In 1949, poet Allen Ginsberg met Carl Solomon in a mental institution, an encounter that would inspire Howl, one of the most influential poems of the twentieth century. Two decades later, in 1969, a remarkable coincidence unfolded in Calcutta’s Gobra Mental Hospital (now Pavlov): film-maker Ritwik Ghatak and poet Binoy Majumdar, two of Bengal’s most brilliant and troubled creative minds, found themselves admitted to the same asylum.

What followed was an extraordinary meeting of art, intellect, and defiance. The two artists, who admired each other’s work, exchanged letters and notes while within the institution and even collaborated on a play that was performed inside the hospital, an episode that has largely slipped through the cracks of literary and cinematic history.

Letters from the Asylum: A Novel of Art, Madness and Memory draws upon this correspondence between Ghatak and Majumdar, placing their authentic letters and reflections within a carefully imagined narrative frame. Through these exchanges emerge conversations about cinema and poetry, the lingering wounds of Partition, caste politics, love, artistic obsession, and the fragile line between genius and breakdown. Framing the story is Ina, a young photojournalist who travels to Binoy Majumdar’s home in Thakurnagar and discovers a cache of these forgotten letters.

Blending meticulous research with inventive storytelling, Letters from the Asylum offers a rare and intimate portrait of two uncompromising artists, and the turbulent world that shaped their art.