Remembering Sukanto - the rebel, poet, dreamer

Poet, rebel, dreamer Sukanta Bhattacharya; - the 15th of August happens to be his birthday also. He was born in 1926. And, as if to add an ironic twist to the story of our Independence, he passed on in 1947, the year India managed to break herself free from the shackles of British imperialism.

Though he died very young, he had envisaged a country where the unfed and the hungry would no longer die of starvation, where the hapless would no longer have to keep groaning in pain, where equity would prevail, where the human-sharks would no longer deprive their fellow beings of their right to a decent life.

He had pledged to keep the struggle waging until all the "children found this world livable" enough - conducive to growing up amidst fun and laughter, free from the pangs of hunger, secured against the ignominy of remaining unlettered.

But, sadly enough, that remains to happen as yet. ...