Silchar: The Cachar district committee of the Barak Upatyaka Banga Sahitya O Sanskriti Sammelan organised a memorial discussion titled “Mithilesh Bhattacharjee: The Man and His Creativity” at Banga Bhawan on Saturday evening. The programme, held around 4 p.m., brought together writers, scholars, and admirers to celebrate the life and work of the noted Bengali author.

Delivering the keynote address, former Assam University Vice-Chancellor Prof. Dr. Tapodhir Bhattacharjee, a longtime friend of Mithilesh Bhattacharjee, said it was deeply emotional to speak about someone he had known for six decades. “His life was both eventful and confined. I have known him since the 1960s. His first publication appeared in Samayik Prasanga newspaper,” he recalled.

Dr. Bhattacharjee reflected on their enduring friendship and literary conversations over the years. “I knew him for almost sixty years—till his demise,” he said, lamenting how true appreciation often comes only after death. “All we can do now is read him more. Mithilesh Bhattacharjee deserves to be read and revisited,” he added.

Former professor Ramaprasad Biswas highlighted the range and depth of Bhattacharjee’s fiction, particularly his stories on the Partition. “His subjects and themes were varied. His stories captured life vividly and with rare clarity,” he said. Biswas noted that Bhattacharjee’s Partition stories offered no easy resolution. “Since there is no cure for the pain of Partition, his stories reflect that truth. We must learn to live life on our own terms,” he added.

Presiding over the event, Barak Banga district committee president Sanjib Deblaskar described Bhattacharjee as “a luminous figure in Barak Valley’s prose tradition.” Though he is no longer among us, Deblaskar said, “his literary legacy continues to enrich Bengali literature.”

The discussion traced Bhattacharjee’s creative journey, literary style, and his contribution to contemporary Bengali prose. The session was conducted by the committee’s literary secretary Dipak Sengupta, while Santasree Shome and Uttam Kumar Saha were also present on the occasion.

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