Manas Ranjan Mahapatra
It’s not that your friends will be of your age. I have several friends who were once friends of my uncle or father. One such friend was Fiction Writer Dr Bijoy Prasad Mahapatra.
I am in the process of writing on him on this decade of his mysterious death in a mental asylum of Kolkata.
My stint as Odia Language Editor of NBT was full of challenges. I took over at a time when NBT had less than 50 books, mostly translations in Odia. It was my first work to hold a meeting of our Odia Language Advisory Panel which wasn’t held for almost two decades. The Panel meeting wanted me to publish more collected works and original titles.
We began with Selected Stories of Sachidananda Routray and Manoj Das. Odisha had handful of typesetting units that time as the printing process had just switched over from letterpress to DTP.
Suddenly in 1994 we decided to bring out a book containing selections from Gandhiji titled Mind of Mahatma and the book was to be published and released in a function at New Delhi by the then President of India on the occasion of 125 years of Birth of Mahatma Gandhi on 2 October 1994.
As Odia typesetter’s were not used to a time frame that time, we decided to get the book typeset at Kolkata, then Calcutta on the advice of our Regional Manager of Eastern Region. My colleague Sumit Bhattacharjee and I rushed to Calcutta. My stay arrangement was at Nizam Palace.
I used to write in Pratibeshi, a literary magazine in Odia published from Calcutta. Dr Bijoy Prasad Mahapatra was then its Editor. His office Language Division was in that campus.
One fine morning I went to his office and called on him. I had information that he was born and brought up in Markandeswar Sahi of Puri where I too was born. He was a classmate of my uncle. His father was a doctor and was a disciple of my grandfather.
We exchanged our pleasantries. He was a talkative person. I canceled all my appointments for that day, he too. He was then heading the Language Division of Government of India. My wife and children were there with me in the CPWD hostel in the campus. He requested me to review a few books for Pratibeshi besides pursuing my wife to write for that magazine.
We came back next day, but my interaction with Bijoybabu didn’t end there. I gave the news about meeting Bijoy Prasad Mahapatra to his childhood friend, my uncle Sarat Chandra Mahapatra.
In 1996 Dr Sumatheendra Nadig came as Chairman, NBT. Dr Bijoy Prasad Mahapatra and he were friends from his CIIL days. Our Odia Language Advisory Panel was reconstituted with Dr Bijoy Prasad Mahapatra as a member on my recommendation.
Our meeting was held at Bhubaneswar. Bijoy Prasad Mahapatra didn’t get a ticket by train. Those days there was no flight from Calcutta to Bhubaneswar. He somehow managed to come and attended the meeting.
The meeting was over. We had our lunch. Dr Mahapatra was hurry to go. I wanted to send him by car and he refused.
But, someone is waiting for me, he said. Later, our Accountant told me that a lady took him by a rickshaw from the gate of our place.
Who’s that mysterious lady, I have not yet been able to know. There was a character ‘Keya Chatterjee’ in one of his stories. Did she come to take him to the mental asylum?
(The Author is a former editor of National Book Trust, New Delhi. Views are personal)
