Sri Sunirmal Basu Thakur was born on 20th of July, 1902 (Bengali month of Shravan, 1309) in his maternal home at Makathpur in Giridih. His father was Sri Poshupati Basu Thakur and his grandfather was a famous litterateur of nineteenth century Sri Girish Chandra Basu Thakur. His grandmother was also a good poet. His father also had deep attraction towards literature. The maternal grandfather of Sri Sunirmal Basu Thakur was a famous freedom fighter and litterateur Sri Monoranjan Guhathakurta. He used to write a lot of poetry by taking the alias ‘Pahari Pakhi’. His father in his first early life used to teach in Giridih School. His famous students included Sri Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Prasanta Mahalanobis, Sri Amal hom etc. later he left teaching and opened a departmental store or a cosmetic shop. Then he moved on to greenery business and after that he started selling Mica. Sri Monoranjan Guhathakurta was known as ‘Prince of Mica Mines’. With the help of his father-in-law, Sri Poshupati Basu Thakur improved his Mica business. He made a lot of money and constructed a house in Giridih. His elder brother Sri Lalit Mohan Basu Thakur was a great artist. He constructed two hills in his front gate the hills were duplicates of Paresh Nath and Khanduli hills.

Sri Sunirmal Basu Thakur used to write poetry when he was a kid and his alias was ‘Sunirmal Sharma’. In 1916 he was admitted to Giridih High School in Class Seven. He introduced a newspaper in his school by the name of ‘Asha’. The director/editor of the newspaper was called ‘Bodnami’. He and his four friends published their first poetry in this newspaper and named that ‘Chandrabhaya r Padmapaar’. Later they release a lot of poetry in this newspaper. After passing out from Giridih High School in matric examination he moved on to Kolkata.

From a very young age he was also very good in drawing just like his poetry. He studied drawing in an arts school for a few days. Later he also got admission for a few days in ‘Oriental School of Arts’ which was run by Sri Abanindranath Thakur. Later in his life he used to draw pictures besides his own writings.

In the year 1320 (Bengali Year) he received a ‘Sandesh’ magazine that was edited by Sri Upendra Kishore Roy Chowdhury. He got very attracted and attached to it. This magazine was his main inspiration towards literature. A new way/path opened in front of him. He became a regular writer of ‘Sandesh’. In the sixth year of the magazine a comic story by the name of ‘Munshi ji’ was released in the first episode. This story was written by Sri Sunirmal Basu Thakur. This was the first published story created by him.

After he came to Calcutta he took an oath as to never work under anyone. He promised that he will only write stories for the kids. From then his hobby and profession became the same. He had first-hand experience with the financial hardships that was complimentary with all writers especially kids story writers at that time. It was really hard for these writers to look after their family by only writing stories. Only a very few people dedicate their life and expose their life to these kind of hardships. However his mind was always alert. That is why he forgot all his sadness and remained humorous forever. He also loved to spend time with kids. During his struggling days he used to proof read in Sri Raj Sekhar Basu‘s ‘Chalantika’. He worked as a main editor of ‘Kishore Asia’. However, the magazine went out of business within a few years.

He was always very energetic with his work. He was very close to his friends. He used to write about his poverty in a very humorous way in his diary. In his lifetime he wrote a lot of books. These books cannot be found in the shops anymore. His first published book was ‘Pata r Bhepu’. He was a member of ‘Kallol’ and ‘Kali Kolom’. He used to write a lot of short stories and poetries in magazines like ‘Probashi’, ‘Sandesh’, ‘Mouchak’, ‘Khokakhuku’, ‘Maas Poila’, ‘Sishusathi’, ‘Bhaibon’, ‘Alpona’, ‘Mukul’, ‘Kishore’(daily), ‘Koishore’, ‘Sishu Bharati’, ‘Kheya’ etc. The poetries he created also contained pictures drawn by Sri Sunirmal Basu Thakur. He also wrote a lot of children stories in Ananda Bazar’s kids section ‘Chotoder Pattari’. He even edited in an annual magazine by ‘Deb Sahityo Kutir’ which was called ‘Rangmashal’.

A book called ‘Sunirmal Rachona Samagra’ was published which consisted of Four Hundred Thirty Two poetries, Two Hundred Twenty Three stories, ‘Ramayana’ and ‘Mahabharata’ for kids, Four books called ‘Chonde r Tung tang Kobita Chobbis Ti’ and an autobiography called ‘Jeevan Khata r Koek Pata’. He also wrote autobiographies of famous characters like Raja Ram Mohan, Michael Madhusudan, Thakur Sri Ramkrishna and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar for the kids. He wrote fourteen plays. His plays were Bondibir, Ananda Nadu, Kipte Thakurda, Kasi r Totka to name a few. He wrote all these by keeping in mind that these plays will be for the kids. He wrote stories taking topics like adventure but most of them were lost in time. In his book ‘Morone r Mukhe’ he wrote poetry in an imaginary African language which is one of its kinds.

His stories were loved by kids from each and every walk of life. Since all his creation had a universal appeal, that is the reason why all his stories and creation were translated in different languages. He used to express very difficult thoughts in very simple languages. The main motto he followed was character building of the kids and he always had their wellbeing in his mind. For education of the kids he created ‘Chonde r Tung tang’, ‘Chonde r Gopon Katha’, ‘Chonde r Jumjhumi’ and ‘Chotoder Kobita Sekha’. All the stories he created contained a moral in it to teach kids. He used to write poetry quite easily. He was a very successful poet. He had a special talent while writing poetry.

Sri Poshupati Basu Thakur who was the father of Sri Sunirmal Basu Thakur moved to Calcutta with his family when his Mica business failed. The responsibility to look after the family increased manifold and it became very difficult to stay in Kolkata because of higher expenditures in the city. That is the reason why he constructed a house in Machlandapur. After the death of his mother he sold that house and again moved back to Kolkata.

He was very humorous by nature and he had a very big friend circle. He also used to know a lot of magicians. The famous magician Sri P.C. Sarkar was his bosom friend. He was very close to a lot of people like Sri Raj Shekhar Basu, Sri Akhil Niyogi (Swapan Buro), Sri Jogendranath Gupta, Sri Hemendro Kumar Ray, Sri Bimal Ghosh (Moumachi), Sri Narendra Deb, Sri Sivram Chakraborty, Sri Gajendra Kumar Mitra, Sri Prabodh Kumar Sanyal, Sri Soilo Chakraborty, Sri Vivekananda Mukherjee, Sri Tushar Kanti Ghosh and many others. The government of West Bengal awarded him with the first posthumous Vidyasagar Award. Other than that in 2002 the government celebrated his birth centenary with a lot of programs dedicated to him and West Bengal Bangla Academy published a memorial book for him.

On 25th of February, 1957 he died in his house in Dhakuria. At the news of his death many came to see his mortal remains at his house. The local schools were given a day holiday. A lot of people both famous and common people, newspaper editors, publishers and many small kids all came to pay their final respect to him.

The quality of Sri Sunirmal Basu Thakur’s writing will be assessed by the critics differently across generations. His fame as a writer will be different in the eyes of different people. However, what everyone will agree is that he will be the beacon of light for all the writers who will be writing kids stories in the future. In this backdrop we can also mention the names of storyteller Sri Buddhadeb Guha and his wife a famous singer Smt. Ritu Guha. Buddhadeb Guha is the son of Smt. Manjulika Guha, who in turn is the third daughter of Sri Poshupati Basu Thakur.