Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, one of the greatest novelists writing in the Bengali language and certainly one of the finest in the literary history of the world, was born on 12^th September, 1894 in his maternal residence in Muratipur near Kalyani. Bibhutibhushan’s grandfatherTarinicharan, a successful Ayurved, left his ancestral home in Panitar, Basirhat and settled in the village of Barakpur in Bongaonsometime before 1859 when the Indigo Revolt broke out in Bengal. Bibhutibhushan’s father Mahanando went to school in Bongaon and later to Varanasi to learn Sanskrit and the Hindu Scriptures. He was a traveling narrator, a wandering minstrel earning his bread by narrating stories from Hindu Mythologies in village gatherings. Mahanando’s first wife Hemanginiwas childless. His second wife Mrinalini gave birth to five children, Bibhutibhushan being the eldest.

After attending a number of village schools, ‘pathsalas’ as they were called, in 1908 Bibhutibhushan was enrolled in class five of Bongaon High School from where he passed his matriculation in the first division in 1914.. But before he could pass out from high school, the untimely death of his father put him into severe financial hardships. He had to take up a house-tutor’s job in a wealthy doctor’s family to make ends meet. The financial adversities magnified when he entered Ripon College in Kolkata. Struggling against the economic odds, he managed to pass I.A. in the first division in 1916 and B.A. with Distinction in 1918. In the same year, he enrolled himself for a post graduate degree in Philosophy at Calcutta University as well as for a law degree in its Law College but because of financial and other compulsions could complete neither courses.

Bibhutibhushan married Kali bhushan Mukhopadhyay’s daughter Gauri on August 15, 1917. When the couple got married the groom was still in his first year of Bachelors’and the bride was just fourteen. Next July, after completing his B.A. examination, Bibhutibhushan took his young wife to his ancestral home in Barakpur to start a conjugal life. His first marital stint, however, ended suddenly in November when Gouri died of Pneumonia (Cholera, according to some sources) while visiting her parents in Panitar.

After Gauri’s death, Bibhutibhushan left his studies and took up the profession of a school teacher. He remained in this profession all through his life, albeit with occasional intermissions. His career as a school teacher started at Jangipara School in Hoogly at a monthly salary of fifty rupees. Serving the school from February, 1919 to May, 1920 he left the job to join Harinabhi High English School in Sonarpur in June, 1920 and worked there till July 1922. The compulsive traveler, inculcated by his father, who lived in Bibhutibhushan probably induced him to take up an assignment with ‘Gorakshani Sabha’ involving extensive travel and a campaign to protect the Holy Cow. Seizing the opportunity, Bibhutibhushan traveled widely in East Bengal, Tripura. Assam and Arakan, sometimes by train, sometimes by boat and often on foot, till the end of 1922. He came back to Kolkata in January, 1923 and took up a house-tutor’s job in the household of Zamindar Khelat chandra Ghosh of Pathuriaghata. A year later he accepted the job of supervising the vast forest estate of Khelatchandra in Northern Bihar as his Estate Manager and moved on to Bhagalpur. It was here in Bhagalpur that he started writing his masterpiece PatherPanchali and met eminent editors like Upendranath Ganguly of Bichitra and Sudhirchandra Sarkar of Mouchak. Indeed it was his experience with the jungle folks that inspired him to write his other masterpiece Aranyak more than ten years later.

Bibhutibhushan’s first published story came out in Prabasi in early 1922 followed by a few more during the course of the next six years. Ten of his early stories, seven of which were published in Prabasi and three in Bichitra, were later put together in a book called Meghmallar. The stories of Meghmallar were of an older vintage than Pather Panchali though the collection was published in 1931, two years after Pather Panchali was published as a book.

In April, 1928 Bibhutibhushan came back to Kolkata and started living in his old mess Paradise Lodge at 41 Mirzapur Street where he got his college mate Nirod chandra Chowdhury as his neighbour. In the same month, the manuscript of Pather Panchali was submitted to Bichitra for possible publication. The novel came out serially in Bichitra from July, 1928 to September, 1929 and was well-received by the readers. Yet no established publisher was willing to publish the work of a young novelist. Nirod chandra introduced Bibhutibhushan to Sajanikanta Das who quite enthusiastically published Pather Panchali from his new publishing house Ranjan Prakashalay. Pather Panchali came out as a book on October 2, 1929 on the auspicious day of Mahalaya and quite appropriately Bibhutibhushan dedicated it to his father as ‘pitritarpan’.A memoir of Sajanikanta’s wife Sudharani informs us that Bibhutibhushan got an honourarium of three hundred rupees from Sajanikanta for the first edition of Pather Panchali.

According to Bibhutibhusan’s journals,the author conceived Aparajito, the sequel to Pather Panchali,on November 14, 1929 in Eden Gardens, Kolkata in astate of pensive repose. The novel was serially published in Probasi from December, 1929 to September, 1931. The first part of the novel came out as a book in January and the second part in March of 1932. The publisher, once again, was Sajanikanta Das. Pather Panchali and Aparajito got spontaneous applause from a wide range of critics. In April 1933 Rabindranath Tagore invited Bibhutibhushan to visit him at Prasanta Mahalanobis’ residence Amprapali in Baranagar. In the same month, the poet’s critical appreciation of Pather Panchalicame out in Porichoy.

The publication of Pather Panchali and Aparajito were followed by several other masterpieces. His novels ― Drishti pradeep (1935), Chander Pahar (1938), Aranyak (1939), Adarsha Hindu Hotel (1940), Anubartan (1943), Debjan (1944) and Ichhamati (1950) ―have all survived the tough test of time. His short story collections ―Meghmallar (1931), Janma o Mrityu(1937), Kinnordal (1938), Talnabami (1944), Upalkhanda (1945) Khshanabhangur (1945) and Asadharan (1946), among others, have found permanent places in the rich ensemble of Bengali short stories. Bibhutibhushan wrote regular diaries. He published his daily memoiresin a number of chronicles ― Smritir Rekha (1941), Trinankur (1942), Urmimukhar (1944) and Utkarna (1946) each of which is a great read in its own right.

Bibhutibhushan’s stay in North Bihar hadinstilled in him a deep love for the wild which in turn induced him to visit the Ghatshila and Galudi regions of Bihar quite regularly. His frequent sojourns finally led him to buy a house in Ghatshila. In memory of his deceased wife, he named the house Gouri kunja. His trips to the wild were narrated in his travelogues Bone Pahare (1945) and Hey Aranya Katha Kao (1948).

Bibhutibhushan married Rama Chattapadhyay, daughter of Shoroshi kanta Chattopadhyay, an excise officer posted in Bongaon, on December 17, 1940. In 1942, he settled in Bangaon-Barakpur with his second wife. But whenever he got a chance he spent time in Ghatshila where his younger brother Nutbehari practiced medicine and lived with wife Jamuna. Bibhutibhushan’s only son Taradas was born in 1947.

On November 1, 1950, Bibhutibhushan died in Ghatshila of a sudden heart attack.