Early Life
Ritwik Ghatak was born in Dhaka in East Bengal (now Bangladesh). Ghatak's father Suresh Chandra Ghatak was a district magistrate and also a poet and playwright; his mother's name was Indubala Devi. He and his twin sister Prateeti, were the youngest of nine children. The other children were – Manish, Sudhish, Tapati, Sampreeti, Brototi, Ashish Chandra and Lokesh Chandra. He and his family moved to Calcutta (now Kolkata) in West Bengal just before millions of other refugees from East Bengal began to flood into the city, fleeing the catastrophic Bengal famine of 1943 and the partition of Bengal in 1947. Identification with this tide of refugees was to define his practice, providing an overriding metaphor for cultural dismemberment and exile that unified his subsequent creative work. The 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, which led to more refugees fleeing to India, was to also have a similar impact on his work.
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