Who wrote the poem on epidemic that fired up social media chatter?

Few verses of a poem depicting people’s thoughts on an epidemic went viral on social media both in Bangladesh and West Bengal, raising a debate on the identity of the poet who penned it.

Netizens have borrowed words from the poem to convey their greetings to celebrate the Bengali New Year: “আমাদের দেখা হোক মহামারী শেষে, আমাদের দেখা হোক জিতে ফিরে এসে।”

The lines roughly translate into English as: “Let’s meet when the epidemic is over, let’s meet when we win over it.”

Some people said the 12-verse poem was penned by Jibananda Das, whose works are part of the canon in Bengali literature. Others claimed poet Shankha Ghosh wrote it three decades ago.

Ghosh’s daughter Sravanti Bhowmik dismissed the claim in a Facebook post on Mar 29, saying the poem can ‘never be her father’s’.

Two news publishers in Bangladesh, the daily Amader Somoy and online portal Priyo, attached a picture of poet Jibananda Das with the poem and published it on their websites on Apr 10 saying he wrote it 75 years ago.

West Bengal actor Prosenjit Chatterjee recited the poem to his fans on the Bengali New Year and mentioned Jibananda Das as the poet.

“Why do people think that a poem devoid of a title is written by Jibananda Das?” said Tamanna Sarwar expressing her astonishment in a Facebook post. The poem is written by Partha Mukherjee, a poet, she claimed.

“I am posting the original poem with the name of its poet. He’s a poet in West Bengal who wrote it on Mar 26 under the circumstances of the coronavirus crisis,” she wrote.

Some videos of recitations of the poem were posted on YouTube and Facebook where it was attributed to Partha Mukherjee.

Amid much confusion and debate over the real poet, Sayan Das, a young man from West Bengal, appeared on Facebook on Apr 17, live-streaming his claim that he wrote the poem.

Das, a student of Moulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology in Horinghata, spoke to bdnews24.com.

“I believe that you won’t be able to find this poem posted anywhere before 11.04 pm on Mar 23,” he said.

A final-year civil engineering student, Das is often applauded by his friends for his poems and songs.

“Whatever I scribble, I post it on Facebook. I write like many others do in their student days,” he said.

On Mar 23, he posted the poem on Facebook but it was circled back to him via WhatsApp from friends and family with a claim that somebody else wrote it.

He found that the poem was shared in West Bengal and Bangladesh through YouTube and Facebook, but he was not credited as the man behind it.

On Apr 16, Prothom Alo posted a video of the recitation of the poem on Facebook where Partha Mukherjee is mentioned as the poet. “There’s a page called Prothom Alo on the other side of Bengal [Bangladesh] where the authority hasn’t changed the name of the poet,” said Das.

 

bdnews24.com asked Das if he spoke to Partha Mukherjee on the issue.

“There is one Partha Mukherjee in West Bengal who is a reciter. He is not the one who’s mentioned as the poet. It’s confusing. This Partha Mukherjee does not exist.”

Amit Kumar Biswas and Tamal Bandyopadhyay, prominent personalities in the literary circle in West Bengal are not aware of any poet called Partha Mukherjee, they told bdnews24.com.

 

“People ask me if I write; I tell them that I read poetry,” Partha Mukherjee, a noted reciter and elocutionist in West Bengal, told bdnews24.com.

“Sometimes few poems are disseminated in the market claiming to be written by Jibananda Das or other distinguished poets. I heard that my name is used too. But I’m not a poet. I’m a reciter and also teach recitation.”

Many Facebook and YouTube users later corrected the poet’s name to Sayan Das.

“I could take some action but it is not possible now during the lockdown,” said Sayan Das while he was satisfied that people started to correct the mistake.