Bengali poems and a Nobel laureate

It was a routine busy day today in Delhi. I met Ashok Vajpeyi over lunch. Ashok Vajpeyi, who heads Lalit Kala Akademi, is well known in the cultural circuit. We discussed various issues and he told me about his recent US trip where he delivered lectures in different cities.

One piece of information that he shared with me was particularly interesting as it goes like this.
A Nobel laureate in Chemistry has translated Joy Goswami’s Bengali poetry into English. Vajpeyi learnt about this while talking on the subject of problems faced by publications in India.

The Nobel Laureate approached him and told him that he had translated two of Joy Goswami’s poems but was yet to find a publisher in the United States.

I though Joy da knows about all this. But when I spoke to him he was pleasantly surprised to hear it all. Tomorrow I shall try and get some more info on this from Ashok ji. In the evening I met Hindi scholar Ramsharan Joshi who was in the news last year and penned the biography of Arjun Singh (picture).

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