Foreign language institute Cucchiaio d’Argento of BJ Block organised a memorial for author Sunil Ganguly recently. Held at BJ Block community hall, the event was presided by Ganguly’s wife Swati.

Ganguly had been a trustee of the institute and had launched its website in January 2011. “On the day the website was to be launched — January 3 — Rabindrasangeet legend Suchitra Mitra passed away. I thought Ganguly would fail to come but he did not disappoint,” said founder of the institute Minoti Mukherjee Kohli. “He always said he would hold our hand in our infancy and help us walk.”

Mukherjee Kohli presented Ganguly’s wife Swati with a framed portrait of the writer. Also present was retired bureaucrat Dipak Rudra, who was a friend of Ganguly’s. “It feels as if Sunil has left for the next room and we will see him again in a while,” he said, before singing Ganguly’s favourite song Jagater anando yajne amar nimontron.

Poet Arun Mitra’s daughter Uma Bose also paid a musical tribute to the author. “I knew Ganguly through my father. He was a disciplinarian yet a bohemian. With his permission I had put some of his poems to tune. He liked them,” said Bose before performing one such song — Joto din chhile tumi.

Elocutionist Sovan Sundar Bosu too recited a poem penned by Ganguly, Dekha holo bhalobashar bedonay. “I remember how I was having trouble getting a visa to travel to the US for the first time in 1998. It was a letter from Ganguly that made it possible for me,” he recalled. Residents of the BJ Block association also paid their respects.

In AK Block, the residents’ association had invited author Jasodhara Roy Chowdhury to speak on Ganguly. Sadly, the audience in AK Park was sparse despite the organisers waiting for a long time after the scheduled hour for the start.

Roy Chowdhury recounted Ganguly’s life, right from the time he and his friends founded the poetry magazine Krittibas at the age of 19. “Poetry was his first love and he continued to write poetry even after becoming a novelist,” she said.

Krittibas, she explained, was the youngsters’ attempt at breaking free of the legacy of established names like Tagore and Jibanananda Das, and introducing something fresh. “They wanted poetry to be an extension of their adda, about young dreams and aspirations.”

Citing popular works of the author, like Shei Shomoy and Purba Pashchim, she remarked how everyone waited for the Puja-special magazines so they could read his new work. “So lucid was his writing that no one could complain that they could not understand.”

Roy Chowdhury also spoke of Ganguly’s lifestyle. “He may have had fun with friends all night but would sit the whole morning and write. Youngsters who aspire to be like him must imbibe his discipline.”

With the death of writers like Ganguly and Tarapada Ray, she felt an era was fading away. “These authors would draw inspiration from their addas but soon, writers will probably write within four walls,” said Roy Chowdhury, before reading out a poem from Ganguly’s Nira series and a poem she had written on him titled Sunil Gangopadhyay-r alikhito kabitara.