The following poem by Suniti Kumar Maiti won the first prize in Regional Category of Wingword Poetry Competition 2022
বুকের মধ্যে ফুটছিল ফুল সহস্রদল
সকাল থেকেই।
আকাশ জুড়ে দেখছি তাহার চোখের কাজল
সকাল থেকেই।
বাতাসে তার অঙ্গ-সুবাস
সকাল থেকেই।
তাহার তরে মন উচাটন
সকাল থেকেই।
মন টেকে না ঘরেতে আর
বিকেল বেলায়।
চরণ যুগল নামলো পথে
বিকেল বেলায়।
দূরের থেকে ঐ দেখি,সে দাঁড়িয়ে মাঠে
বিকেল বেলায়।
আমরা দুজন
মুখোমুখি দাঁড়িয়ে আছি,
ডুবু ডুবু সূর্য তখন।
বুকের রক্তে উঠলো প্লাবন,
ডুবু ডুবু সূর্য তখন।
হঠাৎ হাওয়া বইলো
তাহার এলো চুলে।
উদাস সুরে
প্রেয়সী মোর বললো কানে,
"এত বছর কোথায় ছিলেন?"
ডুবু ডুবু সূর্য তখন।
চারিদিকে নামছে আঁধার ধীরে ধীরে,
সূর্য গেছে অস্তাচলে।
উদাস মনে হৃদয়খানা
বিছিয়ে দিলাম অশথ তলে,
সূর্য গেছে অস্তাচলে।
আমার প্রিয়া একা অশথ
দাঁড়িয়ে আছে একাই মাঠে,
সূর্য গেছে অস্তাচলে।
বিশ্ব যখন ঘুমের ঘোরে অচৈতন্য
আমার বুকে সহস্রদল রক্তে ভেজা
মধ্যরাতে।
দাঁড়িয়ে আছি মাঠের মধ্যে অশথ তলে
মধ্য রাতে।
আকাশ তখন কাঁদছে অঝোর
মধ্যরাতে।
About the poet
Born to father Rakhal Chandra Maiti ,a dedicated freedom fighter who was a student of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and Dr. Rajendra Prasad ,the first President of free India .Captivated in British jail for three times. His ancestral residential building was set on fire by British police. In recognition he got a copper plate and freedom fighter's pension in 1972 ,the silver jubilee year of India's freedom .
Mother Binapani Maiti also actively participated in the freedom movement in Calcutta as a school girl in the great freedom fighter Chittaranjan Das's sister Urmila Devi's historic School "Nari Shiksha Mandir" under the financial support of the great Gandhian Industrialist and freedom fighter Jamnalal Bajaj and ages of Basanti Devi, wife of Chittaranjan Das.
Birth :
Born in 1949, 25th April at village Tajpur on Midnapore-- contai State highway. Went to village primary school. For middle school he went to a hostel in a famous Basic School for three years, class 5 ,6,7 in 1960 to 1962. Joined in Contai town, Contai Kshetra Mohan Vidya Bhavan .Passed Higher Secondary ,class 11 in 1967.
Joined Kala Bhavan, Shantiniketan, Visva Bharati University founded by Rabindranath Tagore ,in 1968. Studied there for 5 years. Completed B.Fine
( Bachelor of Fine Arts) in 1973 .Got great sculptor Ramkinkar Baij, Vinod Bihari Mukhopadhyay, Srimati Gauri Bhanja,daughter of Shilpacharya Nandalal Bose, as teachers .Had affectionate relations with Somnath Hore, Dinkar Kaushik, Nanigopal Ghosh,Sukhamoy Mitra etc .Joined part time Rabindra Sangeet course in Sangeet Bhavan under teacher Nimai Chand Baral. Learned Esraj from Nirmal Chandra Nandini of Bishnupur gharana,Learned Rabindra Sangeet from Biren Palit, Shanti Dev Ghosh ,Nilima Sen ,Manju Bandopadhyay. Fine arts, music, dance ,cultural environment and the unique nature of Santiniketan overflooded his being .
Service life:
Joined Anjuman- I- Islam Panchgani High School. (presently Public School) a residential school at Panchgani,a beautiful hill station in the Western Ghat, Maharashtra in 1973 .In a short span of service life over here he was so much overwhelmed with the ever changing colours of the hills from don to dusk and his first batch of loving students, some of them were from UAE, Iran,South Africa, Mauritius, Afghanistan, Pakistan etc that he wrote a touchy memoir of hisWestern Ghat days," I Western Ghat, and a God-child in Bengali as "আমি,পশ্চিম ঘাট ও একটি দেব শিশু'. Next year in 1974 he joined Grasim Vidya Mandir (a Gwalior Rayon and Silk Manufacture company school) at Nagda, Madhya Pradesh.Another dream sequence of his service life on the Chambal river in the beautiful Chambal Valley and the beautiful Malwa plateau with brooks and lakes( talaos) and vast terrain and basins of black soil and corn and cotton fields.He got so much love and respect here that forty four years after he left Nagda numerous students and parents from all over the world are connected with him still today.Left Nagda in 1978.
The latest and longest chapter of service life:
Joined Sainik School Purulia, West Bengal in 1978 and lived there till retirement in 2009. For thirty one years he lived with students of ten years to eighteen years of age. Sometimes a devastatingly sick child lived with him in his bed.Thus his students became part of his life and converted him into anything they wished. They converted the Art teacher into a science teacher and Indranil Biswas (presently Colonel I. Biswas) under his guidance got the coveted Science Seminar award consecutively in 1980 and 81. Gagan Bhardwaj (presently Additional District Magistrate, District- Chhapra, Bihar) with his Hindi write ups and under his guidance won first prize consecutively three years in All India Sainik Schools Hindi essay competition.
In the boundless open nature, flora and fauna and endless crystal clear night sky overhead in Sainik School he became an amateur astronomer, ornithologist, entomologist, poet,writing poetry in Bengali Hindi and English, lyricist and music composer.He is the lyricist and composer of the school song in English "Oh our Sainik School, Purulia Sainik School".
Family life:
Lived day in and day out for seventeen years with students as bachelor before he married in 1990 at 41 years of age.
He has a small family of three members.Wife Kumkum Maiti is B.Sc.B.H.M.S, a homeopathy doctor and an ardent lover and great appreciator and first reader and critic of all his writings, may it be a poetry or a prose. In her school days she was the editor of the school magazine.
Son Sthitadhi is a Jagadish Bose National Science Talent Search scholar and an IITian, is pursuing Ph.D in chemistry in Arizona State University USA. Also a good singer , a member and the only Indian singer of the university choir.
Achievements as a writer :
First published poetry at the age of 11 years. Got first prize in an open to all classes essay competition on Rabindra Nath Tagore's 'Dakghar' in class Nine. His Bengali write ups got various prizes at different levels of essay competitions. His Bengali poems had been published in many little magazines.
Poet cherishes one with awe. The little magazine "পতঞ্জলি"published one of his Bengali poems along with a poem of the great Bengali poet Jay Goswami.One of his English poems "The Twilight tryst" had been published in America in an online journal "Indian Periodical" in its 13th June 2021 number. It's a unique coincidence that the very poem was also written on the same subject, the same solitary peepal tree.
The Poet says he does not write poems .Poems themselves come to him. He only gracefully welcomes and captures them in his diary. Poems are like divine guests to him and writing poems are like divine induction and inspiration coming down from heaven on to him.