“Dr Roy was a rare combination of talent, personality and power. His upright gait and towering figure inspired awe in people. All officials were scared of him as he understood administrative matters inside out,” recalled author Sanjib Chattopadhyay, reminiscing about Bengal’s visionary chief minister. He was speaking at a programme organised on July 1 at Bidhan Sishu Udyan in Ultadanga.

Dr Roy was a friend of Chattopadhyay’s grandfather Swarup Bandyopadhyay who was a well-known doctor as well. Dr Roy did a lot of election work from his house while contesting from Barrackpore. “When I joined the cottage and small scale industries department as a 25-year-old, senior officials would send me to his house with the files, not daring to face him themselves. Dr Roy was a miracle worker as a doctor. He used to say that he could see, feel and smell a disease as the patient walked into his chamber.”

Chattopadhyay recalled his father’s colleague going to Dr Roy with a complaint of his head spinning every time he got off the bed. “Treatments for vertigo and spondylosis had failed. The man was about to lose his job due to continuing illness. Dr Roy saw him on my request and simply wrote ‘Reverse your head’ on the prescription. His family thought it was a rude joke. When I went back for an explanation, he said the man was surely sleeping with his head to the north and feet to the south and therefore was acting like a needle to the earth’s magnetic field. He changed his sleeping posture and in three days was fully fit!”

Educationist D.K. Sinha talked of Roy’s contribution as an administrator. “He used his proximity with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to expedite Bengal’s growth.”

Tagore’s Tasher Desh was staged in chhou dance style.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph, Calcutta, India / by A Staff Reporter / Friday – July 10th, 2015