Upendrokishore Ray, also
known as Upendrokishore Raychowdhury was
a famous Bengali writer, painter, violin
player and composer. He was born on 10 May
1863 in a little village called Moshua in
Mymensingh District in East Bengal, now
a part of Bangladesh. He spent most of his
adult life in Kolkata, where he died on
20 December 1915, aged only fifty-two.
He was the father of the famous writer Sukumar
Ray and grandfather of the renowned film-maker
Satyajit Ray. Scion of an extraordinarily
gifted Bengali family, Satyajit was born
on May 2, 1921 in Calcutta, India. Founder
of the family artistic tradition was his
grandfather, Upendra Kishore Ray Chauduri,
a product and leading member of the Brahmo
Movement that spearheaded the cultural rejuvenation
of Bengal. He collaborated with the Tagores
whose family, in the arts, achieved world
renown. As a writer he is best known for
his collection of folklore; as a printer
he pioneered in India in the art of engraving
and was the first to attempt color printing
at the time when engraving and color printing
were also being pioneered in the West.
His son, Sukumar Ray, the father of Satyajit
chose to drop the last (caste) part of the
family name. He wrote verse and children's
rhymes with buoyancy, sparkling humor and
flights of fancy, and commonly illustrated
his writings himself. He remains today the
most popular, oft-quoted Bengali poet after
Rabindranath Tagore. Sukumar launched the
first illustrated monthly magazine for children
in India which soon became an institution
in Bengal. A lover of double entendre he
named this magazine Sandesh, after the popular
Bengali sweetmeat which, in Sanskrit, also
means "news." Sukamar Ray died
in his early thirties leaving his wife,
Suprabha Das, the care of their son and
the boy a legacy of two generations of remarkable
artistic creativity.
His father had great linguistic talent.
He was expert in English and Persian languages
and in the traditional Indian and British
Indian legal systems. He became a topmost
expert for interpreting old land deeds written
in Persian and in helping the landowners
to get the best deal from the newly introduced
British legal system in India. He became
affluent and in due course the family was
able to afford two elephants.
Upendrakishore Roy was adopted by a rich
childless uncle whose title Raychowdhury
he adopted.
Upendrakishore is still regarded for his
Bengali short stories, science articles
for children and a variety of other work
greatly valued in Bengali literature. Although
the Ray family embraced the liberal religious
movement of Brahmo Samaj in the 1880s (and
Upendrakishore was a deeply religious man),
his scientific bent of mind is reflected
in the numerous science articles he wrote
for children.
He was also a pioneer in half-tone block
making. When the woodcut line blocks of
his illustrations for one of his books were
very poor, he imported books, chemicals
and equipment from Britain to learn the
technology of blockmaking. After mastering
this, he successfully set up a business
of making blocks. He experimented with the
process of blockmaking, and several of his
technical articles about blockmaking was
published in the Penrose Annual Volumes
published from Britain. After being established
as the leading blockmaker in this part of
the world, he started publishing books,
initially having them printed in other printing
presses.
In 1913 he founded one of the finest early
printing presses in Kolkata, (U. Ray &
Sons) at 100 Garpar Road. Even the building
plans were designed by him. He quickly earned
recognition in India and abroad for the
new methods he developed for printing both
black & white and color photographs
with great accuracy of detail. It was with
the intention of running this business that
his son Sukumar Ray spent a few years at
the University of Manchester's printing
technology department. This press was also
the early lifeline of Sandesh (magazine),
a popular children's magazine in Bengali
that is still published today. This was
the magazine where Upendrakishore (and later
his son Sukumar and grandson Satyajit) published
most of his children's literature.
Upendrakishore's greatest contribution was
in the field of children's literature in
Bengali. His prominent works include the
fantasy "Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne"
(on which Satyajit Ray based his acclaimed
children's movie with the same name), children's
verses in "Tuntuni'r Boi", and
the children's versions of the Hindu epics
- "Chheleder Ramayon" and "Chheleder
Môhabharot". He did most of the
illustrations of his books himself.
Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/
|