Narayan Sanyal

Narayan Sanyal (26 April 1923 – 7 February 2005) was an Indian writer of modern Bengali literature as well as a civil engineer.

Narayan Sanyal was born in Krishnagar to Chittasukh Sanyal and Basantalata Devi.

His name was initially Narayandas Sanyal in school life.

His family consisted of wife Sabita Sanyal; elder daughter Anindita Basu, son-in-law Amitabha Basu, son Tirtharenu Sanyal, daughter-in-law Sharmila Sanyal, younger daughter Mou Sanyal Talukdar, son-in-law Soumitra Talukdar.

His granddaughter is Ayoshi Talukdar.

Although Sanyal is known mostly as a novelist, he was also an eminent civil engineer by profession.

After graduating in science from the University of Calcutta, he passed Bachelor of Engineering from Bengal Engineering College in 1948.

Thereafter he joined Public Works Department and later National Buildings Organisation, Ministry of Works and Housing, Eastern Region, Govt of India.

He was a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers (India) and a Fellow of the Association of Engineers (India).

He also wrote books in Civil Engineering such as Vaastu Vigyan.

A biography of Narayan Sanyal was written by Pradip Dutta – Ami Narayan Sanyal Ke Dekhechi.

He received several awards for literature including Rabindra Puraskar (for Aporupa Ajanta in 1969), Bankim Puraskar (for Rupmanjari in 2000), and Narasingha Dutta Award.

Many of his books were filmed and he won the Best Film Story Writer Award (for Satyakaam) by Bengal Film Journalists.

All books of the Kanta series are of Prasanna Kumar Basu (famously known as P. K. Basu), Bar at Law.

This novel is the first P. K. Basu story by Sanyal, though he called it as a "trial ball".

This book is based on the shadow of Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists (1970), by Austrian Robert Jungk.

Another book Timi Timingil is on whales.

This stands on an article published in Reader's Digest.

He also wrote a series of detective fiction called the Kanta [কাঁটা] (Thorn) series.

Most of the stories were inspired from various foreign novels of Erle Stanley Gardner and Agatha Christie.

The protagonist of Kanta series thriller, Barrister P.K. Basu was based on the character Perry Mason.

Apart from this series, he wrote Bishupal Bodh: Uposonghar [বিশুপাল বধ: উপসংহার], which is basically a completion of Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay's unfinished Byomkesh Bakshi story: Bishupal Bodh.

Narayan Babu fulfilled some terms given by Bandyopadhyay's friend Pratul Chandra Gupta, who edited Bandyopadhyay's works.

Samaresh Basu, as the editor (also a friend of Sanyal) of Mahanagar, a magazine, published it in a Puja issue.

Sanyal did not simply copy foreign works; he took the central themes and adapted them for a proper Bengali atmosphere, which would be familiar to Bengali readers.

For this reason, some changes in the original plot and a few anachronisms (that suit, e.g. offering a chair to the accused & the witness at the courtroom in India—- which is not generally the practice) necessarily occur in his writings.

He always mentioned the source, the changes he made in his script, and why these were necessary.

He also tried to keep the nomenclature resembling the original so as to offer his gratitude.

He often referred to P. K. Basu as "the Perry Mason of the East", as it was Erle Stanley Gardner's masterpiece that inspired him to create Basu.

It is undoubtedly accepted by all that Narayan Babu was one of the finest authors in Bengali and he was a class apart from the flock of contemporary Bengali writers those who were too dependent on sentiment and emotional overdose in their writings and too dependent on monopolist Bengali media/publication groups in commercial front.

It was later adopted in a Bengali movie, Jadi Jantem in 1974.

The three-part book is an inspiration of 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke.

In his book, Sanyal named HAL as Jantra-Na, in his mother tongue Bengali, it ambiguously means 'not a machine' as well as 'pain'.

His most popular work is Biswasghatak [বিশ্বাসঘাতক] written about the Manhattan project that developed the first US atom bomb.

A Documentary on Writer Narayan Sanyal was screened on the 18th Kolkata International Film Festival on 15 November 2012 at Bangla Academy.

The film " CHOKHER DEKHA PRANER KOTHA .... Narayan Sanyal " in Bengali named by his elder son-in-law Amitabha basu, was directed by his younger son-in-law Soumitra Talukdar and produced by his younger daughter Mou Sanyal.

Sanyal wrote numerous books that dealt with various topics, such as children, science, art and architecture, travels, psychiatry, technology, refugee problems, history, biographical pieces, encyclopaedia of animals, social novel and Devadasi-related.

This author also preferred writing books on deep shadow of many world-famous works.

One of the most popular sci-fiction books, Nakshatraloker Debatatma [নক্ষত্রলোকের দেবতাত্মা], is based on the transformation of human race from primitive creature to civilised intelligent species controlling the whole earth.

Then it deals with Jupiter exploration and a super intelligent computer HAL.