Narayan Debnath hospitalised

Doctors in the hospital said that the condition of the 90-year-old cartoonist is stable now. Debnath had been frequently losing consciousness and his family decided to admit him in the hospital.

 The creator of cult Bengali comic characters like Bantul the Great, Nonte-Phonte and Handa-Bhonda, dominated Bengal’s cartoon scene for over three decades. Debnath’s immortal characters still give immense pleasure not only to children, but to people of other age groups as well.

After graduating from Indian Art College, Debnath began his career as an artist. He started off with the legendary character Bantul the Great, the first Bengali superhero, and later came up other comic characters like Nonte-Phonte, Handa-Bhonda and Bahadur Beral.

 All his characters were created on the basis of certain ideologies. Bantul, for instance, was created during the Bangladesh Liberation War and India was personified through this character. He symbolises enormous power and was a hero of many children before the advent of television superheroes.

In one of the most popular stories one can find, Bantul the Great uses an elephant to douse a fire that had breaks out in a circus. Bantul, who was passing by, hears cries for help.  He goes to the place where the elephants were kept, gets hold of one of them and takes it near a pond. By filling up the elephant’s trunk with water, he was able to put out the flames.

In another story, Bantul, an avid reader, breaks a series of lamp posts that came in his way as he was engrossed in reading a detective story book while holding the book in his right hand and walking. In a football match, Bantul kicks an iron ball, mistaking it for a football ,which goes up to the sky and comes back after after turning into a huge ball of snow and falls on his opponents’ heads, Bhaja and Gaja.

 The doctors in the hospital said that he has been recovering gradually and kept under close observation. He had a swelling on his feet because of which he was losing consciousness.

Even after getting admitted at the hospital, he had lost consciousness many times. His blood pressure was below normal and his prostate gland had enlarged. Various clinical tests were performed on him.