The Smile He Refused to Let Time Take Away

“That time of year thou mayst in me behold”…….. Shakespeare tried to defeat time through verse.

Bhupatiranjan, from an obscure part of West Bengal, India, tries to defeat time through sculpture.

The sculpture depicting the smile of her wife is almost a three-dimensional sonnet.

Let us elaborate.

Time has taken away the familiar smile from his wife’s face. But 88-year-old Bhupatiranjan Debnath has refused to let that smile disappear.

For nearly six decades, through the quiet routines of marriage, the raising of children and the many rises and falls of life, he remembers Anjali by the smile that once lit up her face.

When she smiled, two tiny dimples appeared at the corners of her lips. Today, however, the smile has vanished. Anjali, now past 70, has been confined to her sickbed for a long time; she doesn’t smile any more.

Unable to bear seeing her in that condition, Bhupatiranjan has found his own way of preserving the woman he remembers. He has sculpted a statue of Anjali—with the gentle smile he knows so well.

Bhupatiranjan Debnath

A resident of Madhyamgram in North 24 Parganas district, West Bengal, Bhupatiranjan taught for many years at a local high school. Alongside teaching, he quietly nurtured an artistic passion for more than four decades: making sculptures and models from ordinary materials.

His home is filled with his creations. Clay, coconut, branches of trees and other everyday household materials have all found a new life in his hands.

His artistic repertoire extends to the canvas as well. He has painted portraits of celebrated figures including Rabindranath Tagore, Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Ustad Allauddin Khan and Manna Dey. Some of his works have also been displayed at exhibitions.

Emotional Weight of Anjali’s Smile

But none of those creations, perhaps, carries the emotional weight of his latest work.

The sculpture of Anjali is intensely personal. It is not merely an exercise in craftsmanship; it is an attempt to hold on to a memory that illness has slowly taken away.

Neighbours say Bhupatiranjan has endured several personal tragedies over the course of his long life. He lost his son during the Covid-19 pandemic. His daughter-in-law and grandchildren presently live with him.

The couple at the time of their marriage

Through all these trials, neighbours recall, the bond between Bhupatiranjan and Anjali has remained strikingly strong. When illness confined Anjali to bed, a profound loneliness seemed to have descended upon the elderly teacher.

Bhupatiranjan does not speak much about his own suffering. Whenever he talks, his conversation repeatedly returns to Anjali.

Age has made even everyday life difficult. He now struggles to withdraw money from his bank accounts because many of them are joint accounts, and obtaining his ailing wife’s signature has become a challenge. He manages the household somehow with his pension.

His body has bent beneath the weight of 88 years. But two things remain remarkably undiminished—his devotion to his art and his love for his wife.

And so, when Bhupatiranjan looks at the sculpture he has made of Anjali, he smiles faintly.

Perhaps, in that moment, he sees the Anjali he has carried in his heart for almost 60 years—the woman whose smile came with two little dimples and made an ordinary life beautiful. Not the Anjali in a sick frame.

As he speaks about her, his eyes repeatedly fill with tears.

Shakespeare wrote poetry to make love survive time.
Bhupatiranjan has made a smile survive time.