Balai Chand Mukhopadhyay

Mukhopadhyay was born in Manihari village of Purnia district (now Katihar District), Bihar on 19 July 1899. His family originally hailed from Sehakhala situated in Hooghly District of present-day West Bengal.[2] His father, Satyacharan Mukhopadhyay, was a doctor, and his mother was Mrinalini Devi. He originally took the pen name Banaphul ("the wild flower") to hide his literary activities from a disapproving teacher. He attended Hazaribag College and was later admitted in the Calcutta Medical College. He was assigned to Patna Medical College and Hospital after completing his medical degree, and later practised at Azimganj Hospital and worked as a pathologist at Bhagalpur. He moved to Lake Town, Calcutta, in 1968, and died there on 9 February 1979.[3]

He is most noted for his short vignettes, often just half-page long, but his body of work spanned sixty-five years and included "thousands of poems, 586 short stories (a handful of which have been translatd to English[4]), 60 novels, 5 dramas, a number of one-act plays, an autobiography called Paschatpat (Background), and numerous essays."[5][6]

On the 100th anniversary of his birth, the Government of India issued a postage stamp featuring his image.[7]

• Bengali literature

• বনফুলের ছোট গল্প সমগ্র (Complete Short Stories of Banaphul), published by Banishilpa, Kolkata in January 2003
• উপন্যাস সমগ্র (Complete Novels), published by New Bengal Press (Private) Limited, Kolkata in July 1999
• পশ্চাৎপট (Background), the autobiography of Banaphul, published by Banishilpa, Kolkata in 1999

• Balaichand Mukhopadhyay at Banglapedia
• "Balai Chand Mukhopadhyay". Store norske leksikon (in Norwegian). Foreningen Store norske leksikon.
• Works by Banaphula at Open Library
• Balai Chand Mukhopadhyay at the West Bengal Public Library Network
• Parabaas Profile