House of renowned Bengali poet Sankha Ghosh that is now a library.
| Photo Credit: Bishwanath Ghosh
The flat of Shankha Ghosh, one of Bengal’s tallest literary figures, gives a look as if he’s gone out for his evening walk and will be back any moment and maybe ask for a glass of water or a cup of tea.
The house, on the fringes of Salt Lake City, is preserved exactly the way its occupants — Sankha Ghosh and his wife Pratima — left it behind when they passed away, almost at the same time, in 2021; only that it contains more books now. By the time he was in the autumn of his life, he had gathered so many books that the house could hold no more and he had to rent a flat (first in Rajarhat and then in New Town) just to store the excess.
Today the books are back in his house — lifetime’s collection under one roof — with the house now becoming a museum, allowing fans and researchers to step in every Tuesday and Thursday evening to spend time with the nearly 20,000 books that the late poet either bought or was given.
“Not one book that came home was ever discarded or given away. Even when aspiring writers gifted him copies of their books, he made it a point to preserve them. He used to say, ‘It is not easy for a struggling writer to publish a book’,” the writer’s daughter Sravanti Bhowmik told The Hindu.
In terms of volume, Mr. Ghosh’s prose far outnumbers his poetry, and yet he was better known as a poet because his poems were immensely powerful, fighting inequality and creating social awareness. Born in 1932 in present-day Bangladesh, he restarted life in Kolkata as a victim of Partition — and poverty — in 1947, but prestige eventually came his way as his writing touched public consciousness: Sahitya Akademi award, Padma Bhushan, Jnanpith, to name a few.
He specialised in the subject of Partition and also on Tagore — now-rare editions of books by and on Rabindranath being quite visible in the library. There is also a glass case containing Mr. Ghosh’s handwritten poems, spectacles and small items of daily use; and another case displaying the prestigious awards.
“I never saw him sitting down to write at a fixed time or a fixed place. He wrote immediately when a thought came to him; sometimes on a torn piece of paper, sometime amidst a room full of people. When lines would be building up in his mind but not materialise the way he would like them to, he would go on long walks. He liked to walk, he walked a lot,” said Ms. Bhowmik, who taught at the Surendranath College for Women. She and her sister, Semanti Ghosh, are the only children of Sankha Ghosh.
The poet was 89 when he died on April 21, 2021, but his demise still came as a shock because he was doing fine until Covid claimed his life. His wife died eight days later. Suddenly, the house had only books and magazines; the humans were gone.
Mr. Ghosh was very clear that not a single book should leave his house; so, after his death, the 10,000-plus magazines he had collected over the decades were donated to Jadavpur University, where he once taught. That created some space for the books stored in the rented flat. Some more shelves were created, and, finally, on April 21 this year, the library was started.
There’s one thing a visitor is unlikely to miss: almost every book that Mr. Ghosh purchased during his literary career bears the name ‘Eva’ — in his handwriting — along with the date. Even the librarian looking after the memorial, while he knew that the flat had precisely 19,887 books, including in the kitchen and bathroom, had no idea who Eva was. It was Ms. Bhowmik who revealed that Eva was the nickname of her mother. Every book that Sankha Ghosh purchased was a gift for his wife. In the end, they didn’t remain separated for too long, just eight days.
