Narayan Debnath : A Friend from Our Childhood

It is a rather cloudy day for spring. Yet in the heart of Shubhojeet , it's spring. He sticks his face on the window glass, eager to get a glimpse of his home. His final exams are over and a bunch of craziness is waiting for him on his study table. As soon as the school bus stops outside, he springs out of the bus, bolts into the house and grabs a hazel-coloured parcel. As he strips the parcel, his eyes start glittering, as if he has won some kind of a lottery. A book comes out with a colourful cover, all familiar faces to him. As he opens it, the scent of the raw, tinted papers get into his nose – his favourite smell next to his mother’s sarees. But, his preferences are specific – only the first and last two pages, where something magical happens. In the first two pages,a man saves the world with his 40-inch chest. He can do everything, from holding the earth on one hand to catching the criminal by their collars – he is the ultimate superman. The last two pages are more ancient and funnier. One is slender, another is bulky. Together, they are a mess. As Shubhojeet closes the book, only to come back to devour those two pages as quickly as he can and rushes out to have his lunch, the warm sunlight falls on its cover and the name shines up – Shuktara , the lone star of the twilight sky. And so it is to him, and so it has been to all those lost childhoods.

One of the main attractions of reading Shuktara was and is Narayan Debnath – the man known for popularizing comics among Bengali kids and teenagers. Bantul The Great, Handa-Bhonda, Nonte-Phonte are his immortal creations. As someone who didn’t have Bangla as a part of the curriculum, I was literally taught Bangla by two supremely talented people – Sukumar Roy and Narayan Debnath. Tagore was still a far cry. I remember many times when my parents lured me into doing well in my exams to get the latest copy of Shuktara. My yearning? Only to get a glimpse of Bantul and Handa-Bhonda. I remember many wintery nights back home from Boi mela when I used to get lost in the world of his comics, impervious to the stifling crowd and deafening voices in the bus. Back in the pre-smartphone times, children didn’t really like newspapers (they still don't). Obviously, we were encouraged to read them and sometimes forced to read them. But newspapers to us were these incomprehensible papers which were read by superbly erudite folks. But the addition of comics, first on Sundays and then every day, made us roam around them when our parents read the news or solved the crossword puzzles. The comics of Narayan babu that were printed in Shuktara, Kishor Bharati or the daily newspapers were monochrome or black and white. But then Dev Sahitya Kutir ( the publishing house which publishes Shuktara and which gave birth to the cartoonist in Debnath) started printing collections of Bantul, Handa-Bhonda in colour. Once I got my hand on one such book in the book store and I was on cloud nine! The world seemed like a paradise for me. Now I could clearly see the slender Handa playing pranks on the plumpy Bhonda and eventually getting a thrashing from their haughty paternal uncle, Pishemoshai. Bantul's day-saving adventures where he fights hooligans and terrorists run through the wall (eventually breaking it) and restricts the bullets to pierce through him with his high chest, seemed more alive to me. Keltuda continued to play truants at school and irritate Nonte and Phone, but this time, it was all in colour. And finally, we got a very defining outfit - Bantul's pink vest and black half-pants. Yes! Now we had our own icon, just like the American cartoons. The occasional ‘damash', ‘ galg', ‘ gechhi re', ‘yikes', ‘ults' and several other sounds were accentuated.

The idea of Handa-Bhonda was first hatched by the publishers of Dev Sahitya Kutir who asked Narayanbabu (who was only a freelancer at that time) to make comics out of it. This idea of comical twins was not new by that time as many cartoonists in the West had already become famous with this formula. Debnath who was initially reluctant decided to take up this project and finally, in 1962, Handa and Bhoda were born. And as they came, they saw and they conquered. Handa-Bhonda was a revolution. Every Bengali household bears witness to the inception of this golden era. Debnath was the man who gave us the confidence to read flawlessly in Bangla. Sometimes I wonder if he had not been there and his comics had not been there, we would not have been able to read the much complex works of Shakti Chattopadhyay, Jibanananda Das, Michael Madhusudan Dutta, Joy Goswami, or even Tagore to some extent!

The most unique character created by Debnath is, hands down, Bantul, the ultimate macho man. This character largely remains an enigma. We don’t know Bantul's age. We don’t know whether he is plainly macho or there remains a certain wit to his credit. He can fight with sharks but he can also use his brains to catch criminals and bank robbers. During the early 90s, when it was decided to make an animation series based on the cartoon, the makers had to consult Narayan babu on his voice. And though he chose an aggressive baritone, some of the character's traits contradict his tone, such as breaking machines while working with them or unknowingly doing impossible things which may appear pure childish to even the child hero-worshipping him. But what does Bantul truly stands for? Many people say the character was inspired by Debnath's friend, the famous Bengali bodybuilder Manohar Aich. Yet some others say western influences. Whatever it may be, in a historical sense, Bantul stood for a common Indian! Yes! A common Indian. But not the 21^st century Indian. He stood for the Indian fighting against Pakistan during the Bangladesh Liberation War. Debnath was asked to show his invincibility. And that he did by adding nationalism to the machismo of Bantul.  He was shown driving tanks, throwing bombs and saving the day!

Unfortunately, we don’t know much about the man behind this craziness. Narayan Debnath, a boy from Howrah, conceived during the years of WW1, started his career as an illustrator. He even did illustrations on Rabindranath Tagore and Swami Vivekananda. A few years ago, he had stopped working because of his age, not making much of the fact that he probably held the world record for creating the longest-running comic strip as a solo writer-artist (he still does) . The magnitude of the 97-year-old Howrah resident’s achievement with his comics is better understood when put in context: Two of the world’s most popular and longest comic strips written and drawn by a solo writer-artist are Johnny Hart’s BC (49 years; 1958-2007) and Hank Ketchum’s Dennis the Menace (43 years; 1951-1994). The looks of his creations changed – from monochrome to black and white to colour and finally to animation. But he continued to remain at his address - a narrow lane, a century-old mansion, dim bulbs under the light of which immortal characters were born and blossomed. Debnath always chose to remain in recluse, satisfied with his heights. He never seemed to be our guardian, our teacher or some elderly man with a lot of worldly experience. He was like a friend who lived across the streets and who, on summer afternoons, would call us to play hop-scotch in the nearby maidan, barefooted, on the sand. He drifted to eternal sleep yesterday at 10:15 am in Kolkata's Belle Vue Clinic due to age-related ailments. He was 97.

The recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award, Banga Bibhushan Award and the prestigious Padma Shri, he left but somehow he didn’t. He and his characters will live till posterity and beyond.  When the Government of India awarded him the Padma Shri on 26 January 2021, he was 95 at that time and was needed to be explained several times before fully comprehending that he indeed was chosen to receive the award. His first reaction was, “Finally, have they chosen me?” Yes, Mr Debnath, they have chosen you, we have chosen you, excellence has chosen you, immortality has chosen you, through your work. Perhaps what remains are the words of Tagore :

তখন কে বলে গো সেই প্রভাতে নেই আমি
সকল খেলায়,
সকল খেলায় করব খেলা এই আমি - আহা,
কে বলে গো সেই প্রভাতে নেই আমি ।
নতুন নামে ডাকবে মোরে বাঁধবে,
বাঁধবে নতুন বাহু-ডোরে,
আসব যাব চিরদিনের সেই আমি ।

English translation:

And who says I shall not be there in that morning

I shall be omnipresent in all proceedings.

You will call me by my new name, you will bind me with new chains.

I shall come and go eternally the same me.