Malay Roy Choudhury - Memoirs

Memoirs

Malay's father Ranjit (1909–1991) was a known photographer-artist at Patna. His mother, Amita (1916–1982), was from a progressive family of 19th century renaissance. Roy Choudhury, on request from younger generation admirers, embarked on a tell-all memoir writing at the end of 1990s. He wrote Chhotoloker Chhotobela and Abhimukher Upajibya in three parts. Such confessional memoirs have rarely been recorded in Bengali until date. He had spent his childhood in the Imlitala ghetto of Patna town (Bihar, India) inhabited by Dalit Hindus and Shia Muslims, where there have never been riots even during pre-independence nightmare. All the mud-houses in the vicinity as well as the local mosque was accessible to the children of the area. Theirs was the only Bengali family. This ghetto life had positively impacted Roy Choudhury and his brother Samir. Roy Choudhury's uncle Pramod was Keeper of Paintings & Sculpture at the Patna Museum, where the young Malay and Samir used to pass whole day moving from room to room as they wished, from pre-historic to Middle Ages to modern time relics. This had been a rare opportunity to relate with the past of not only India but with the whole world. Roy Choudhury was born into the Sabarna Roy Choudhury Clan of Bengal who owned the villages which later came to be known as Calcutta or Kolkata. The Kalighat temple was established by his ancestor Kamdeva Brahmachari and his ancestor Lakshmikanta was an adviser to Maharaja Pratapaditya who had defied Mughal emperors. The history of Bengal runs in Roy Choudhury's veins.