Hemendrakumar Roy Rachanabali Vol – I

As Khagendranath Mitra correctly summarises in his introduction, Hemen Roy was the pioneer in the Bengali adventure classic domain for the young and the writer's works generally concentrated on celebration of the powerful masculine with the supernaturals too playing some important roles owing to him being a staunch believer in the same. Thus we are yet again presented with some of his memorable classics in this volume whose content runs as

1. Jokher Dhan
2. Sandhyar Pore Sabdhan
3. Himachaler Swapna
4. Ekhon J(n)ader Dekhchi
5. Meghdooteer Martye Agaman
6. Chora
7. Chithi

Starting with the young Bimal-Kumar's 1st adventure in Jokher Dhon, we have a collection of short horror stories to follow up in Sandhyar Pore Sabdhan. Most of the stories of the later collection have one thing in common: each of the tale narrates happenings during the dark hours after sunset. Some of these have been based on foreign stories which the able penmanship of Roy has transformed to suit our familiar surroundings. Though targetted for an young audience, older readers can derive much amusement from quite a few of them. Infact the 3rd story is really meant for the li'l ones and here the style can be compared to Lila Majumdar's, where the misadventures of an escaped Himalayan Bear from Alipore zoo in quest for his motherland have been narrated with the best possible humour to attract the young minds. Infact, just analysing the humour part, I found it to be very similar to that applied to the Tenida stories by Narayan Gangopadhyay. That this versatile writer, mainly remebered for his perilous adventure stories, can also be a master of humourous pieces is proved by this wonderful anecdote. Ekhon J(n)ader Dekhchi starts with an essay on the cultural abode of Jorasako Thalurbari and continues with tributes to the Bengali genius of Abanindranath Tagore, historian Sir Jadunath Sarkar, and culminates with fond reminiscences of Sourindra Mohan Mukhopadhyay and Kazi Nazrul Islam. Meghdooteer Martye Agaman is a science fiction thriller and I'd read this earlier and could never forget the thrilling concept till date. The collection of poems in Chora begins with a delightful nonsense verse while the rest a mainly mean for young uns. In Chithi, how a simple letter to his nieces can have a significant literary value will be appreciated and is worth going thru.