Ashapurna Devi
| Born |
8 January 1909 Potoldanga, Calcutta, India |
|---|---|
| Died | 13 July 1995 (aged 86) |
| Occupation | Novelist, poet |
| Language | Bengali |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Ethnicity | Bengali |
| Period | 1939–1995 |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Notable works |
Prathom Protishruti Subarnolata Bakul Katha |
| Notable awards |
Jnanpith Award Padma Shri Sahitya Akademi Fellowship |
Ashapoorna Devi (8 January 1909 – 13 July 1995) also Ashapurna Debi or Asha Purna Devi, was a prominent Bengali novelist and poet. She has been widely honoured with a number of prizes and awards. In 1976, she was awarded Jnanpith Award and the Padma Shri by the Government of India; D.Litt by the Universities of Jabalpur, Rabindra Bharati, Burdwan and Jadavpur. Vishwa Bharati University honoured her with Deshikottama in 1989. For her contribution as a novelist and short story writer, the Sahitya Akademi conferred its highest honour, the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship, in 1994.
Ashapoorna Devi was born on 8 January 1909, at her maternal uncle's home at Potoldanga in North Calcutta. Her birth name was Asha Purna Devi (Gupta). Her early childhood was spent in a traditional and extremely conservative family at Vrindaban Basu Lane amongst a large number of relatives. Due to the domination of her grandmother, a staunch supporter of old customs and conservative ideals, the female children of the house were not allowed to go to school. Private tutors were employed only for the boys. It is said that as a baby Ashapurna used to listen to the readings of her brothers sitting opposite to them and that was how she learnt the alphabets.
Ashapurna's father Harendra Nath Gupta was a famous artist of the time who worked for C. Lazarus & Co. fine furniture makers as a designer. Ashapurna's mother Sarola Sundari came from a very enlightened family and was a great book lover. It was her "intensive thirst" for reading classics and story books which was transmitted to Ashapurna and her sisters in their early age.
Due to shortage of space, Harendra Nath shifted his family to a new house at 157/1A Acharya Prafulla Chandra Road (beside the Khanna Cinema Hall), which provided freedom to Sarola Sundari and her daughters to read according to their heart's desires. To satisfy Sarola Sundari's tremendous urge of reading there had been a continuous flow of books and magazines from the libraries of the time. As there was no dearth of leisure for the daughters and no bar to reading adult books from a very early age, Ashapurna and her sisters built a love-relationship with books. Though Ashapurna had no formal education as such, she was self-educated.
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