Shyamal is the only Published Poet in English that I had the privilege to meet, shake hands with, and embrace.
He traveled all the way from KGP to Hyderabad to attend my son's wedding in February, 2008 and it was a pleasure for me and my wife to return the visit to KGP to attend the wedding of his cute daughter in January 2010.
I have seen none who is so well-versed in English Language, Literature, and Poetry in particular. English Poetry comes to him as naturally as song to a thrush.
Last year when he hosted us in the Technology Guest House, my wife and I were woken up early one morning by Shyamal who pulled me out to the Garden in the Quadrangle and off-hand recited a long Milton poem celebrating the beauty of dawn (In our B Sc Hons at AU more than half a century ago I had to mug up two long Milton poems, L'allegro and IL Penseroso, in addition to his quaint Prose Booklet Areopagetica ).
Shyamal and I saw each other once in a while and had a mere nodding acquaintance at IIT KGP for a couple of decades. He was not one of my students in the Phy Dept although his classmate and buddy Sudip Bhattacharya was my first Project Student in 1976 (We have a Joint Paper in Journal of Physics A to prove it).
Suddenly he appeared in the Phy Dept towards the end of my stay there when I was teaching half a semester of QM & its Applications to 2nd Year B Tech students (one of my most satisfying Courses...I put all the topspin I had acquired in the subject for 4 decades). He was allotted its Tutorial and naturally we had a couple of cordial meetings.
During my Fond Farewell from Phy Dept KGP...fond from both sides {;-}, I was astonished to hear a heart-felt speech from him in addition to a limerick (the existence of which breed of verse I had forgotten for a couple of decades and then remembered with a vengeance after my retirement). Till then I had no idea that this Physicist with a Ph D from Material Science Dept had an interest and proficiency in Eng Lit.
Soon after my retirement I had a surprise gift from Shyamal...a booklet of wonderful Poetry: Grasshopper's Dream & Other Poems written by him. Ever since, there have been a plethora of regular gifts from him...his own Compilations of his soulful and beautiful Poetry, his Translations of Tagore Poems, a lovely English translation of Parashuram by famous English stalwarts of Calcutta, a cute compilation of The Statesman's Now & Again pieces with lovely B & W Drawings, and it goes on and on till now.
He was also instrumental in getting three of my blog pieces published in Now & Again.
He also wrote many impromptu Poems on Ishani and co. Poetry just flows from his heart.
All in all, a treasured surprise friendship that continues to this day although he is too busy to read my blogs nowadays just as I am too busy composing my daily blogs to read his wonderful Poetry.
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Shyamal once told me that his impressionable childhood in the 1960s was spent near Hedua (Azad Hind Bagh) in North Calcutta comprising his Home, Tagore's Jorasanko, Vivekananda's ancestral home, SN Bose's home, Iswar Chandra's and Raja Ram Mohan Roy's mansions. Apparently this imbued him with such a sense of Pride in his North Calcutta that almost amounted to a feeling that he was sitting on top of Mt Everest; while the Rest of India was just a collection of mounds, dunes and barren hillocks.
Prejudice!
And when he won an Admission to the Mech Dept through IIT JEE (1970), a Seat in B Sc (Hons) Physics at the Vidyasagar College, Calcutta, was preferred!
It took the Naxalite Movement in the late 1960s and its immediate aftermath of murders and mayhem and a loss of two precious years for him to realize that all is not so well with his proud Calcutta....but it was during that spell of enforced leisure that he read his Milton, Shelley and other Poets.
Later he joined IIT, Kharagpur for an M.Sc. in Physics and an M Tech at IIT Kanpur, and after a hiatus of a few years in Industry he did his Ph D at KGP, Mat Science; but was posted in the CRF rather than in the Phy Dept. Since CRF had no UG Teaching he must have lost his touch with Bread & Butter Physics.
It was only towards the end of my term there that he was inducted into the Phy Dept.
And he at once became an expert in the Jumbo Tutorials which had a huge number of interesting but tough Problems from Irodov, particularly in Fresnel Diffraction.
It was then we met up and discovered our mutual interest in UG Physics.
Had he been admitted to the B Tech in Mech Dept after his JEE, his worldline would have been entirely different, perhaps like that of his batchmates Supriyo Dutto (EC&E, PGM) and Partho Majumdar (EC&E) who moved to the US and shifted to Physics after their B Tech and are now world-renowned Physicists (I had the privilege of teaching their Section in their First Year and was immensely gratified that Partho waited in the Phy Corridor with Sayan to meet me at KGP in my last Semester at KGP).
And perhaps Shyamal would now be at UC, Berkeley; and a World-Renowned Poet too.
Once again a Classic Case of Pride & Prejudice!
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