Posts

Bengal and bomb

Image
Football, literature, poets, singers are already a piece of history in Bengal while Calcutta is now good at producing lumpen elements. The city, like its myriad crumbled edifices, is only left with its history to boast. “Parar dokane boshe aajkal Mohun Bagan ar East Bengal niye adda hoina. (Bengalis don’t discuss Mohun Bagan or East Bengal nowadays). The youths are more interested in politics,” said one of my co-passengers in Rajdhani Express two summers ago. There’s something wrong with the Bengalis, who still take pride in being the cultural conscience of the country, though their domination in literature, films, football is all but a part of folklore. “I was born and brought up at Arambagh in Hooghly district, but I shifted to Siliguri to study engineering from North Bengal Engineering College in the early 90s. I stay in Sodepur as I wanted to stay close to Calcutta. But the transformation of the villages into small battlefields baffles me more than what I see on...
Post a Comment
Read more

Soumitra Chatterjee: The doyen of Bengali cinema

Image
Quiet and solitude, the visitors’ room at his Golf Green residence in south Calcutta was an ideal place to discuss Bengali cinema with Soumitra Chatterjee, one of the living legends of Indian films. On one side of the wall, is a portrait of his idol Shishir Kumar Bhaduri, pioneer of modern Bengali theatre. Soumitra Chatterjee and  Sharmila Tagore in Aranyer Din Ratri. “Mr Bhaduri influenced me a lot,” said Chatterjee, whose first play was Mukhosh, a Bengali adaptation of William Wymark Jacobs’s horror story The Monkey’s Paw, which he directed while doing his Masters at the Calcutta University. After watching the ‘Natyacharya’ in the 1950s, Chatterjee got into acting and even acted with the late actor in one of his later productions Prafulla. With his tall frame, refined look, education, and someone who is passionate about poetry, plays and theatre, Chatterjee rivaled Uttam Kumar in mainstream stardom. Satyajit Ray’s Apu talked about his relationship with ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Naya Daur

Image
Sitting on his rickshaw parked on the Narkeldanga Main Road, Mehboob was watching the shuttle autos ferry passengers from Phoolbagan to Kaizer Street, Sealdah station and Central Avenue. “I’m the only one left in this area,” lamented the 45-year-old from Bihar. Almost obsolete around the country, but still going strong, hand-pulled rickshaws are one of the oldest means of transport in the city. In the energy-sapping heat and humidity, his vest was soaked with sweat. H e fanned himself with a  gamcha.  There’re still some rickshaws near the vegetable markets and local areas, waiting to run you to your destination, but commuters prefer the autos. It saves time and cheaper too. "I get very little business nowadays. People want to rush. Everything has become so fast. Most rickshaw-pullers have either left the job or went back home,” he added. While I waited for app-cab Ola on the rickety four-point crossing at Khal Pol, I wondered if the man versus machine c...
Post a Comment
Read more

Tumi robe nirobe

Image
Thakurbari, Jorasanko. My name won’t give any hint at my Bengali identity. Once a schoolmate doubted my knowledge on Rabindranath Tagore despite knowing we had Bangla as second language in a Christian missionary school in Calcutta! With one of Kavi Guru’s famous songs jodi tor dak shune keu na aase , tobe ekla cholo re played in the background at his palatial bungalow at Thakurbari at Jorasanko, some fleeting thoughts crossed my mind. Is Tagore restricted only to the Bengal-born mind space? “Tagore is for everyone,” said 2012 Dada Saheb Phalke Award-winner actor Soumitra Chatterjee, who, when not acting, recites poems, be it Tagore’s or his own. Renowned lyricist-poet-director Gulzar said once the Bengalis didn’t let Tagore out of their state because Viswa Bharti had rights over his works. In his effort to introduce Tagore to the Hindi-speaking world, Gulzar translated 60-odd Bengali Tagore poems in two books — The Crescent Moon and The Gardener . To k...
Post a Comment
Read more