Born in 1887 in the illustrious Raychaudhuri family of Calcutta, Sukumar Ray was a creative genius. A brilliant student of the sciences, he grew up to be a distinguished photographer and priniting technologist.
The series of hilarious articles, poems and stories that were penned by him in Sandesh, where Sukumar was the editor, marks the initial instances of his uproarious nonsense comedy and flowering of the genius.
The school stories around Pagla Dashu, the hilarious updated version of a Ramayana eposode in Lakshmaner Shaktishel, the travel journal of professor Heshoram Hushiar, all these came alive in the pages of Sandesh.
Khai Khai, ha-ja-ba-ra-la followed and very soon the evergreen characters like Pagla Dashu, Hiji-Bij-Bij, Kakkeshwar Kuchkuche, Udho Budho captured the hearts of whoever entered the world of Sukumar's nonsense.
Abol Tabol, a collection of forty five nonsense verses, was his last book. It was released eight days after his untimely death in 1923. Abol Tabol established Sukumar's reputation as a nonsense writer comparable to Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll.
In the words of Rabindranath Tagore, "The spontaneous effusion of Sukumar's humor has enriched bengali and is unparalleled. The wide gamut and the dynamic movement of his faultless rhyme-scheme, the unimaginable incongruity of his emotive associations astound us at every turn. He had a scientific sobriety in his nature and therefore has been able to evoke a play of the binaries with such promptness. Indeed, there has always been some real resonance of humour in the domain of Bengali literature but Sukumar's hallmark of humor is unique and all surpassing. This immense gift of his refined humour along with the pity of his premature demise would forever be aflame in the reader's mind."
