Shri Jagadish Prasad Mandal, an epitome of struggle and achievement
_________________________________________________________
Shri Jagadish Prasad Mandal, the winner of the Sahitya akademi Award in Maithili for the year 2021 for his novel, Pangu, is an epitome of struggle and achievement. Perhaps very few people knew that until the age of 59 he had hardly touched his pen, was busy fighting court cases thrust upon him by the local strongmen against whom he fought for years together for the sake of the poor and the downtrodden villagers. Having acquired M.A.degree in Political Science and Hindi, he could definitely have got a good job and spent a life of luxury. But he consciously chose to live a life full of struggles, participated in various farmers agitations, did many things valuable for the upliftment of his fellow villagers. That is how he spent his entire youth and continued with this till he approached 60 years of his life.
Having realized that he may now need to reduce physical activities due to growing age, he decided to spend his time in writings although farming continued his means of livelihood. A few acres of land that he inherited, were sufficient to manage his day-to-day necessities.
His entire family, his son (Dr Umesh Mandal), his daughter-in-law, his granddaughter -all work day and night to publish his work. And this is continuing not for one month, two months but for years together and that too without any financial gain. They have set up Pallavi Prakashan and Manav Art Printing for publishing books in Maithili. In fact, my first book in Maithili, Bhor san Sanjh dhari(भोर सँ साँझ धरि),was published by Pallavi Prakashan (in collaboration with Dr. Umesh Mandal) in the year 2017.
Jagadish Babu is a true Karmyogi. He gets up at 2AM in the morning. After a cup of tea, he spends about three hours’ time till 5AM in the morning on regular basis since last about 16 years now. During this period, he wrote about 106 books in Maithili language in almost all genres. He wrote 20 novels,750 stories, hundreds of poems.Thus, he has done a lot in the field of Maithili literature.
Sahitya Academy has added to its prestige by honoring this great son of Mithila. In fact, this award should have gone to him much earlier. He deserves much better. His writings are original and tell a lot about the realities of rural life of Mithilanchal. He deserves even the Novel prize in Literature.
I got the opportunity to meet him for the first time on 11th March 2022 when he came to Sahitya Akademi to receive the award. I was amazed by his simplicity. I was very much impressed with his innocent smile. The warmth in his manners, his utterances and behavior—were all excellent! I could hear him speaking many original words of Maithili which are now mostly forgotten.
I pray for the long, happy and healthy life of Jagadish babu so that he continues to benefit us from his literary talent for many, many years!
_______________________________________________________________
Rabindra Narayan Mishra
mishrarn@gmail.com