Kolkata: Eminent Bengali poet and writer Sarat Kumar Mukherjee died of a heart attack in the early hours of Tuesday. He is considered part of a group of postmodernist poets along with Sunil Ganguly and Shakti Chattopadhyay. Also known as Sarat Mukhopadhyay, Mukherjee often wrote under the pseudonym ‘Trishanku’ and is known for poems such as ‘To God’ and ‘Birjamohan’. He turned 90 on 15 August.
Sion Mukherjee is the only son in his family. His wife and Sanskrit scholar and poet Bijoy Mukhapodhyay has already passed away. Mukherjee is one of the poets of postmodernism who came to the Bengali and Indian literary world with a new grammar and language for poetry.
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His poems were modern and revolutionary of their time. The poets of this group broke many misconceptions. He studied in Glasgow and was a successful chartered accountant and company secretary before devoting his life entirely to literature.
Apart from Chattopadhyay and Ganguly, he was a close friend of writers Buddhadeb Guha and Dibyendu Palit. A compilation of his poems was translated into English with the title ‘The Cat Under the Stairs’. This translation was done by Robert S. McNamara. Mukherjee himself translated several short stories by Rabindra Tagore. A well-known name in the Bengali literary world, Mukherjee wrote poems with deeply personal views on the events of his time and environment and composed many sensitive poems. (agency)