Is he SidhuJaytha? If he was alive, on 25th. July he would have touched 100. He had a close relation with Satyajit Ray. A room full of rare and antiquarian books, almirahs full of antique materials. Prof. Aloke Kumar, of IIM Calcutta received a mail from a student of the University of Bologna, Italy, where the sender mentioned that she has come across a book on India printed by the Smithsonian Institute which has a book-plate of Kumar and researching the same she would like to come over to India to work on the collection of the antiquarian, Nirmal Chandra Kumar. A few years back Pradeep Sebastian wrote an article in the Hindu where he mentioned that Satyajit Ray’s character SidhuJaytha is etched from the time and life of Nirmal Chandra Kumar. We first come across this character in Satyajit Ray’s novel Sonar Kella. There is a line: “All this time you have been reading a book on Geometry. Since it is covered, could not get the title”. SidhuJaytha lends books selectively but he lend books to Felu. An exact story in real life is narrated by well-known photographer Silbhadra Dutta. When he was a young lad of ten he used to come to the home of Chand Kaka, his uncle. Chand Kaka was none other than Anniruddha Lahari the pandit and bibliophile. In his home there used to be regular ‘adda’ session and one day I saw Nirmal Chandra Kumar handing over a rare book to Chand Kaka asking him to cover it up and read it. Latter Chand Kaka told him that SidhuJaytha is alive and lives within them hinting that Kumar is SidhuJaytha. R P Gupta the famous writer, Anglophile and more, popularly known as Satul Babu said the same about Kumar. In fact it is Gupta who introduced Kumar to Ray. R P Gupta, the writer, bibliophile gives a description of Nirmal Chandra Kumar’s Collection. The four walls were lined with books, from floor to ceiling. And what books! Numerous volumes on Indology and on all conceivable subjects of Anglo-Indiana, all rare, some excessively so. Beautiful books, bound in vellum, often gold-tooled under the loving care and attention of their former owners whose book-plates served as an extra adornment. One can say that the four walls represented an acre of vellum with the glint of old gold. A big aspect of the antiquarian Kumar is the “Adda’ that he hosted at his home. The who’s who of Calcutta attended them every evening. From film maker Satyajit Ray to writer R P Gupta. From film actor Vasant Chowdhuri to author Kamal Majumdar. From Ray biographer Marie Seaton to French industrialist Jean Riboud. From traveller Peter Fleming to photographer Raghubir Singh. Many spent their day going through books, maps and prints. Other borrowed books for reference. Kumar’s favourite was R P Gupta and Satyajit Ray as they took care of the books and returned them regularly. In one scene in the film Sonar Kella, SidhuJaytha takes out a Guard Book where there were newspaper clippings to fact check. Prof. Aloke Kumar took out a similar book to show me where his father pasted the important news. That is how close the character of SidhuJaytha was modelled from Nirmal Chandra Kumar, the antiquarian.
Inii Kii Sei Sidhujaytha. Ei Samay. Aniruddha Dhar. July. 2017.
