By: Debopam Purkayastha
Eminent writer, journalist, Retired Indian Airforce Officer and a Polyglot of repute Shyamal Bhattacharya was born in Agartala. He has published 36 books so far, which includes four novels, eight story collections and two books for children. Besides Bengali, he knows Hindi, English, Punjabi, Assamese, Dogri, and Rajasthani.
He started his career with Indian Air Force as an Aircraft Controller (1981- 2001) and represented the country at the Beijing International Bookfair in 2010. Hindi Literary Magazine ‘Parasmani’ (2015) and commercial monthly ‘True Media’ (2019) have published special issues on him. In Bengali a special issue was published by ‘Srot’ (2016), a literary magazine from Tripura. Here is an excerpt of the interview
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When did you look at the literary world?
I think from my previous birth…Actually, the storytelling practice of my maternal grandparents, and frank interaction with my parents’, their experiences, their sorrows, their simplicity and lifelong fight against all the inevitable has conglomerated with my story reading habit since childhood and unconsciously has paved my way to becoming an author. When I was in 8th – 9th grade, Paltuda-Ramaprasad Dutta, and a Bengali teacher Mrinmoy Dutt’s of Netaji Subhash Vidyaniketan encouraged me to read and enter the world of reading outside of my school syllabus books. My first rhyme was published in the ‘Sandesh’, edited by Satyajit Ray, Leela Majumder and Nalini Das in 1978. My first short story titled, “Sonar Dhwas” won first prize in a state-wide inter-school competition in Tripura.
The beginning of your writing days and the current time – do you feel the change in the world of writing?
Yes, many changes have taken place; it takes much less time to get reference services due to the internet. With the help of social media, I get to know about news and reviews of many books quickly and I sometimes enjoy the writings of the youth on Facebook. There are variations in the medium of publication; the role of ‘Shruti’ is becoming popular in new forms along with literary lessons.
Apart from Bengali, which language do you enjoy writing the most?
Writing helps me to heal and gain energy and apart from Bengali I prefer Hindi and Punjabi.
Do you have any plans in promoting the North-eastern States of India in the near future through your writings?
There is no plan as such, there is aspiration; I have worked on the folklore of Mizo and Bongcher workshops organised by Sahitya Akademi, I like Assamese, I don’t know whether I will get time to work on it! Let’s hope for the best!!
Would you share the unforgettable experiences of your life?
Kindly go through my novels and stories, almost all of these are based on my personal experiences mingled with my way of positive thinking. If anybody reads, I can guarantee, he or she will enjoy, as there is a powerful and mysterious force in human nature, a kind of mental engineering in the form of a concept called imaging. It consists of vivid picturing, in your conscious mind, a desired goal or objective, and holding that image until it sinks into your unconscious mind, where it releases great untapped energies. Interaction with my readers in various ‘Meet the author’ program arranged by NBT, Sahitya Akademi and few other state academy of letters, libraries and universities made me confident about this great untapped energies!
These experiences are also unforgettable for me which I cannot share with everybody.
How will you define success?
You may belong to any place, the definition of success remains same. I don’t intend to define “Success” as it is an abstract and relative term. Rather as a writer, I debunk all the Myths of Success, like i) Set your career goals, ii) prepare and plan for achieving goals, iii) Learn from mistakes, iv) identify success factors, understand yourself and bridge the gap, and v) use people skills to build career.
Specially, the first myth of setting long-gestation goals is so ineffective; you may be wondering why this myth is so popular. One of the reasons is due to, what psychologists call, confirmation bias. When we read biographies of successful people or listen to their interviews, they ascribe their success to having a goal. For instance, believing that success is all about having a goal they look back at their lives and selectively notice the evidence which tends to support the conclusion that they had a goal at the beginning. I have also told to so many in various interviews that since childhood I wanted to become a soldier, then a teacher, and journalist and a writer and blah…blah…blah…, while ignoring evidences that those goals got evolved over a period of time.
