"I have always felt at one with rebels, wherever they are, because like the artist they want to reform the chaotic world by imposing on it a form of material unity ..." said Birendra Kumar Bhattacharyya, in 1980. It was this very streak of the rebel that wouldn't let him oblige the bureaucracy of the All India Radio, two decades earlier, by dropping the poem "Naganir Chitthi" (Letter from a Naga woman) and choosing another poem for recitation: he would rather not participate in the poetic symposium than toe the official line.

The rebel had to plough his lone furrow, but he did it with such courage that Acharya Vinoba Bhave felt that "Dhirendra" would be more appropriate a name for him than "Birendra". Coming from a poor family Birendra had often to go to school on an empty stomach; even while Bhattacharyya was earning, he had to be content with two sets of clothes and a second-hand Army overcoat, and his wife had to make do with only one sari for some days. He braved all this but never gave up writing.

Yaruingam
Year of Publication: 1960
Publisher: Lawyers Book Stall, Guwahati

Translated into: Bengali, Malayalam

Mrityunjaya
Year of Publication: 1970
Publisher: Sahitya Prakash

Translated into: Hindi, Nepali, Bengali, English