In a 2011 interview, Hasan Azizul Haq said that modern Bengali literature was lucky to get a Rabindranath Tagore within 100 years of its emergence, whereas most other literatures had to wait hundreds of years to get such a towering figure. What he implied was this: Tagore broadened the horizons of Bengali literature so much that later writers found all the lands tilled sufficiently. So, all they needed to do was to sow the seeds and wait for the harvest. One wonders if a similar line of thinking also applies, to some extent, to Haq himself. Bengali prose in the post-partition phase was lucky to have a Hasan Azizul Haq. Without his stories it would be difficult for us to come to terms with the traumas of the 1947 partition of India, the 1971 liberation war of Bangladesh and so much else. Further, he took the Marxist tradition of Bengali fiction to greater heights.Hasan passed away on November 15. The following essay is republished in tribute to his memories.