebrate Rabindranath Tagore in Toronto. The organisers invited me to give a talk on the Bengali poet and with full enthusiasm I accepted. When they asked for another name as a discussant, I proposed the name of DilipDa. Afterwards they asked for more two names. Till date I can recall the grand stage of Daniel Spectrum where Dr. Dilip Chakraborty, Akbar Hussain, Subrata Puru and I were on the stage to speak on different aspects of Tagore.
After some days Dr. Sushital Chowdhury of Durgabari made a phone call to me and told me to be a speaker on SriChaitanyaDev which would be organised on the occasion of the arrival of a SwamiJi from the USA. Though I was not an authority of the topic, I had to agree. Afterwards, SushitalDa asked who else could be better speakers for the mini session. The name that had popped up first in my mind was of DilipDa. Gradually the name of Dr. Dilip Chakraborty, a name of a Bengali pundit of Toronto began to spread from here to there to everywhere.
In the same year we had got two reviews from him on my activities and my books. The Daily Sun, Dhaka published a long article on me on July 10. “Subrata Kumar Das: A Feather in the Cap of Canada’s Bengali Diaspora” astounded me. Next week on July 18, his review on my Mahabharata book was published in the Daily Star, Dhaka. To speak true, from the very beginning of my Canada days, I was very much interested to be associated with the West Bengal Bengalis along with Bengalis from Bangladesh. DilipDa played a pivotal role in making my interest meaningful. He told Shyamal De Sarkar, the noted Torontonian veteran cultural activist of the last five decades, about my literary activities. Resultantly ShyamalDa, the spokesperson of Toronto Bengali Drama Group (TBDG), invited me to read out a self-written poem on November 22. The event opened a new horizon for me – I began to be acquainted with the Torontonian West Bengalis as well.
On December 18, we kicked off an event to celebrate the friendship of Rabindranath Tagore and W. B. Yeats. It was a brainchild of SujitDa and me. Alongside Dr. Borhanuddin Khan Jahangir, Poet Asad Chowdhury and Poet Asoke Chakravarty there was also Dr. Dilip Chakraborty to speak on the occasion. The event was organised under the auspices of Bangladeshi Novels and it was the first event that I had organised with the help of my friends.
By then we had formed our literary organisation Bengali Literary Resource Centre (BLRC) and 2016 was the year that came forth with the vibration of our new force. For me 2015 was for writing a book on SriChaitanyaDev and researching on how a non-profit can work in the Canadian context. For DilipDa 2015 was the year to give birth his first manuscript. Till date, I can recall the day he finished the manuscript – he made a phone call, gave me the completion report and asked leave of a week for waist and back pain.
On 12 March of the year we organised ChaitanyaMela. We made Dr. Dilip Chakraborty the convenor of the committee. He was requested to inaugurate the 6-hour long event by lighting a candle and he was the person to deliver the concluding speech of the event that was attended by more than five hundred people from all walks of life, irrespective of their religion and beliefs. This event empowered us in involving friends and organising events. He was the first person to write a review on my book on ChaitanyaDev which was published in the Daily Observer, Dhaka on 9 April.
Afterwards, BLRC showed up with its full vivacity. We published five books from BLRC and the whole community came up to celebrate the grand publication. The celebration included the debut books of Akbar Hussain, Sujit Kusum Paul, Shekhor Gomes as well as DilipDa’s autobiographical novel Sapratibho. The publication ceremony developed in us a lofty idea to organise a Canadian Bengali Writers’ Conference. Accordingly, we organised the conference in December and as Dr. Dilip Chakraborty loved to spend his winter days in Kolkata, he was absent from the event.
The publication of the first book boosted DilipDa up to run for a second one. Next January we found him crowned with a second book named Swagotokti, a collection of all his prose and poems. His English translation of a Hindi book was also published during those times.
2017 was the most significant year for two events for DilipDa and me as well. We celebrated the 80th birth anniversary of Dr. Dilip Chakraborty and we organised the second Canadian Bengali Writers’ Conference. Poet Delwar Elahi and I organised the anniversary program which was attended and participated by a good number of people from 16 to 86 age-groups. I took the opportunity to collect the greetings from the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office also. That event had been deeply imprinted for DilipDa and many of us.
The Bengali Writers’ Conference was held on October 15. It was the second one and was attended by main stream writers like Toronto poet laureate Anne Michaels, John Degen, the executive director of the Writers’ Union of Canada, Mary Osborne, the executive director of the Writers’ Trust of Canada, noted Bengali poet Asad Chowdhury, poet Iqbal Hasan, along with some Canadian poets and writers and a huge number of Bengali writers living in different cities of Canada. DilipDa was on the stage in the inaugural session.
From 2016 to 2019 we created our most fruitful times. The more I was creating new venues to work, the more I was involving Dr. Dilip Chakraborty in those. The more I was placing him as an advisor to look after all my actions, the more DilipDa was cherishing his performances.
2018 was the year when we had some special days together. One of those days was in March when DilipDa celebrate his 50th marriage anniversary. It was celebrated in a big restaurant in Mississauga. Among the about fifty guests, we some fans of DilipDa like poet Delwar Elahi, researcher Sujit Kusum Paul were from the Bangladesh community to join the grand lunch. In two months we got another opportunity to spend time together. Our favourite couple from Brampton Nilay Saha and Apu Saha wanted Nilima and me at their house with my near ones of the literary circle. Dr. Dilip Chakraborty was the most wanted. The others included Sujit Kusum Paul, Poet Asad Chowdhury and activist Delwar. The day was full of fun, food and fervour. After some days we had a similar gathering at the house of DilipDa also. The recollections of DilipDa and AsadBhai impressed Delwar and me immensely.
The other major event that took place in 2018 was the creation of my Bengali Language book on Canadian Literature. After about three years I was in the final stage in preparing the manuscript of that book. My new learning of CanLit kept me full of new enthusiasm all the days of the week and it was DilipDa with whom I could share all my secrets without any hesitation. But the sorry saga was the absence of DilipDa in the launching ceremony of that book held on 2 February 2019 which was graced by the then Poet Laureate of Toronto city Anne Michaels and noted Torontonian Bengali poets and writers and dignitaries.
On September 29, the Asian Age, Dhaka published his article ‘Subrata Kumar Das’ First Five Year in Toronto’. It was an extended article that he wrote about me three years before. A written evaluation by a twenty seven year older scholar is not a common phenomenon in the Bengali society. But Dr. Dilip Chakraborty did because he didn’t hesitate to tell what he thought which many of our co-writers and co-organisers of my age or of the older age hesitate to express.
2019 opened a new horizon for me. We started a new programme called Canada Journal with NRB TV. The programme was initiated on June 15 with the opening of the new building of the Bharat Sevasharam. DilipDa was interviewed there with a perfect zeal which was multiplied in October when Canada Journal arranged the weeklong DurgaPuja special and DilipDa came to the NRB Studio on time to record the inaugural speech. Every evening he would watch the Canada Journal Puja program, make comments of the Facebook live links and in the morning give his invaluable feedback over phone.
Dr. Dilip Chakraborty is such a man who is jovial all the time. He himself doesn’t drive but he is never lethargic to travel very frequently to attend community events and visit his near ones. Alongside his everyday walk outside home in the neighbourhood, he loved to mix with people of different communities. But all those pastimes stopped with the emergence of a pandemic named Corona. The man who is full of energy and spirit all the seven days of a week and fifty two weeks of a year got locked down physically and spiritually.
Dr. Chakraborty is not a person to be bashed down. Born in Bangladesh, he left his motherland with the family when there had been huge tumult in the Indian sub-continent resulting casualties of millions for the cause of the partition. Afterwards, he met a head injury and was predicted to die soon when he was 16 but he was reborn and his new life showed his excellence in his student life through his professional life as a professor of English. Serving many colleges in Rajsthan as a Principal, he took retirement and chose Canada as his country to immigrate. In the new society of the new land only a few people knew the sea of knowledge of Dr. Dilip Chakraborty had inbuilt till 2014. But he was never a man to be demotivated. When he was placed in the right milieu his excellence glittered around. Can such a glittering soul be doomed by any circumstances?
After about three months since the emergence of Corona, I was requested by the Chair of BCCB (Bangladeshi Canadian, Canadian Bangladeshi), the largest online platform of the Bangladeshi Immigrants in Canada, to organise an online prayer session for the Hindu people. With applaud I accepted the proposal and the date was fixed May 2. That was the first time even for us to join an online platform. With many others across Canada, it was DilipDa who did his job excellently. He talked on the Hindu scriptures and increased our knowledge. That event, in a true sense, empowered us to reinstate Canada Journal virtually. On May 11 Canada Journal’s first episode was to be aired and the topic was the Wisdom of Hinduism in which DilipDa was one of the best speakers. Afterwards every Monday Canada Journal had newer topics to air. Our record says on June 15, the topic was on Bengali Poets and Writers in Canada and again DilipDa spoke well. Joining these live shows helped him to remain alive with full spirit as it did to hundreds of Bengali Canadians to spend time with a scholastic show.
The best feature that I have detected in Dr. Dilip Chakraborty is that he is such a person who can engross himself into a new book and with an unknown topic very easily. He can bog down on fat volumes hours together which is a rarity in the Bengali readership. DilipDa is one of those few rare readers who is not only able to grab newer things but can evaluate them in his own way. The truth is he passes his times with Bengali books and English literature. But sorrowfully never I have found him to dive into Canadian Literature and so I tried to make him interested in CanLit. During the years 2018 and 2019 I continued my attempts. At the end I understood he was not at a stage to develop interest in an alien literature. So I narrowed down his periphery and confined him to the Queen of Canadian Literature named Margaret Atwood. But unavailability of books and inability to access to online resources compelled me to confine him to Atwood’s single work ‘Survival’ only. DilipDa’s article on the epoch-making book on Canadian Literature is undoubtedly a praiseworthy one. I am sure if I lived near his house and could provide him the necessary books and periodicals he could have been a major Bengali critic on Canadian Literature or at least on Margaret Atwood.
I like to certify that his best virtual performance was in TIFA (Toronto International Festival of Authors). That year the Director of TIFA emailed me to join TIFA and submit new proposals. I submitted five proposals and among them three were accepted. Ten authors from the Canadian Bengali community joined TIFA 2020 and Dr. Dilip Chakraborty was the senior most. Due to pandemic that year TIFA did most of their events online. By then we also had got stronger in online activities. And thus DilipDa proved himself indomitable as we also did.
Our activities on the online platforms continued through 2020 to 2021 up to 2022. For Dr. Dilip Chakraborty it continued up to June 2022. DilipDa maintained all the precautions against Corona but the vicious disease didn’t care the wise elderly man’s strong boundaries. But we are lucky enough that Corona had to be defeated and give up all its evil designs announcing the victory of DilipDa.
NRB TV oraganised an online event to celebrate my birth anniversary in the first week of March of 2021. More than fifty people sent their video wishes. The video of the octogenarian writer was no less good than anyone else’s. In November we first took the initiative to celebrate Hindu Heritage Month which was approved by the Ontario Provincial Parliament in 2016. We did it through NRB platform through the whole month where discussions of Hindu Scriptures and beliefs and history were incorporated and essentially one of the scholar discussants included DilipDa.
In March of the year 2022 he rewrote his previous piece on me and gave a new shape with a more attractive title. ‘Subrata Kumar Das: The Torontonian Bengali Wonder Boy’ was published in the Bengali Times. The article documented his close observations on my literary and social and cultural and religious activities. I applaud him for these articles on me not because he has praised my activities, but because he didn’t hesitate to praise me. Everyone around him and me knows our close ties and he was in a risk to be marked as nepotistic, but he did not hesitate to express what he thought of me.
After the Corona age, the new sun began to shine us. That shine helped many new flowers to bloom also. Such a flower was the publication of an autobiographical book by an 83-year old Toronto Bengali named Ashit Kumar Datta. On July 3, 2022, the book was launched in a well-furnished banquet hall in a well-designed programme. The precious feather of that event was the presence of Dr. Dilip Chakraborty as the chair.
During the years 2018 and 2019 when I did not come out successful to make DilipDa write a book on Canadian Literature, I deviated myself from my target, but did not give up my intention. With the same objective, I had been pushing DilipDa to write an autobiographical book in English. I knew, like many of his relatives, friends and acquaintances that he had an enriched childhood passed in the present day Bangladesh. His tormented past related to the partition of Bengal can be a great resource for any researchers. So did I feel more interested to get a documentation of those days. Because of his authority in English language, I thought his rendering in English could be more capable to draw the attention of the readers.
When he finished the manuscript and gave that to me, Corona has started engulfing the whole world. For many reasons we could not bring that manuscript into light very immediately. Neither after the passing of Corona, I could find myself in a state to take initiative to bring that into light. Afterwards, during the last months of 2022, DilipDa went to Kolkata on a four months tour. He was supposed to return in the first week of April, 2023. We were happy he had returned safe. But what happened in the days of March? The truth was he was supposed not to return from the hospital.
So, returning from the hospital when he landed at Pearson, I decided not to waste any more time in indecision. And as a result the autobiography of Dr. Dilip Chakraborty alias Jin saw the light – the light that has been shinning over me throughout the last decade and will be shining till my last breath.