With a flick of the mouse, you could soon stroll through the moonlit ridges of Chander Pahar or rest at the fabled Hindu Hotel. Not through yellowed pages by time, but on screens— alive with letters, manuscripts and memories of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, Bengal’s eternal storyteller.
The writer’s priceless literary remains, from intimate correspondence to unpublished manuscripts, are set to enter the digital realm. The project will be undertaken by the School of Cultural Texts and Records at Jadavpur University, offering literature lovers and researchers unprecedented access to the master’s world.
Trinankur Banerjee, Bibhutibhushan’s grandson, has been spearheading the effort. “The manuscript of iconic Pather Panchali novel has long been in the National Library, but reaching it is like breaching a fortress. Ordinary readers and even scholars face endless hurdles. What use is a treasure if the people cannot touch it?” he remarked, stressing that Bibhutibhushan “belongs to all Bengalis, not just our family.”
Beyond digitisation, the family is waging another battle— preserving the physical footprints of the writer. His ancestral home in Barakpur, near Bongaon-Gopalnagar in North 24 Parganas district, has been listed as a heritage site, but years of neglect have left it dilapidated. Renovation plans are afoot, with the family raising funds to restore and maintain the homestead.
In tandem, an evocative exhibition is underway at Jodhpur Park, Kolkata, since August 29. It blends nostalgia with creativity: T-shirts etched with the author’s creation Ichamati and Aranyak, dolls and magnets of the Pather Panchali family, floral tablecloths, and other whimsical memorabilia—all stitched together to capture the essence of Bibhutibhushan’s aesthetic universe.
As September 12, the writer’s birth anniversary, approaches, the family plans to bring keepsakes to his Barakpur home—facsimile drafts of Pather Panchali and Aranyak, fridge magnets, and more— offered as souvenirs for the countless pilgrims of literature who journey there.
“This village is not just Barakpur— it is the very village of Pather Panchali novel, the soil where Apu played, the field of Ichamati, the house that nurtured Bibhutibhushan’s imagination,” Trinankur observed, adding, “We dream of gradually reviving every brick of this memory. But this legacy is not ours alone. It belongs to Bengal. We are merely its custodians.”
What began as a writer’s solitary musings in a village hut is now rippling into the digital age, where future generations can discover him with a keystroke. In the quiet transition from ink to archive, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay is poised to walk once again among his readers— timeless, unforgotten and within reach.
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