Sreyash Sarkar (21), a promising polymath whose interests range across poetry, art, writing, music and engineering, who was in his hometown Kolkata for a fleeting visit, is currently a third-year student of electrical and electronics engineering at Bangalore’s RNS Institute of Technology. Last month (November) Sense of Elsewhere, a Vancouver (Canada)-based magazine acclaimed him ‘poet of the month’ for his contributory compendium Letters from Bangalore. 

The only child of Dr. Samir, professor of applied optics and photonics at the Raja Bazar Science College, Kolkata, and Pushpita Sarkar, professor of political science at the city’s Bangabasi College, Sreyash, who moved to Bangalore in 2012 after completing his higher secondary education from Kolkata’s South Point School, attributes his achievements to family tradition and parental nurturance.

The Canadian award is only one of the many accolades this bright polymath has accumulated over the years. In 2011, his compilation Aspects — a Tagorean Venture, bagged the first prize at an all-India competition organised by Jagabandhu Institution, Kolkata and Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan. The very next year, in an international poetry competition sponsored by the Atlanta (US)-based W.B. Yeats Foundation, his poem titled The Optical Symphony was shortlisted among 40 entries worldwide.

Concurrently while reading for his engineering degree, Sreyash is editor-in-chief of a bilingual (Bengali and English) monthly magazine, art expert for a web journal, and associate editor of a webzine/forum for budding artists. Moreover last year, he was conferred the Gandharva Puraskar for his musical intelligence and rendition of a manj-khamaj thumri at the National Thumri Festival staged in Benaras. 

When Sreyash is not lost in the world of music, poetry, or art, he is intensively preparing for GRE/TOEFL examinations, to qualify for admission into institutions of higher education abroad. “After I complete my BE, I want to enroll for a Masters in power systems at an Ivy League university in the US. My objective is to contribute as much as I can to make this world more livable, enrich myself and those who want to be enriched by my talents,” he says forthrightly.

Way to go bro!

Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)