Jagadish Gupta was a Bengali writer and pioneer of the modernist movement in the 1920s. He published eight novels, eight short story collections, and some poetry, and his writing took Bengal's literary world by storm. He earned both praise and criticism from Rabindranath Tagore, which brought him much critical attention. Born in 1886, he worked a number of smaller jobs before finally quitting to concentrate primarily on his literary career, until his death in 1957. Some of his works include Binodini (1927), Laghu-Guru (1931) and Akshara (1932).
A Primal Issue is the first collection of his stories to appear in English. All the seven stories, with women as central protagonists, probe the deep undercurrents of life at individual, familial and social levels. Six of them focus unsparingly on the brutal realities of the day-child marriage, taboo on widow remarriage, polygamy, society's constant violation of women's humanity-and yet remain affirmative in their final impact. The seventh story is a delightful take on a common enough male fantasy. Together, these stories, written between the 1920s and 1930s, voice a defiance of conservatism that still resonates with undiminished power.
Tagadish Gupta was a pioneer of the great modernist movement that, from the mid-1920s, began to radically transform Bengali fiction after its near-exclusive domination by Rabindranath Tagore and Saratchandra Chattopadhyay. He was arguably even the pioneer of this movement, having begun his literary career nearly a decade earlier than its much better-known exponent, Manik Bandyopadhyay. He published eight novels, eight short story collections, and some poetry, but it is generally agreed that his most significant contribution was his short stories.
Born in 1886 in the Kushtia district of present-day Bangladesh, Jagadish Gupta graduated from a Kolkata school in 1905, married Charubala in 1906, and entered college, but dropped out a year later. In 1908, he started working as a typist at a suburban law court. From then until 1944, except for a rather adventurous two years in between, this would be his profession. He worked as a jobbing typist, barring the years 1912-25, when he held a regular job. He resigned from this job, following a difference of opinion with his British superior over a capital letter, never to take up regular employment again. He then brought out a journal, carrying his own stories in each issue, which was not a great hit. Next, turning entrepreneur, he started manufacturing fountain pen ink under the brand name Jago's Ink (Jago obviously from Jagadish), but this, too, failed to catch on. Sobered by these experiences, he went back to his original trade of a jobbing typist in 1927 and concentrated on his literary career. For the rest of his life, undeterred by poverty, neglect and ill-health, he pursued his art and his unique vision of the world with fanatic devotion, disdaining to make any concessions to popular taste, unlike even the iconic Saratchandra Chattopadhyay or Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay, He read extensively in Western literature, making references to Shakespeare and Molière in his correspondence, and was a lover of music who also played several musical instruments. He lived the last seven years of his life with his wife in a settlement for refugees from East Pakistan (which is now Bangladesh) near Kolkata, where they, being childless, adopted and brought up a girl. In 1954, he was granted a monthly government pension of Rs 150, which was later reduced to Rs 75. Suffering a head injury from a fall, Jagadish Gupta died in a cousin's house in south Kolkata in 1957.
**Contents and Sample Pages**
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