A RATHER ROUGH [PUN INTENDED] APPRAISAL OF DILIP KUMAR ROY

A RATHER ROUGH [PUN INTENDED] APPRAISAL OF DILIP KUMAR ROY

Dilip Kumar Roy was a curious assortment of artistic attributes, an ever-shifting assemblage of diverse tendencies tugging at his being that lent fruition in terms of half-baked artistic output, a person of unfulfilled aspirations owing to mixed emotions driving his deeper calling in life which he termed the quest for God. He was the archetypal representative of the spiritually ascending soul that ever looks behind to see if there is yet some greener pasture left to graze on before leaving it all behind in the solitary sojourn to the summit. Desire in its refined form so clung to his deliberating soul that it spared him neither repose in the world of the senses nor allowed him access into the world beyond. His was an oscillating soul, a vaccillating spirit that craved for the dual delight of the senses and what lay above and beyond, the typical existential predicament of the poet who seemingly seeks perfection in life but can never quite give up life altogether to seek it. Located in the realm of this dual longing for delight in both the senses and the transcendental, such souls are ever craving and never satiated owing to this contradiction in their character. They remain pilgrims through life, without rest, without repose, without a safe and secure anchor anywhere, ununderstood, misread, misled, misdirected in their journey through life, now rolling along the royal avenue of God and Truth, now slipping into the alleyways of earthly delight whence they return frustrated to the regal road again. Thus, buffeted by the winds of desire, higher aspiration and change, they keep floating lifelong, floating and never sinking wholesale, till they pass out of this earthly form, this casement in clay, to seek a firmer foothold in a future life. Thus the saga goes on.

Written by Sugata Bose