His early life in the intimate natural setting of Barisal and Silchar, the great Bengal famine of 1943, the violent legacy of Partition, and above all his experience of service in the armed forces went to the making of Manindra Gupta(1926-2018), one of the major architects of Bangla poetry in the post-Jibanananda era. He assimilated all that was best in his predecessors and carved out a style all his own. Dispensing with the conventional lyric mode marked by effusion, Gupta brought his intensive reading of world literature, critical thinking, and unsentimental worldview to bear on his unique style of presentation that is manifest in the deft employment of the occult and the absurd. This book offers an interpretation of Gupta's life, his texts and times.

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A montage of memories, legends and myths, the book discusses in detail, life and death, unnecessary egotism and man’s leaps before thought. To put it simply, it talks about the ebb and flow of human civilization as a whole. Ajoy Gupta’s soul-piercing style of writing, with hues of subtle humour echoes Gabriel Garcia Marquez as it reminds us, ‘Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it’. This book beckons not fear of living, but a grand celebration of life.

Click here to read an excerpt from the book.