Madhusudan_Das

(V)
REMINISCENCE OF
(i)
NO IDLE DREAMER
SATISH CHANDRA BOSE
The name of Mr. Madhusudan Das conjures up much, very
much. It takes us back to a period in the early sixties of the last
century when we find the mighty and rugged spirit moving in Calcutta
in quest of learning and culture. We see him within the portals of
the University of Calcutta, whose motto "Advancement of Learning
" had fired the youthful imagination of the strange and adventurous
youth who had already freed himself from the shackles and bondage
of cramping custom and unreasoning conventionalities which, in those
days, hung like a dead weight on Orissa. Years later, we find his
mind and entire outlook on life transformed by long residence in
Calcutta and intimate contact with the intellectual atmosphere of that
place. We find him intellectually and in spirit a Bengalee, who lacked
neither intellect, emotion nor imagination. In intimate touch with the
flower of Bengalee culture and intellect, he imbibed the restless spirit
of the intellectual adventure and of resistance to the forces of
oppression and tyranny which marked the lives and activities of
prominent Bengalees in those days. His own province of Orissa had
in those days no more than a mere geographical existence to persons
outside the province. But the change came and it came with Madhu
Babu.
In the later seventies of the last century, we find him back to
his own province, a lawyer by profession. He was however, much more
than a mere lawyer. The lure of the Bar proved attractive but not
too attractive for him. The spirit of resistance to evil, the innate urge
to uplift his province and its inhabitants in the fields of commerce,
industry and politics had already taken full possession of his virile
mind. We find him organising and consolidating the dismembered parts