Balai Chand Mukhopadhyay (19 July 1899 – 9 February 1979) was an Indian
Bengali-language novelist, short story writer, playwright, poet, and physician who wrote under the pen name of Banaphul (meaning "the wild flower" in Bengali). He was a recipient of the civilian honour of the
Padma Bhushan (1975).[1]
Life
Mukhopadhyay was born in
Manihari village of
Purnia district (now
Katihar District),
Bihar on 19 July 1899. His family originally hailed from
Sehakhala situated in
Hooghly District of present-day
West Bengal.[2] His father, Satyacharan Mukhopadhyay, was a doctor, and his mother was Mrinalini Devi. He originally took the pen name Banaphul ("the wild flower") to hide his literary activities from a disapproving teacher. He attended
Hazaribag College and was later admitted in the
Calcutta Medical College. But he graduated from
Patna Medical College and Hospital, later he practised at Azimganj Hospital and worked as a pathologist at
Bhagalpur. He moved to Lake Town, Calcutta, in 1968, and died there on 9 February 1979.[3] He is the elder brother of famous Bengali film Director
Arabinda Mukhopadhyay.
Literary works
He is most noted for his short
vignettes, often just half-page long, but his body of work spanned sixty-five years and included "thousands of poems, 586 short stories (a handful of which have been translated to English),[4] 60 novels, 5 dramas, a number of one-act plays, an autobiography called Paschatpat (Background), and numerous essays."[5][6]
^Ananta Ghosh,
Great writersArchived 2 June 2021 at the
Wayback Machine, Bengali Association of Greater Chicago Newsletter, Volume 25: Issue 2 : April 2000. Retrieved 1 May 2007.