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Let alone Western academics, even most Indian academics remain unacquainted with the name Sukumar Ray (1887-1923) and his cultural Utopias, the Nonsense Club, and the Monday Club. In fact, to many of his countrymen, he is known as the father of Satyajit Ray, the great film director, littérateur, and music composer. Yet, of the great nineteenth-century humanists like Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel laureate; Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, the famous Bengali novelist; Rammohan Ray, the great social reformer; and Pundit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, the great scholar, who emerged during the renaissance in undivided Bengal, Sukumar Ray was undoubtedly one of the most glorious.
Sukumar came from a family where art, literature, science all found expression together. His father, Upendrakishore Roychoudhury, is chiefly remembered for his children's literature, but was undoubtedly one of the great products of the Bengal Renaissance. As his grandson, Satyajit Ray observes:
We find in Upendrakishore a rare combination of science and the arts, the east and the west. He played the pakhwaj [a musical instrument, almost like a tom-tom, used as an accompaniment in Indian Classical music] as well as violin; wrote devotional songs while carrying out research in printing methods; viewed the stars through a telescope from his own rooftop; wrote old legends and folktales anew for children in his inimitably lucid and graceful style, and illustrated them in oils, water-colours and pen-and-ink, using truly European Techniques. His skill and versatility as an illustrator remain unmatched by any Indian.
Sukumar's mother Bidhumukhi Devi was the daughter of the famous Brahmo leader, Prince Dwarakanath Gangyopadhyay and Kadambini Gangyopadhyay, the first lady doctor in India. In fact, the entire family was a cultural galaxy comprising bright luminaries. It was almost a solemn ritual in the family to indulge in literary and cultural interactions, one of the salient features of which was to cap verses. As Leela Majumdar, Sukumar's cousin and biographer has noted "in the evening the juniors and the seniors of the family took part in the cultural gatherings of the family - what we may call a process of culturally interactive familism. An instance of capping verses may be cited:
Once a bone stuck in a tiger's throat,
In pain, he hardly felt any comfort.
Sleepless, for three days and nights he...