Four years after his return to Calcutta in 1857 from a self-imposed exile in Madras, Michael Madhusudan Dutta burst on to the sky of Bengali literature with one of its best-known stars, the nine-canto Meghnādbadh Kāvya (Ballad of the Slaying of Meghnād). Composed in blank verse and 14-character amitrakshar (non-rhyming) lines of the payar ­cadence of Krittivās Ojha’s medieval Srirām Pānchāli, Datta celebrated, à la John Milton’s Lucifer, two other all-conquering usurpers of the heavens, Meghnād (the cloud thunderer) and his father Rāvan, the demon sovereign of divine pedigree. Though following the broad storyline of the Rāmāyan, with every twist and turn of the 6,087-line epic, he invented and innovated, drawing all the while from the various versions of the Indian Rāmāyans.

The crown prince and icon of the mighty Rākshas clan of Lankā, and the doting husband of the sensational Daityā (Titan) warrior-princess, Pramilā, the indomitable Meghnād was slain with divine enchantment and that too, when vulnerable. Quite like the invincible Greek warrior, lover and demigod Achilles. Michael’s retelling of the epic, especially of the “murder” of a defenceless Meghnād, otherwise indefeasible, departed radically from the full-blown battle in the conventional texts of Rāmāyan by Vālmiki, Krittivās or others. There were other
inventions too. His Aeneas-like Rām negotiated the nether-world with goddess Mahamāyā to get clues from the spirit of the deceased Dasarath for resuscitating a wounded Lakshman. He invented Princess Pramilā as the idol of Lankā’s women and as an Amazon-like cavalry chief in line with his penchant for strong female characters, sensitively describing her conjugal romance and her immolation on Meghnād’s pyre. And all through, his diabolical gods plotted against the Rākshas whom they feared to fight face-to-face. That was Michael Madhusudan Dutta, a genius who rose “like a tremendous comet” (Murshid 2004: 168) only to burn out like a shooting star.