An Ideogram character denoting 'Quest'

by Nilotpal Roy

This book is like a raw sewage, the first ever book of 'pensees' written in Bengali language. A juxtaposition of personal and impersonal fragments, impregnated with cerebrally nefarious and rancorous thoughts, this book explores the dialectic existence of the author as an unbiased witness of his own time. The sporadic ramifications of these vignettes, emerging out of the socio-psychological experiences of the author, reflect the perils of a precociously fecund mind. The title of this book has no letters or words from any alphabet of any language; it is just an Ideogram character that means 'quest'. This book symbolically signifies the classical quest of every individual on earth, as a human being, and henceforth the title of the book can never be pronounced or read, (neither aloud, nor silently); rather it can only be viewed, and understood --- or not understood at all. This book is an unputdownable piece of cerebral literature, which is the first of its kind in the Bengali language.

96 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2004

About the author

Nilotpal Roy (born 19th June 1978) is an Indian writer, thinker, literary critic, and commentator on culture. He is a bi-lingual novelist, essayist, poet, playwright, and short story writer. He writes with equal flair in two languages --- in English, and in his vernacular Bengali. So far, he is best known for his bold, maverick, and unforeseen styles of writing, as well as for his unconventional ways of thinking. As the immense magnitude of his erudite brain as well as his ganglionic pen ranges from ‘samizdat’ via ‘tamizdat’ to ‘magnitizdat’, since ‘blue blouse’ through ‘aleatoricism’ unto ‘degree zero’; he offers with effortless ease, a sojourn to cerebral literature.

He claims himself to be a ‘counter-intellectual’, because he feels that it is worse to be a ‘refined mediocre’ than being a ‘crude mediocre’, and prefers to be a ‘counter-intellectual’ to a ‘pseudo-intellectual’. He never calls himself an ‘author’ as he rather prefers the term ‘penman’ which is his own coinage. According to this exceptionally experimental penman, the true yardsticks of an exceptional thinker’s and/or writer’s extraordinaire should be --- Magha’s ‘versatility of inventiveness’, Joyce’s ‘fecundity of thought’, Borges’ ‘fastidiousness of analyticity’, and Kamal Kumar’s ‘infinitude of erudition’ --- all these assembled together.

He was born and brought up in north Calcutta, West Bengal, India, and presently lives in Dum Dum with his wife.

Main interests : Indian mythology, Sanskrit literature, Greek mythology, Roman mythology, Absurdism, Postmodernist experimental prose and poetry, Modernist experimental prose and poetry, Avant-garde theatre, Literary theory, Literary criticism, European philosophy, Psychoanalytic literary criticism, Psychological realism in literature, Experimental prose in Bengali literature, Bengali little magazine movement, History of primitive Kolkata, Bengali folklores (songs, riddles, proverbs & tales), Bengali stage theatre, Experimental film.