Making of a poet and living legend

The nation appears to be headed for a great void in its creative domain. Deaths in quick succession in the last one and half decades make many feel puzzled. A lot of literary connoisseurs have already expressed their premonition of a barren spell. The recent voyages to eternity began with Shamsur Rahman, considered the country's foremost poet, in 2006. It was followed by the 2010 death of Abdul Mannan Syed, a poet and critic belonging to the generation of the 1960s. Others joined the group soon. They included Rafiq Azad, Shaeed Quaderi and Syed Shamsul Haque --- all of them left this world in 2016. Earlier popular novelist Humayun Ahmed died in 2012.

With the death of Belal Chowdhury, a poet and a living legend, on last April 24, the literary circle of Dhaka has reasons to feel veritably orphaned. In fact, the poet continued to enhance his position in literature as he kept casting a unique spell on creativity enthusiasts in Bangladesh. He had been gifted with a charming disposition, which would later develop into a mystique of sorts. Thanks to his off-beat lifestyle followed throughout the period from the 1950s to the early 1970s, he won an innumerable number of admirers in two cities --- Kolkata and Dhaka. A complete bohemianism incarnate filled with drives for adventure and a poeticised life, Belal Chowdhury lived the arts, poetry in particular. As he said on several occasions, he had dreaded fixed occupations. And he loathed being bound by mundane confines. Here lay the secret of his passion for freedom, one that he could apply to his movements from place to place at will. But poetry had been haunting him since childhood. This unique genre of the arts requires a semblance of camping where the artist stops to look around in his own way. Belal Chowdhury chose Kolkata as a camp in his youth. Except his later stint in Dhaka, he passed his golden times of creativity in that city. Chattogram also played a significant role in his poetic growth.

Belal Chowdhury was born to emerge as a creative person who stood apart from all his contemporaries. Thanks to his seemingly inexhaustible energy, the qualities of a Good Samaritan and the irresistible creative vibes, he won popularity of mythic proportions. Many stalwarts in the literary landscapes of both Kolkata and Dhaka pale beside Chowdhury. As could be seen in the lives of many a poetically charged person, he, too, once remained aloof from his chief calling --- writing. However, it did not last for long. It may have been a belated realisation, but Belal Chowdhury finally delivered on his commitment to poetry. For three long decades, he remained fully engrossed in writing. The creative bout resulted in the publication of over fifty books of assorted characters. Apart from poetry, they included essays, compilation, translation, juvenile literature and travel stories.

Few poets can muster their dormant qualities to eventually be known as a folk hero. Belal Chowdhury was one of them. He had achieved it by dint of his pure genius. Besides poetry, he proved his talent in founding and editing magazines, writing columns and also his scholarship. A widely read person, he earned smooth entree for faring in almost all branches of the arts. Given these distinctions, bereavement and a sense of loss over the poet's death sit in the mind as a corollary. Deaths of writers, for that matter all creative artists, shock their readers and admirers. Voids follow. However, they do not last long. New-generation writers come up and take the former's place. Yet deaths, like that of Belal Chowdhury, and the resultant vacuum haunt literary landscapes for a long time.

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