(. SPECIAL)
RANABIR SEN
New Delhi, Feb 25 (.) We belong to a generation raised, nourished, almost mentored by names that began with the letter S – Sunil Gangopadhyay, Samaresh Basu, Syed Mujtaba Ali, Satyajit Ray and Sankar.
They were not merely writers. They were architects of our imagination.
I often feel we may be the last generation that remembers them in their fullness, not as content, not as algorithm-friendly clips, but as creative giants whose words shaped how we saw cities, ambition, morality, and failure. Today, they would be called content creators. What they actually created was conscience.
With Sankar’s passing this month, an era folds quietly into memory. We did not read his novels casually. We devoured them.
Those thick paperbacks of Chowringhee, Seemabaddha, Jana Aranya and Nivedita Research Laboratory were finished in one or two breathless sittings. Sleep could wait. The city outside could wait. We needed to know what happened of survival. Practical, unsentimental, next.
In Chowringhee, Sata Bose stayed with us long after the last page. Elegant, efficient, worldly, yet quietly wounded. He was the embodiment of urban sophistication, the man who knew every rule of hospitality and every secret of the human heart. Through him we understood that professionalism could hide loneliness, that charm could coexist with sacrifice. Sata Bose made us want to grow up polished. He also warned us what that polish might cost.
Then there was Shyamalendu Chatterjee in Seemabaddha. Brilliant. Driven. Impeccably groomed for success. We admired his rise even as we sensed the slow erosion within. He taught us that ambition has a temperature. Handle it carefully and it warms you. Hold it too tight and it burns. For many of us who later entered corporate life, Shyamalendu was not just a character, he was a mirror we feared and respected.
Jana Aranya gave us Bishuda and Natabar Mitra. From Bishuda, we absorbed the streetwise grammar of survival. Practical, unsentimental, clear about how the marketplace truly functioned. From Natabar Mitra came the uncomfortable business lessons, that networks matter, that persuasion is currency, that morality in trade is often negotiable. We were young and idealistic, yet these characters forced us to confront the mechanics of commerce without illusion. They did not corrupt us. They prepared us.
And in Nivedita Research Laboratory, Jimutbahan stood tall in a quieter way. A man of intellect and depth, wrestling with science, funding, ethics, and isolation. He impressed us not with glamour or cunning, but with integrity under pressure.
Through him we learnt that the laboratory can be as dramatic as any boardroom, that the pursuit of knowledge demands resilience as much as brilliance. Jimutbahan made idealism look fragile, yet necessary.
Taken together, these characters shaped us. They were not heroes in the conventional sense. They were human, flawed, striving.
We read them in hostel rooms, under dim table lamps, finishing chapters past midnight. We argued about them with friends. We secretly measured ourselves against them.
Sankar did not simply tell stories about hotels, corporations, markets, and laboratories.
He initiated us into adulthood. And somewhere in the corridors of Chowringhee, echoes a truth he made us feel, that beneath every shining façade lies a vulnerable human story.
That truth, like his words, will stay with us forever.
(By arrangement with The Statesman. The writer is a freelance contributor. His views are personal)
. XC RSA