Kolkata: Writer, novelist, playwright, translator and critic Ketaki Kushari Dyson, 86, who played a significant role in taking Tagore’s works to a wider audience through her research and translations, passed away at Oxford on Saturday.
She received the Ananda Puraskar in 1986 and 1997. In a TOI article from Nov 2008, former Presidency students had recalled how she and poet Shankha Ghosh avoided canteen adda at the college and batchmates would make fun of them. You Can Also Check: Gold Rate in Kolkata | Silver Rate in Kolkata | Bank Holidays in Kolkata | Public Holidays in Kolkata | Kolkata AQI | Weather in Kolkata | Petrol Price in Kolkata | Diesel Price in Kolkata | CNG Price in Kolkata | LPG Price in Kolkata Stay updated with the latest Kolkata news.
Ketaki Kushari Dyson In an interview, she had said she was deeply influenced by Tagore and Buddhadeb Bose’s works in her early life. Jadavpur University emeritus professor of English Sukanta Chaudhiri said: “While living abroad, she maintained an unusually active and vibrant presence in the world of Bengali letters and publishing. “We mourn the death of one of Presidency College’s best alumnus Ketaki Kushari Dyson,” said a statement issued by Bibhas Chaudhury, president of Presidency Alumni Association.
Suffering from age-related ailments for a long time, she breathed her last at her home in an Oxford suburb. She is survived by her husband Robert Dyson and sons Virgil Pujari Dyson and Igor Niladri Dyson. Dyson started writing poetry at the age of four. This struck me as something very admirable. Her body of work includes numerous volumes of poetry, translations of Tagore and Buddhadeb Basu, collections of essays, a volume of autobiographical sketches, two Bengali novels, scholarly studies of early British colonists in India and of Victoria Ocampo. Ketaki Kushari would invariably walk into the library and bury herself in books, they recalled. Her notable works include ‘Bokol’, ‘Sap-wood’, ‘Shobij Prithibi’, ‘Hibiscus in the North’ and ‘Joler Koridor Dhorey’. Download the TOI App.
Born in 1940, Dyson, who also studied at Oxford University, had been a UK resident since the 1960s. Her doctoral thesis at Oxford University, entitled ‘Various Universe: The Journals and Memoirs of British Men and Women in the Indian Subcontinent, 1765-1856’, explores the writings of British men and women on their experiences of the Indian subcontinent from the early rule of the East India Company (Company Raj), until just before the 1857 Mutiny. it is exceptionally wide-ranging While her work does not engage with history directly. ‘Rabindranath O Ocampor Sandhane’, her Bengali novel, combines research and translation and remains one of her most defining contributions. She also researched extensively on the two great writers after the book was published. Educated in Kolkata and Oxford, she was an alumnus of Presidency College and Jadavpur University. Dyson, however, lived most of her adult life near Oxford. She wrote in both Bengali and English, on topics as wide-ranging as Bengal, England, the various diasporas, feminism and women’s issues, cultural assimilation, multiculturalism, gastronomy, social and political topics.