Pabitra Kumar Deka (29 January 1940 – 5 January 2010) is a novelist, humor writer, publisher and editor of a monthly magazine, film critic and script writer living in Assam in India. He is the winner of the Best Film Critic Award in 1988 from the Eastern India Motion Picture Association. The Government of Assam has instituted the State Best Film Critic Award in the name of ‘Pabitra Kumar Deka Award’ from 2010 after his death.
Deka was born in the small town of Haibargaon in the district of Nagaon (Assam) to Shri Mahendra Nath Deka and Swarnalata Deka. His father was a government officer in the Agriculture Department. The family settled in Guwahati in the early 1960s. After his retirement from office, Mahendra Nath Deka started M.N. Deka Films, a film distribution company, which released many Assamese and Bengali films.
Pabitra Kumar Deka, the eldest son, attended Nagaon Government High School and earned a degree in Commerce from Nowgong College. During his college days, he acted in and directed a number of one-act and full-length plays in Nagaon. In the one-act play competition held in Nagaon Natya Mandir in 1960, he was given the best actor and best director awards for the play ‘Adarsha Homeo hall’, written by Deba Kumar Saikia. Plays like 'Interview' and ‘Mara Sutir Jiya Saku’ (Writer: Deba Kumar Saikia) also received the best direction award in many drama competitions.
During the same period, Deka began to translate short stories of foreign writers in Assamese for the magazines ‘Manideep’. His first published work was an Assamese adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s story published in ‘Manideep’.
In Guwahati, Deka worked at Assam Tribune group of Newspapers as Advertising Manager, beginning in 1965. In the 1980s he joined the new Sadin-Pratidin group and he remained in this job till his death in 2010.
In the 1960s, Deka was hired as assiciate editor of the magazine Amar Pratinidhi, published from Kolkata by Shri Bhumi Publishing Company. Working in Guwahati under editor Dr. Bhupen Hazarika, he wrote a column ‘Dhananjayor diary’ in which, influenced by leftist thinking, he wrote many humorous critiques of society and people. He also wrote and translated many social and science fiction novels during this period, some of which were also published in the form of, including ‘Sihote Sar Paise’, ‘Vietnam’, ‘Mexicor pora aha gabhorujani’, ‘Operation Momba’, ‘Frankenstein’ etc. Deka also wrote many humor articles under the name of Pranpriya deka for the magazine Cartoon, another Shri Bhumi publication.