TAGORE AND ME

A Medical Practitioner by profession and indulging in literary writings in between as a hobby, Dr Debidas Ray was born in Bishnupur of Bankura District in West Bengal in India. He did his schooling and spent his childhood there. He used to write Bengali poems which were published in school and local magazines. He studied Intermediate Science at Ramakrishna Mission Vidyamandir at Belur Math and undergraduate Medicine at Kolkata. He did his post graduate studies In UK where he spent a decade and worked in several hospitals. Returning to India he joined the Maulana Azad Medical College at Delhi and thereafter worked in the Christian Medical College, Vellore until retirement .For the next five years as an Emeritus Medical Scientist of the Indian Council of Medical Research, he carried out research projects at Chennai. Throughout his professional career though very busy in patient care, teaching and research, his writing habit remained with him. He wrote scores of scientific papers in Medicine which were published in well known Journals in India and abroad. It is after retirement and abatement of routine work when his earlier literary habit returned and he again started writing Bengali poems and a book of the poems was published. Over the last decade, he has been writing English poems which have been published in reputed English Journals throughout India. For the last five years he has been extensively translating Tagore's original Bengali poems into English which are being published in prestigious journals including the Visva Bharati Quarterly founded by Rabindranath Tagore. Currently he resides with his wife at Vellore and runs a Chest Clinic at Sathuvachari. He is an active member of many professional bodies, literary organizations and cultural societies. He is an avid reader and regularly writes articles and poems for journals, magazines and anthologies.