Sukumar Ray- A brief introduction

 Sukumar Ray(1887- 1923): A brief Introduction 

Famous for his writings for children in Bangla. His father Upendrakishore Ray was also a writer for children. Sukumar Ray’s son Satyajit Ray was a famous filmmaker and a writer too. 

Sukumar Ray and Lewis Caroll are similar in many ways:

        

- Think of their academic backgrounds

 Their interest in technology like photography, printmaking and lithography, illustrations

Sukumar Ray continued to publish the children’s magazine that his father had started, this was called Sandesh.

Ray was influenced by his father who experimented with block-making technology and was one of the earliest innovators in publishing in Bengal. His contribution was recognised internationally also as he wrote papers to introduce this innovation. 

He was a writer, publisher and a scholar.  Like his father, Ray was also interested in most of these fields. Soon after leaving college he founded the Nonsense Club with his friends and relatives as members. 

He wrote two plays for the Nonsense club- Jhalapala (Cacophony) and Lakshmaner Shaktishel (Lakshman and the Wonder Weapon)

The Children’s monthly Sandesh was launched in May 1913 by Sukumar Ray’s father Upendrakishore Ray as the editor. Once Sukumar returned home from England, where he had gone for advanced training in printing technology, his writings and illustrations too began to appear in Sandesh.

         

It is difficult to define NONSENSE VERSE as a literary genre. It could be seen as a game or play with words which has endless possibilities of interpretation but is also lucid at the same time. It can also be a critique of its own times.

Fantasy and Nonsense

Though both forms depict a world which is far from material reality, yet the fantasy world is regulated by certain logic- the logic of magic. Therefore the events happening in fantasy lands or fairytales make perfect sense when we follow the logic of marvel and magic. 

In Nonsense Verse/Land: intentional lack of rationality in the nonsense- land. It is not the case that logic and coherence are not totally absent from this land. They exist, but with an absolutely different definition. 

The purpose and sense behind the nonsense becomes visible when we analyse these texts are made with reference to the socio-political context. 

Ray’s writing has two key features (Rima Chakraborty): 

a keen sense of observation and a profound sense of imagination. It was in 1914 that ‘Khichuri’ (Hotch-Potch or Stew Much), the first of the Rhymes without Reason (Abol Tabol) first appeared. 

Abol Tabol was actually a section in Sandesh magazine. Many of the poems were first published there. 

39 poems and 7 quatrains first appeared in the magazine. Satyajit Ray collected all these unpublished manuscripts to finally publish a collection.