Thirteen winters ago, on 24th January 2011, I attended the The Dover Lane Music Conference for the last time, along with my parents. That was a significant phase of my life as I was on the cusp of starting my professional career and was about to bid adieu to Calcutta and move out into the big bad world. It was also the time when I had newly joined this social network called Facebook. As I look back into my Facebook timeline today and parse through the uploaded photos, I stumble across the fact that my Facebook post from that period actually carried the memories of the magical night including a snippet alluding to Ustaad Rashid Khan who was one of the four performing artists.
The night started with danseuse Yamini Reddy performing to Raaga Nata Bhairavi. Born to the legendary Kuchipudi exponents, Padma Bhushans Raja and Radha Reddy, Yamini has got dance in inheritance from her parents and she lived up to her genes with her beguiling mudras. Then came Kaushiki Chakraborty, daughter of Pandit Ajoy Chakraborty , who enthralled the audience with her rendition of bandish in Raaga Pahari and Raaga Kaunsi Kanhra. Next up was Amaan Ali Bangash who mesmerised us with Sarod recital of a bandish composed by his father Ustaad Amjad Ali Khan. He had his mother Subhalakshmi Khan in the front row as audience.
There is a saying in Bengali .. “ওস্তাদের মার শেষ রাতে” and the unforgettable Musical Soiree was rounded off with Ustaad Ustad Rashid Khan coming up with powerhouse performances of Raaga Lalit and Raaga Ahir Bhairav as the night slowly gave way to dawn.
Rashid Khan was always a maverick and a musical genius in equal measures. But then he was destined for greatness. After all, he carried the flattering endorsement of Pandit Bhimsen Joshi and Ustaad Amjad Ali Khan called him a “Prodigy” !! For listeners, it was Rashid’s ability to stir profound exclamations – of love, devotion and reverence – that set him apart. Hearing him sing was a beautiful surprise, as he would switch between the lyrical and soft, before suddenly bursting into an intricate taan – the technique of improvising with rapid melodic passages. His voice had a honey-like warmth that grabbed listeners the instant he sang the first note. He could sing the slow tempo alaap with the meditative quality of an Ustaad Amir Khan and move seamlessly into a fast-tempoed tarana or a romantic thumri like ‘Yaad Piya Ki Aaye’. Inside the sanctum sanctorum of Indian Classical Music, Rashid Khan was the “prince of modernism” who showed complete respect to classical forms but didn’t hesitate to “blur the distinctions between mainstream genres”.
On that fateful day , as the sun broke out , his exquisite exposition of Raag Ahir Bhairav – usually sung as the first Prahr of the morning – didn’t leave me for days. In fact it stayed with me and continues to reverberate in my subconscious and has strangely become an abiding memory of Calcutta winters that I will carry till my last breath.
‘Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter’.
~ John Keats
We mourn the passing of Ustaad Rashid Khan, one of the greatest vocalists of Hindustani classical music, may be we mourn the passing of his legacy of perfection as well
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is one of classical music’s most famous openings. It begins with a distinctive four-note “short-short-short-long” motif. But what do the starting notes signify? Is it a thunderclap – or fate, knocking at the door? Perhaps “Oppenheimer-the movie” mirrors this dilemma and oscillates between the two.
It has been 10 days since Christopher Nolan’s latest creation “Oppenheimer” released in the theatres and 9 days (yes, I am counting) since I had the good fortune of experiencing it on the big screen and I have been contemplating about the director’s vision ever since , having made the exception of booking the ticket two weeks in advance for the first time in my life. What I initially thought would be a review of a 3-hour long biopic has instead in my mind turned into a more complex deliberation on the vortex of power vis-à-vis science. In three words, I describe this latest cinematic masterpiece as a “Triumph of Intellect”.
At the very beginning of the movie, two sequences play out which essentially lay bare the tone and tenor of what is to come ahead. And it is only much later while brooding about the movie that I realized the immense significance of these two sequences. Nolan is a wizard of reverse storytelling (remember Memento) and with Oppenheimer, the director plays with the timelines from the very first shot of the movie as Nolan surreptitiously interplays the ART of CINEMA with THEORETICAL PHYSICS. Along one timeline — in colour, with opening text reading “FISSION” — runs the story of Oppenheimer (an incredible Cillian Murphy), spanning his youthful forays into theoretical physics at European universities, through his years at Berkeley, his dabbling in left-wing politics, his affair with Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh) and eventual marriage to Kitty (Emily Blunt), and his appointment by Gen. Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) to run the ultra-secretive Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. Through timeline jumps, we start to fill out a picture of what would happen to him after — in particular, an older Oppenheimer being investigated by a government commission regarding his ties to communists. Meanwhile, in a second track, we are witnessing — for reasons that do not become obvious for a while — an agitated Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), who is trying to get approved by the Senate as commerce secretary and isn’t quite sure why he’s meeting with resistance. This section is in black and white, and labeled “FUSION.”
Those labels are worth keeping in mind, because when at Los Alamos the Hungarian physicist Edward Teller (Benny Safdie) describes his idea for a hydrogen bomb — and someone later describes it as not a weapon of mass destruction, but a weapon of mass genocide — we suddenly learn the difference between fission and fusion. Fission, which splits the nucleus of an atom into two lighter nuclei, unleashes enormous power, capable of leveling Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But fusion, which combines two light nuclei into one, unleashes far more energy and can level, in a sense, the world.
OPPENHEIMER would have been a daunting subject for any filmmaker. A public intellectual with a flair for the dramatic, he directed the top-secret lab at Los Alamos, New Mexico, taking the atomic bomb from theoretical possibility to terrifying reality in an impossibly short timeline. Later he emerged as a kind of philosopher king of the postwar nuclear era, publicly opposing the development of the hydrogen bomb and becoming a symbol both of America’s technological and scientific might and of its conscience. That stance made Oppenheimer a target in the McCarthy era, spurring his enemies to paint him as a Communist sympathizer. He was stripped of his security clearance during a 1954 hearing convened by the Atomic Energy Commission. He lived the rest of his life diminished, and died at 62 in 1967, in Princeton, New Jersey. A life of triumph and tragedy, in equal measures, similar to PROMETHEUS in Greek mythology, who is best known for defying the Olympian gods by stealing fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technology, knowledge, and more generally, civilization, someone who represented human striving (particularly the quest for scientific knowledge) and the risk of overreaching or unintended consequences, embodying the lone genius whose efforts to improve human existence could also result in tragedy.
About a minute into Oppenheimer, it becomes obvious why Christopher Nolan wanted to tackle the project. His subject, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb,” was a theoretical physicist, a man who obsessed over the building blocks of the universe. He flings crystal goblets into corners to observe how they shatter and flirts with women by telling the scientific reasons his own matter won’t just pass through theirs. He dreams of particles and stars and fire; he becomes transfixed by water smacking the surface of puddles. Stoic in his decisions , a polyglot poet who lives in the contradictions, Oppenheimer is a man who delights in paradoxes; at his first encounter with a bewildered Berkeley pupil, he demands to know how light can be both a wave and a particle, and then proceeds, with gusto, to explain.
Nolan seems engaged in a long-running investigation of theoretical physics. He discerns some link between the cold material fabric of the universe — things like time, space, matter, death, eternity — and the more metaphysical meanings of human existence: love, identity, memory, and grief. Often, he weaves together emotion and science, then pulls some threads from ancient myth through the fabric to remind us these are eternal questions. From Memento to Inception, Interstellar to Dunkirk, The Prestige to Tenet, Nolan’s movies leverage Cinema as a Science (images, sound, time, chemicals on celluloid) to confront the tangible with the intangible. The man’s brain is a marvel. His craving for perfection led him to ditch CGI and use traditional graphics to recreate the visualization of atomic behavior and extreme beauty and terror of the trinity test.
Oppenheimer did not regret what he did at Los Alamos; he understood that you cannot stop curious human beings from discovering the physical world around them. Sadly, Oppenheimer’s life story is relevant to our current political predicaments. Oppenheimer was destroyed by a political movement characterized by rank know-nothing, anti-intellectual, xenophobic demagogues. His downfall reminds one of the “Fall of ICARUS” : a Greek parable on human aspiration. Daedalus and his son, Icarus, were imprisoned on the island of Crete. Daedalus created wings to fly away. Icarus, ambitiously, flew too near the sun. The wax holding his wings together melted and he plunged into the sea and drowned. The Oppenheimer case sent a warning to all scientists not to stand up in the political arena as public intellectuals. Cut to present day, we stand on the cusp of another technological revolution in which artificial intelligence will transform how we live and work, and yet we are not yet having the kind of informed civil discourse with its innovators that could help us to make wise policy decisions on its regulation.
The greatest scientific minds in the world are public intellectuals who respond to a higher calling that transcends the paradigms of nations and geo-politics. Oppenheimer belonged to that category, a man of science who was in equal measures a polyglot, a philosopher and a theoretical physicist. You can see this in the repetition of the line from the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” which Oppenheimer reportedly quoted after the test bomb, nicknamed Trinity, successfully detonated in the desert and showed the scientists and politicians of what it was capable. The moment, at least for Oppenheimer, is a visceral punch, an acknowledgment that with this great invention comes the ability to destroy humankind. Something has been unleashed (a chain reaction) that cannot be pushed back into the bottle.
The movie has not entirely figured him out, and history has not either, but there is no doubt he’s a figure of towering importance. In Oppenheimer, Nolan focuses his lens on power — the kind that split atoms produce, the kind that countries wield, the kind that men crave. Nolan’s Oppenheimer barely qualifies as a biopic, at least not the thudding Hollywood variety. Instead, it is a movie — a virtuoso, among his best — investigating the nature of power: how it is created, how it is kept in balance, and how it leads people into murky moral quandaries that refuse simplistic answers.
Happy Birthday, Mr. Nolan. We are lucky to watch you magically wield your craft as one of the modern masters of avant-garde cinema.
At Indendencia Street, in downtown Guadalajara, a sign was placed on the ANDA Theatre: “Hoje! Não trabalhamos porque vamos ver Pelé”, translated “Today! We don’t work because we’re going to see Pelé”.
At the end of the 1970 World Cup, the English newspaper The Sunday Times published a historic headline: “How do you spell Pelé? GOD”. In the glorious championship in Mexico, Pelé showed Brazilian football to the world, like no one else, and made a city stop working to watch him. In 2019, the official page of Santos, the club where the player made history, joked with the photo: “ Work dignifies the man, but seeing Pelé on the field dignifies him even more. Privileged are those who had the chance to live this unforgettable experience”.
Pelé was one of the first global sporting superstars who transcended continents, admired for his wizardry and sometimes criticized for his political stance, or the lack of it. Pelé’s greatness can be measured by the simple fact that he could make football a spectacle of natural grace and beauty when he missed as much as when he scored. He was the national treasure who once managed to bring about a 48-hour ceasefire between two warring factions during the Nigerian civil war in the 1960s, just so they could watch Pelé play in an exhibition game in Lagos. He was also the person who played a big part in Calcutta hosting him and the New York Cosmos during its tour of Asia in 1977. Pelé played in that game against Mohun Bagan at the Eden Gardens for about half an hour, in the winter of his career and far from his best, but still a turnout of 80,000 mesmerized.
Pelé suffered World Cup disappointments too, none more than when he was brutally kicked out of the competition in England in 1966. He left the scene of the 3-1 defeat by Portugal at Goodison Park draped in a blanket after a succession of fouls that left him limping on one leg, with his right knee heavily bandaged. That knee injury was caused by earlier savage challenges in Brazil’s first game against Bulgaria and Pelé was so disgusted by his treatment that he vowed never to play in another World Cup – a decision the game was grateful he later reversed.
Brazil’s 1970 World Cup win was the pinnacle of Pelé ‘s career. He was the focal point of a dream team that has become enshrined in the game’s history. Pelé may have been the headline act but he was accompanied by names such as Rivelino, Jairzinho, Tostao and Gerson, as well as the great captain and leader Carlos Alberto. Testimony to Pelé ‘s brilliance are two occasions in the 1970 Mexico World Cup when he failed to score – and yet are used to this day as prime exhibits of the skill, power, elegance and mental speed and agility that mark him out as arguably the greatest to have ever graced the game. The first came in Brazil’s opening group game against Czechoslovakia when Pelé , from several yards inside the centre circle in his own half, received the ball languidly then spotted keeper Ivo Viktor off his line. In an elegant, instinctive swing of his right boot, he sent the ball in a high arc towards goal, landing inches wide, with the panicking Viktor making a scrambling retreat before the relief of realising he had not been embarrassed by Pelé ‘s genius. Fast forward to the semi-final against Uruguay, again in Guadalajara, when Pelé raced at full speed on to Tostao’s pass, yet still had the presence of mind to run past keeper Ladislao Mazurkiewicz, also allowing the ball to run past the pair. The keeper had been sold perhaps the greatest dummy in World Cup history. Sadly, the angle was subsequently too tight for Pelé to score but the moment is still replayed whenever World Cups are relived and as the late, great BBC commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme, probably taken as much by surprise as Mazurkiewicz, said in that wonderful moment: “What genius. Incredible.”
Brazil, in 1888, was the last Western country to abolish slavery, and Pelé was born just 52 years later, a poor Black child who started out life shining shoes. Edson Arantes do Nascimento was born on Oct. 23, 1940, in Três Corações, a tiny rural town in the state of Minas Gerais. His parents named him Edson in tribute to Thomas Edison. (Electricity had come to the town shortly before Pelé was born.) When he was about 7, he began shining shoes at the local railway station to supplement the family’s income. One of Pelé’s earliest memories was of seeing his father, while listening to the radio, cry when Brazil lost to Uruguay, 2-1, in the deciding match of the 1950 World Cup in Rio de Janeiro. The game is still remembered as a national calamity. Pelé recalled telling his father that he would one day grow up to win the World Cup for Brazil. And he did in 1958. He had become such a hero that, in 1961, to ward off European teams eager to buy his contract rights, the Brazilian government passed a resolution declaring him a non-exportable national treasure. I am not joking. You can check the records !!! When Pelé was about to retire from Santos in the early 1970s, Henry A. Kissinger, the United States secretary of state at the time, wrote to the Brazilian government asking it to release Pelé to play in the United States as a way to help promote soccer, and Brazil, in America.
In his 21-year career, Pelé — born Edson Arantes do Nascimento — scored 1,283 goals in 1,367 professional matches, including 77 goals for the Brazilian national team. Many of those goals became legendary, but Pelé’s influence on the sport went well beyond scoring. He helped create and promote what he later called “o jogo bonito” — the beautiful game — a style that valued clever ball control, inventive pinpoint passing and a voracious appetite for attacking. Pelé not only played it better than anyone; he also championed it around the world. Among his athletic assets was a remarkable center of gravity; as he ran, swerved, sprinted or backpedalled, his midriff seemed never to move, while his hips and his upper body swiveled around it. He could accelerate, decelerate or pivot in a flash. Off-balance or not, he could lash the ball accurately with either foot. Relatively small, at 5 feet 8 inches, he could nevertheless leap exceptionally high, often seeming to hang in the air to put power behind a header.
How does one define an ICON? A person or thing regarded as a representative symbol or as worthy of veneration They say Muhammad Ali was arguably the greatest sports personality of all time. Pelé was that and more. In his pomp, Pelé was Ali from the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’, Jesse Owens in Berlin Olympics. He was Rafael Nadal at Roland Garros, Tiger Woods at Augusta, Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps in Beijing, London and Rio. All rolled into one, many times over!! Maybe it’s best to let pop-culture icon Andy Warhol define Pelé’s legacy in his own inimitable fashion,
“Pelé is one of the few who contradicted my theory,” “Instead of 15 minutes of fame, he will have 15 centuries.”
Commenting on his acting in Satyajit Ray’s Teen Kanya, veteran director Shyam Benegal had once observed –
“Soumitra Chatterjee’s performance can be compared to a fine Persian carpet, subtle and exquisite. It is only when you turn to look at the back of the carpet do you see the intricate weave that has gone into its making.”
So which Soumitra Chatterjee are you going to reminisce today ?
The Actor
The Poet
The Writer
The Playwright
The Reciter
The Painter
The Public intellectual
Soumitra Chatterjee, the thespian , was all of the above and much more.
He was the protagonist of one of the greatest movie trilogies ever made in world cinema and he was also the voice of Amit Ray in Tagore’s শেষের কবিতা (Shesher Kabita).
To call Soumitra babu as one the greatest actors this country has ever produced , would be an understatement. He is an institution, a cultural icon and right up there in the pantheon of legends along with the likes of Toshiro Mifune, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Robert DeNiro & Marlon Brando.
Chatterjee was also someone who has steadfastly remained an integral part of the Bengali cultural landscape for close to six decades, an embodiment of the typical Bengali bhadralok — sensitive, vulnerable, and intelligent.
The world of Apu catapulted Soumitra to international acclaim, but his naturally unique and sensitive portrayal of Amal in Charulata is unforgettable and also took him closest to his one of his three mentors , Tagore ( the others being of course theatre legend Shishir Bhaduri & the auteur Satyajit Ray himself ). Chatterjee has acted in 14 films directed by Ray that comprised of many diverse layers of characterization, performance, style and presentation. His epochal collaborations with Ray ( his alter-ego according to many ) have few parallels in world cinema , only two instances of worth I can recollect right away ‘Kurosawa – Mifune’ & ‘Fellini – Mastroianni’.
It is hard to believe that someone who essayed the role of Bhibutibhushan’s Apu could also reinvent himself as the proud and ill-tempered taxi driver Narasingh Rajput in Abhijan (অভিযান, The Expedition). In fact it is a little known fact that the character of Narasingh was a direct influence for the character of the cynical cab driver Travis Bickle (played by Robert De Niro) in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. On one frame he was the conscientious and honest Dr. Gupta is Ganashatru, on the other , the revolutionary Sandip in Ghare Baire.
Writing in the New Yorker, critic Pauline Kael said this about Chatterjee: ‘Soumitra Chatterjee, Ray’s one-man stock company, moves so differently in the different roles he plays them, he is almost unrecognisable.’. In Tapan Sinha’s adaptation of The Prisoner of Zenda, Jhinder Bandi, Soumitro could play the role of handsome but fiendishly wicked Mayurbahan with equal elan. All this while he was never typecast and could also effortlessly straddle the world of commercial films with star turns in Teen Bhuboner Pare , Saat Pake Bandha & Basanta Bilap to name a few.
But then there was this other side of Soumitra babu as the public thinker and many of his characters brought his intellectual beliefs to the fore as someone who could speak truth to power , be it Udayan Pandit in Hiraak Rajar Deshe ( দড়ি ধরে মারো টান, রাজা হবে খান খান ) or as the swimming coach Khidda in Koni struggling against the impossible odds of the corrupt system (“ Fight Koni, fight !!), memorable performances which will forever remain etched in the cinematic lore.
Chatterjee was a polymath. Apart from the 300 or so films under his belt, he was also a dramatist with over 15 adaptations and more than 30 productions to his name, poet, writer , elocution artist , painter and an editor for two decades of one of Bengal’s most versatile literary magazines Ekshan. On stage, he is most famous for his rendition of Shakespeare’s King Lear.
The last time I saw his acting was in Mayurakshi , an intensely emotional tale of an 84-year-old Sushovan, a brilliant former professor of History, presently suffering from dementia and cognitive decline. In fact, Chatterjee is no stranger to the current Netflix generation , remember the short film Ahalya by Sujoy Ghosh where he was cast opposite Radhika Apte.
With his passing away today, another remnant of my childhood is also gone forever. You cannot imagine Hercule Poirot without David Suchet, Sherlock Holmes without Jeremy Brett. Similarly, Soumitra Chatterjee immortalized Ray’s super sleuth Feluda a.k.a Pradosh C Mitter on the silver screen. His antics as the cerebral detective in Sonar Kella , his sparring duels with Utpal Dutta’s Machiavellian Maganlal Meghraj in Joy Baba Felunath are all part of a cherished memory jukebox and any Bong kid worth his/her salt , will happily attest to the same.
And that brings me back to my earlier question. Which Soumitra Chatterjee will I remember ?
The answer, Soumitra Chatterjee … Bengal’s Last Renaissance Man.
For someone of his stature , one can’t write an obituary .. maybe an eulogy , not that he needs one.
Let me end by borrowing words from one of Tagore’s immortal creations , boundless reverence for whom , we both share.
St. Stephen’s Green is a beautiful urban park in central Dublin immortalized in James Joyce’s Ulysses. There I stood at the gates of this park on August 1 , 2017 , raring to catch up with someone whom I had known actually since the very moment I was born. So you can actually guess, it was not our first meeting. And this was to be my bucket list item in the whole Ireland trip which had left me utterly enthralled. After all, Ireland is a journey into the imagination, windswept History in Stone ,ancient rocks and great legends all rolled into one. And I had just come back from a trip to Galway , Ireland’s cultural capital (remember Ed Sheeran’s song Galway girl .. no wonder why he was crooning). As I made my way into the park, hoping to find my friend somewhere inside, I was simply taken aback by its size. I mean, this is a nine hectare / 22 acre park, in Dublin City Centre, maintained in the original Victorian layout with extensive perimeter tree and shrub planting and spring and summer Victorian bedding. At the entrance was a memorial to all those who died in the Potato Famine. Spread across the green’s lawns and walkways are some notable artwork. As I walked to the southside of the park, I noticed a fine old bandstand. Near the bandstand is a bust of James Joyce. As I watched the assorted groups of friends, lovers and individuals splaying themselves across the nine elegantly landscaped hectares of Dublin’s most popular green lung, I was yet to find my friend. Where was he, I wondered ? And then suddenly he appeared in sight , sheltered among the foliage of St Stephen’s Green. There stood the monument to a man often referred to as “the Bard of Bengal” , just a few paces from the James Joyce memorial. A monument that could easily be missed, commemorates someone with no connection to the park, born on another continent entirely, yet still bound to the Irish story. A bust which stands as a reminder of the historic ties between the people of Ireland and India. Presented by the government of India, it is a fine tribute to a man who had a significant impact on the thinking of William Butler Yeats, and who achieved fame as the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Tagore was also a fierce opponent of imperialism and advocated widespread educational reform, two issues that were very important in the story of his influence in Ireland.
Tagore’s play, The Post Office (Daakghar), was performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1913, as a fundraiser for St Enda’s School in Rathfarnham, which had been set up by Patrick Pearse. Both Pearse and Tagore held radical views on how children should be educated and Tagore long held that teaching shouldn’t just explain things but inspire children to curiosity. He strongly opposed rote learning.
Pearse and Tagore never met, but in July 1912, in England, Tagore did meet up with Yeats. The Irish poet was much impressed by Tagore’s poems and wrote the introduction to a collection of Tagore’s poems (Gitanjali) translated into English and published that same year, 1912. This book of poems was so widely acclaimed that it was reprinted 12 times in its first year of publication. Readers, stimulated by Yeats’s approval for Tagore’s work, found the perfect source of Eastern spiritual guidance in Tagore. For the introduction of Tagore’s English-translated work Gitanjali (Song Offerings, 1912), Yeats wrote, “I have carried the manuscript of these translations about with me for days, reading it in railway trains, or on the top of omnibuses and in restaurants.”
The Irish poet wrote that he had become so overwhelmed by his contemporary’s work that he’d had to put away the manuscript, “lest some stranger see how much it moved” him.Yeats’s fascination with Tagore’s poetic works was intense and his interest in Tagore’s work fostered close cultural and political connections between Ireland and India. Rural Ireland was compared to Bengal and the work of the Gaelic bards of old was compared with Tagore’s writings. Yeats often spoke of a shared cultural memory that brought distant civilisations together and the literary links between Ireland, Bengal and India inspired by the friendship between Tagore and Yeats, extended into politics.
Many Irish political figures supported India’s quest for independence, finally gained in 1947. In many ways, the friendship between Tagore and Yeats stimulated the close links between India and Ireland that exist right up to the present day, since presently we have an Irish-Indian Taoiseach (Prime minister of the Republic of Ireland), Leo Varadkar.
Enough of time travel and history. Back to 2017. Another bucket list item had been ticked off.There he stood, bearded, with deep-set eyes and a cropped hairstyle typical of the time. Though armless, he wears loose robes atop an engraved stone plinth that bears the dates of his birth and death. And so we met again, this time in Central Dublin.But this meeting was no happenstance. Let me take you back to our first meeting. In fact the events that eventually led to this meeting in Ireland were actually set into motion long back when a young girl (my mother) first read the Tagore Novel Rajarshi. So influenced was she by the exploits of the saint king Gobindamanikya and his renunciation of violence and bloodshed as immortalized by the bard’s writing, that years later when it came to choosing a name for her new-born, she had already made up her mind … Rajarshi if it is a boy and Yagnasheni if it is a girl. On 9th May, 1988 as I made my way into this world precisely at 12:18 PM , the die was already cast.
Rajarshi and Rabindranath had met for the very first time
~ Dedicated to the original global citizen (বিশ্ব-পথিক) on his 157th birth anniversary whose philosophy of life (জীবন দর্শন) remains as relevant even to this day , বাঙালির মনন যাকে ঘিরে আবর্তিত হয় , সেই বাঙালির শ্রেষ্ঠ ICON …
In the pic: 1) 27 April 1994 , Nelson Mandela casts his vote in the first South African elections held without the discrimination of voters on grounds of race. It was the first time Mandela had voted in his life.
2) An infographic portraying the origin of all the languages in the world (Source: Ethnologue.com)
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Rogue One is the latest addition to the Star Wars saga. It highlights the daring mission undertaken by a rag-tag group of rebels (ordinary by Jedi standards but with a firm belief in the FORCE) to steal the Death Star plans in order to save the galaxy from an impending doom. Sorry, are you a bit confused that the title says democracy, the pic shows Nelson Mandela and here I am sharing spoilers of Rogue One? Please bear with me. We are definitely going to discuss democracy , lament about the lack of nuance in the current public discourse and talk a bit about a very 2016 phenomenon which I prefer to term as the “Revenge of the Fringe”. But I would like take generous inputs from Pop culture to make some sense here with your permission of course 🙂
So back to Star Wars then. Rogue One is a clear deviation from all the other movies in this George Lucas saga of Mahabharat proportions , because for the first time we come across characters who played a pivotal role in the scheme of things but were mere footnotes in Star Wars History, simply the Unsung Heroes. What Jyn Erso and her friends achieve by sacrificing their lives, offers a RAY OF HOPE to the Rebellion cause and ultimately lays the foundation for the fantastic exploits of Princess Leia, Han Solo and others in destroying the Death Star eventually.
Enough of Star Wars Mumbo Jumbo I say!! This brings me to my second pop culture reference, It’s a MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD, a 1963 cult classic comedy of a madcap pursuit of $350,000 in stolen cash by a diverse and colorful group of strangers based on the last words of a dying old man.One of the strangers is a Truck Driver who gets constantly outwitted and out-maneuvered in the chase by the others who are slick , suave and well-healed and take advantage of his gullibility to derail his moves. But thanks to his determination , he always catches up and makes himself heard. In the course of the movie he is called STUPID but this truck driver guy gives it back when he says
“Then they all decide that I’m supposed to get a smaller share! That I’m somebody extra special stupid, or something! That they don’t even care if it’s a democracy! And in a democracy, it don’t matter how stupid you are, you still get an equal share! “
YES THE TRUCK DRIVER DID MAKE A CORRECT OBSERVATION. IN A DEMOCRACY, EVERYONE OF US HAS AN EQUAL STAKE AND AN EQUAL SHARE AS WELL.
2016 was a very bad year they said. Death blows were stuck to the Liberal agenda and the cherished notions of Globalization. Annus Horribilis !! Brexit, President Trump, Demonitization back home. But ask a Trump supporter or any one of the 52% who voted for Brexit or the Indian Anti-corruption crusader for whom the Black Money is the root-cause of the malaise that plagues our greatness, he or she will come up with a different world view and they are loving every moment of it.
Ladies and Gentleman, we live in a BI-POLAR world. A world where either you can be WITH ME or AGAINST ME. There is no middle ground. Sadly, there is no room for building consensus. We have all forgotten the art of agreeing to disagree.Democracy, my friends, is not a REDUCTIONIST CONSTRUCT. It is not an ULTIMATE or ABSOLUTE value. In fact the notion of democracy truly lies in its inherent ability of preventing the majority from imposing their choice over the direction that our politics and society might take.
2016 is definitely the year when the POLITICIAN failed to do his job. Yes, it’s the politician’s job to bridge the divide and heal the wounds. The reality was that conventional politics that champions Globalization and Free Market and bats for a borderless economy failed to grasp the growing feeling of disenchantment and disenfranchisement amongst a large section of the populace (Whom I call the FRINGE ) who felt powerless and left out from this so called Gravy Train. The politician should have swooped in on this opportunity , discussed and debated and legislated on a new more inclusive economic model .. but alas the so called Liberal politician abdicated on his duties and the inevitable happened. The FRINGE turned instead to a virulent ANTI-POLITICS in which facts and arguments are replaced by slogans, symbols and sensation where the Internet Trolls, the Nigel Farages , Donald Trumps and Marie La Pens ruled the roost.
Back to Pop Culture. After the end of Mad Men and Downton Abbey, I thought this was the end of a Golden Period of television. But the Crown saved the day (Narcos as well) and has been a revelation to say the least. For the uninitiated, the Crown chronicles the the early reign of Queen Elizabeth II of the UK. The Crown shows Sir Winston Churchill in his last years , resting on his past laurels of defeating the Nazis and hardly governing the country thanks to his failing health. Ask any Briton about Churchill, and you will see the halo of a world statesman whose magnificent oratory and iron-clad leadership helped save the civilization from the Third Reich. But ask an Indian historian, he might point to Churchill’s infamous role in denying assistance to Bengal during the Great Famine of 1943 which left millions dead out of starvation. Or the fact that he despised Mountbatten because he gave up India, the Jewel of The Crown. So how do we judge Churchill then ? You see there is never a black or a white, always shades of grey. It is a matter of perspective and hence our arguments have to be nuanced with facts and less with rhetoric or emotions.
Democracy is an ONGOING NARRATIVE. Democracy is a Compromise where the Middle Ground has to be reached. When I speak on merits and demerits of demonitization, I should not been branded either a JNU jholawala or an RSS Sanghi. I can be a devout Hindu and still fight for Mohd. Akhlakh’s right to eat whatever he chooses to. And You have the right to disagree. I may believe that free trade is the economic model to follow while you may bat for a socialistic model. We both may agree to disagree but the moment we cross that line of decency or try to suppress the other person’s opinion, we cease to be a democratic society. We can’t say to the other person with a divergent opinion in Pablo Escobar style “Plata or Plomo”. Escobar doesn’t work in a democracy. Let us debate and discuss and endeavour to keep the narrative moving into a better and brighter future. The day we surrender to the Internet trolls is the day we renege on our promise to uphold our democratic ideals.
Mitron, all this might have sounded too heavy for a 31st night. If you have gone through the 1000 odd words penned above, I thank you for your patience. My sincere apologies if my random musing has offended your sensibilities or dampened your celebratory mood.
Democracy is not about ONE SUPREME LEADER , it is about the faceless millions who tirelessly work to keep the SYSTEM up and running. That’s what Madiba’s life story and his prison term in Robben Island should have taught us. As the pics show, all of us share the same roots in language and culture and the fact that the notion of democracy has to be cherished at all costs
All right. That’s it. My FB calendar tells me that I have to attend 31st get together at Place du Marche by the lakeside where the whole of Vevey will descend to celebrate a New HOPE (again so filmy) and rejoice in unison irrespective if their caste, creed or colour or even the nationality (yes there are a lot of expats and I am one of them).
Happy New Year !! May the FORCE be with you ALWAYS 😀
Ending with one of my favourite quotes,
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”
Tilting at Windmills is an English idiom which means “attacking imaginary enemies”. It originated from Miguel de Cervantes’ early 17th century novel Don Quixote. Thanks to my school curriculum I was exposed to excerpts of this classic as a 12-year-old, although , if yours truly may sheepishly admit, at that point, the full realization of its significance was to yet to dawn upon the then young impressionable mind.
In the passage that I am alluding to, mounting his skinny horse, the protagonist of Don Quixote , charges an army of giants. In his eyes, it is his duty to vanquish these behemoths in the name of his beloved lady, Dulcinea. However, this act of valour is ill conceived. As his squire Sancho Panza explains to him time and again, these aren’t giants; they are merely windmills. Don Quixote is undeterred, but his piercing lance is soon caught in their sails. Never discouraged, the knight stands proudly, and becomes even more convinced of his mission.
So why do I invoke the delusions of a literary character on a day when my nation celebrates the 73rd anniversary of the august occasion of the adopting the Indian constitution and officially transition into a Republic – a Sovereign , Secular, Socialist, Democratic Republic. Because I feel that I need to mark my protest , maybe , a futile attempt, denouncing whatever is transpiring right now in the name of New India. I am a nobody in the larger scheme of things but if maybe 50 years from now, someone is reading my blog (unlikely), they will know that with a clear conscience, I refused to be a mute spectator to the nightmare that is unfolding right in front of my eyes. And this is my way of speaking up …
The attacks on India’s democratic and secular fabric have been relentless in the past few years but events from the past few weeks , seem to point to an even more sinister future. Very recently, I came across the disturbing news of women ( prominent liberal faces who are embodiments of this nation’s Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb ) being apparently auctioned via a mobile application. My horror was further compounded by the fact, that this app targeted two prominent faces with whom I am connected on social media. One of them is an eminent Indian writer, critic, and literary historian. The other person is an extremely popular Radio Jockey. And the common thread binding them is the fact that they both represent the liberal progressive voice which runs counter to the narrative of hate and propaganda that is now all pervasive. The other incident that shook me to the core was the news of a so-called “religious” congregation where in broad daylight oaths were taken to eradicate members of a certain minority community. If you are part of the silent majority that thinks “ this is not my concern”, I assure you , this fire will singe you and your near and dear ones shortly, before you know it. It is a familiar playbook that has been repeated too often in the annals of history , so whether you stand for the majority or minority voice , it will not matter !!
Ananta Dey was my great grandfather from maternal side. He was a freedom fighter who had been imprisoned for 14 years in the Cellular Jail. His name is inscribed in the white marble plaque list of freedom fighters incarcerated by the British at the Cellular Jail (refer to the picture shared above ), where 6 of these 14 years are officially documented. Unlike Savarkar, he didn’t write mercy petitions to the British seeking an early release. Born into wealth, he was a socialist and immersed himself in the cause of freedom struggle in the prime of his youth , renouncing the comforts of a secure life. If I must write about him, one paragraph or even an essay might not do justice. He passed away one year before I was born. Sometimes I imagine how would he (or men of his ilk) have felt about the India they had envisioned and the India that is slowly unravelling before us right now, transforming into an illiberal, majoritarian and intolerant nation.
The state of Indian democracy is very perilous: Parliament has become a rubber stamp, as most of the significant pieces of legislation are passed as laws without discussion; the supreme court’s abdication has been the most spectacular and disappointing. I think, in some senses, it is even worse than the Emergency, because now it stretches across a whole range of judicial issues, where the Supreme Court is simply not willing to challenge the government on constitutional basics. The present ruling dispensation is openly giving dog whistles to communalism which is, you know, a kind of poison that is permeating across our civil society in ways that are quite unprecedented in recent years.
This would not be, for example, possible without the support of Indian capital and the organised and systematic way in which the flow of information is controlled and manipulated, without in a sense the complicity of India’s professional and middle classes. Meaningful Discussions and deliberations have ceased in the public discourse, parliament barely functions, select committees don’t even operate. So, India’s democracy has diminished and shrunk. What feels more disturbing and insidious is the fact that the Indian media openly legitimises and disseminates hate and prejudice. Whether it is print or electronic, most of the media-houses and publications are propagating hatred against minorities in covert or overt forms.
Civil Society is the new frontier of war. The ruling class essentially brands any dissenting voice or stream of thought as an “Enemy of the State” OR in other words like I had mentioned in the beginning of this write-up , “the windmills” are being falsely masqueraded as the principal adversary. I think it was the current Supreme Court Chief Justice who observed the other day that investigative journalism has virtually ceased to exist in India as he says, “everything in our garden appears to be rosy”. Here I am tempted to quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” !!
We have already been reliably informed that Abide with Me will not be played in this year’s Beating Retreat Ceremony because it feels less Indian. This should not come as a surprise. Discarding a wonderful hymn with a universal and humanist message ( and a decades old military tradition) fits in with what New India wants to be. I am afraid that we have moved beyond the inflection point and the shift away from pluralism , secularism and multi-culturalism is now perceptible, decisive, and permanent. It would be naïve to think few election outcomes will change this. However, there will be no one happier than myself to be proved wrong.
Recently Netflix released the Meryl Streep starrer “Don’t Look up”, a doomsday dark comedy / satire on everything that is wrong with our democracies where two scientists are desperate to get the public and political classes to react to a planet-killing comet. With the hope of snapping the masses from their stupor, Jennifer Lawrence’s character, a young scientist with a Greta Thunberg-like disdain for the apathetic, screams into the camera during a live TV appearance: “You should stay up all night every night crying when we’re all, 100 percent, for sure, going to [expletive] die!” She’s swiftly dismissed as hysterical, and an image of her face is gleefully seized on for the full meme treatment.
Maybe, just maybe, if we as a nation collectively decide to wake up from our willful slumber and apathy , LOOK UP and start pushing back , there is still a glimmer of hope , albeit a faint one…
Let me end by tracing the etymological roots of the word REPUBLIC, derived from the Latin expression res publica (“the public thing”). Oxford provides two definitions. The modern interpretation is “ a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.” The archaic definition is “a group with a certain equality between its members.” I cherish the sentiment echoed in the archaic version, what about you !!
In the picture (L-R) : Preamble to the Constitution Of India, An artist’s depiction of Don Quixote , Names of freedom fighters inscribed in marble plaque who were incarcerated at the Cellular Jail pre-independence.
There is something in the air of Pabna, where Mahanayika Suchitra Sen (Rama Dasgupta) was born in the then undivided Bengal Presidency.
As the legend goes, Pabna gets its name from a Robin Hood-like bandit named Pobana who lived there long ago and was venerated for his good deeds. Later the district became the epicenter of the Indigo revolt (Neel Bidroho) and the same Pabna gave us Rajanikanta Sen, whose fiery patriotic songs immensely inspired the freedom fighters and the Swadeshi Movement.
59 films, the quintessential doe-eyed Bengali beauty, the hypnotic smile, the larger than life screen presence, what really defines Suchitra Sen ? Probably all of them and much more.
So how will Suchitra Sen’s legacy shape up? That is best left to the film historians to ponder over and of-course her films will take up lion’s share of any such discussion. After all, her rise to super stardom is marked by some unforgettable performances which mesmerized a whole generation of the bhadrolok bengali. And her on-screen pairing with the other matinee idol Uttam Kumar ushered in the Golden Age of mainstream Bengali cinema. In fact there are very few instances in World Cinema where a reel-life duo can generate such adoration, hysteria and an almost distinct genre of cinema. Elizabeth Taylor – Richard Burton in Hollywood or Marcello Mastroianni – Sophia Loren in Italian Cinema , immediately come to mind. And to think of it, Suchitra-Uttam shared a wonderful friendship with tremendous mutual respect (“metaphysical” is how the Mahanayak’s son Goutam described their relationship)..
Sen in fact created a new image in Bengali Cinema of the articulate if tragic heroine carving out an independent space outside that of family and tradition. That in my view, is her most important contribution to Bengali society and her enduring legacy as well. In a male dominated film industry and a patriarchal society, Mrs. Sen was the original feminist. As the noted film critic Saibal Chatterjee puts it, Sen “combined understated sensuality, feminine charm and emotive force and a no-nonsense gravitas to carve out a persona that has never been matched, let alone surpassed in Indian cinema”.
Two of her most memorable performances as the Anglo-Indian Rina Brown in Saptapadi or in the dual role of the courtesan Pannabai and her lawyer daughter in Uttar Falguni , established her as actress par excellence but also provided an insight into a dynamic personality, someone who lived life on her own terms. In fact all through out her glittering career, she broke the established norms. Be it acting post-marriage (considered unthinkable in those times) or charging more than her male co-stars, Mrs. Sen (as she was called on the sets) challenged the status quo. Being married to a rich industrialist, money was never the motivation, passion for acting was. The industry held her in such awe and admiration that her name appeared above Uttam Kumar’s in the credits of Harano Sur & Saptapadi. Such instances where unheard of, even in Hollywood, where things started changing only with Meryl Streep and much later Julia Roberts. And did I mention her refusal to act in Satyajit Ray’s Devi Chaudhurani which forced the maestro to shelve the project. Only Mrs. Sen had the audacity to this 🙂
No wonder when Gulzar decided to make the political drama Aandhi, he cast Sen as the mature female politician, a role modeled loosely on the real life persona of the then prime minister Indira Gandhi.
And then in a Greta Garboesque act, Suchitra Sen quit movies, leading a life of determined seclusion, far away from the public & media gaze at her Ballygunge residence till her last breath.
In her native Pabna (modern Bangladesh), the Suchitra Sen Memory Preservation Committee has been set up, to celebrate her life and achievements, clearly showcasing the pride and adulation she commands on the other side of the Ichamati.
An Icon , an Enigma, the Diva, in the words of my friend Navonil HAzra ,
“Suchitra Sen holo ekta Concept” ..
.. maybe he is right , a concept that will remain timeless in public memory.
An example of how deeply she has invaded the Bengali psyche. Even to this day and age, if a girl drapes herself in a saree in the traditional bengali style, there is a high probability of her getting the below compliment,
“Puro Suchitra Sen lagche. (You look exactly like Suchitra Sen).”
মহানায়িকা … in your absence, our lives certainly seem less magical ..
The Cambridge Online Dictionary defines Detective as someone whose job is to discover information about crimes and find out who is responsible for them.
Fair enough I guess. And that is how even most of us picture any private detective in our minds. All of us have their own favourites. Some swear by the pipe-smoker from Baker Street , some are mesmerized by the antics of a certain elderly spinster who lives in the village of St. Mary Mead and acts as a consulting detective, others love this impeccably attired Belgian gentleman with a sensitive stomach and a penchant for good food. If you are still to figure out who these characters are (I am in the detective mode right now , hence the clues 🙂 ), I was referring to Sherlock Holmes , Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot.
But every Bong boy/girl worth his/her salt will obviously remind me to add two more names to this illustrious list. One is the inimitable Prodosh C Mitter (Feluda) , Satyajit Ray ‘s immortal creation and the other of course is the one I will be dwelling at length now , a fictional detective in Bengali literature created by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay. And he goes by the name Bakshi .. Byomkesh Bakshi🙂
I grew up in an India of the 90s (yes the Nostalgic Nineties the good ol days). Those were my wonder years you see. And there was this detective serial which premiered on DD1 one fine Thursday at 9 PM , the year 1993. Thanks to Basu Chatterjee’s direction and Rajit Kapur’s fine acting , Byomkesh suddenly became a national sensation. In fact, every time I think of Byomkesh , the background score still rings in my ears. That was my first tryst with this Calcutta-based detective and the only instance till date where I have seen the television adaptation before I read the actual book. By the time I was in my teens, I had finished Byomkesh Shamogro (the omnibus) in addition to what Agatha Christie , Arthur Conan Doyle and Ray had to offer.
In the Bengali consciousness, Byomkesh had played second fiddle to Feluda till the time Manik Babu was around with the honourable exception of Chiriyakhana , where Ray consciously chose Uttam Kumar, the matinee idol to essay the role of the super sleuth over his perennial favourite Soumitro Chatterjee who has since achieved cult status portraying Feluda on the big screen. All that changed with the TV series which not only catapulted Sharadindu Babu and his creation to nationwide recognition but also announced the arrival of a private investigator who was devoid of any idiosyncrasies (remember the carrot munching Karamchand) and went about his business without a fuss.
Come 2014, the detective parlance had undergone a sea-change. Most of us were either busy getting Sherlocked or were swearing by the True Detective . Suddenly the old-world charm of the erstwhile detective had vanished into thin air. And where was Byomkesh ?? (Sorry Mr. Anjan Dutta, your trilogy didn’t make the cut). Till one fine day, Yash Raj Films decided that they were fed up with the formula (read Swiss locales and white chiffon sarees) . Enter Dibakar Banerjee (referred to as DB from now on) and voila, they have their partner-in-crime grin emoticon The trailers only added to the anticipation and the fact that the script was in the safe hands of DB, the non-resident Bong (of Khosla Ka Ghosla , Oye Lucky Lucky Oye, LSD & Shanghai fame) made it doubly reassuring. So finally, yesterday, on a Good Friday, I kept my date with this brilliant Satyanneshi (Seeker of Truth) and I must admit that I came out greatly satisfied 🙂
Let me first highlight a few aspects which make Detective Byomkesh Bakshy ! (yes there is an exclamation in the title) stand out. Will discuss the cons later (minor).
The film is set in the backdrop of 1940s Calcutta. Yes, when Calcutta was still the second city of the Empire after London and the Calcutta Police was called the Scotland Yard of the East. The imagery of the Bow Barracks , the China Town and the Coffee House , all add to that indescribable feeling of nostalgia. To any pure-bred Calcatian like me, these images are a relic of the golden past from a time-warped city. And we still cherish them !! Dibakar succeeds in recreating the contemporary milieu and the darkness of WW2 and the constant air raids only heighten the reality quotient. The director has loosely based his script on the debut story সত্যান্বেষী but apart from the basic premise, everything else has been changed as per his cinematic vision and script. And every director in my humble opinion should have those cinematic liberties to operate with. Hence the hostel-owner and philanthropic doctor, Anukul Babu who peddles cocaine in the garb of his homeopathy trade, here becomes Yang Guan, the king-pin of a thriving drug-cartel who connives with the Japanese army as they plan to invade Calcutta and deliver a death blow to the Brits. The plot revolves around the murder of Bhuvan Banerjee (shown as Ajith’s father), a renowned chemist and Yang’s accomplice while in the original story it is the murder of Ashwini Babu, a hostel inmate, that triggeres the chain of events. Also in the course of events, Satyabati is introduced who later becomes his wife (check the end credits , you will see the marriage invitation 🙂 ) whereas in Sharadendu Babu’s story, Satyabati’s character is placed the fifth story of the series অর্থমনর্থম্. But who is complaining. As long as the essence of the classic detective is retained and the sub-plots add up to create the aura and thrill and romantic mysticism of war-ravaged Calcutta .. I am fine 🙂 DB executes the same to perfection and you get delightful yet subtle entertainment as the end product. The acting department is replete with fine performances from Sushant Singh Rajput as the detective himself , Anand Tiwari as his side-kick and ever-loyal friend Ajit, Neeraj Kabi as Dr. Anukul Guha / Yang Guan. For me Neeraj’s performance as the evil mastermind and Byomkesh’s nemesis is fantastic and brings out the same kind of intensity like in the exchange that Holmes shares with Professor Moriarty. Found Swastika Mukherjee’s portrayal of Anguri Devi, a dancer and spy, as insipid and nowhere close to Mata Hari, the Frisian exotic dancer and an enduring archetype of the femme fatale, that her role is rumoured to be modelled on. Divya Menon as Byomkesh’s love interest Satyabati, Meiyang Chang as the police informer Kanai Dao, Takanori Kikuchi as Dr. Watanabe and Mark Bennington as Deputy Commissioner Wilkie , all do justice to their roles.
Finally, a few accolades have to be reserved for the director. DB has done a splendid job and the film is fit for an international release. Not only do you get to romance the Calcutta of yore but the plot lends an international espionage crime thriller touch in what would have been otherwise a strictly native premise. Kudos to DB for the script. In fact Bollywood now might have its own Guy Ritchie in Dibakar Banerjee. Hats off to DB for his continued experiments with the sound-track.The background score will enthrall you as it brings to life the genre of “neo-noir meets crime thriller” and adds the right doses of chutzpah. The music actually tries to bind the past with the present-day modern techno sound in the same mould as The Great Gatsby OST designed by rapper-producer Jay-Z. It is a unique collection of songs – from the metal of “Life’s A B***h” to the swing of “Calcutta Kiss”. Then there is the amazing blend of classical (thumri vocals by playback singer Usri Banerjee ) and psychedelic synthetic pop by Mumbai alt punk act BLEK in “Byomkesh In Love” which again is my personal favourite. Both “Chase in China Town” and “Yang Guan Lives” matches the adrenaline rush that the project requires. A big Thumbs Up to DBB’s music. Kya Baat !! For me the film’s highlight is actually the climax where Byomkesh assembles all the characters in the hostel and finally unravels the true identity of Dr. Guha followed by the gory bloodshed in the ensuing gang-war. Dr.Guha aka Yang Guan lives to see another day and the seeds of a riveting rivalry are sown. Yes , both me and the director are hinting at the mouth-watering prospect of a sequel.
Now as far as the misses are concerned, I am in a particularly lenient mood. So won’t complain too much. Sushant could have been a little more assertive in his demeanor and how dare you show the cigarette-smoking detective munching on a bunch of potato fries with tea at the The Indian Coffee House. Dibakar must have taken our craving for the Aloo Bhaja a tad too seriously. Of-course the timely mention of The Statesman Ltd. and Bata ticks all the right boxes in our hearts 😀
To conclude, Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! is beguiling, captivating and delightfully delectable .. and the Calcutta Kiss is waiting to wrap you in her warm embrace 🙂 😛
By the way, have a great Easter Sunday everyone. Cheers !!
Do you know what time it is
Don’t know what time it is
Don’t care what time it is
‘coz it’s time for cal Calcutta kiss
P.S. Byomkesh Bakshi has been mentioned in the 2014 episode “The Mommy Observation” of the US TV series The Big Bang Theory. The character Bernadette Rostenkowski refers Bakshi as Indian Sherlock Holmes while Raj Koothrappali refers Sherlock as the English Byomkesh Bakshi 🙂
I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and for you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.
I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed the day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.
The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people passing by
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
But what they’re really saying is I love you.
I hear baby’s crying and I watched them grow
They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.
Yes, I think to myself what a wonderful world.
~ What a Wonderful World
Rendered ever so soulfully by Louis Armstrong, this song has a hopeful, optimistic tone with regard to the future, with reference to a child being born into the world and having much to look forward to.
It has been quite a while since I last took to blogging. But the human tragedy which unfolded today in Peshawar forced me to extricate myself from this self-imposed ghost protocol.
Ironically, just last week I had changed my profile picture to one that celebrated the cause espoused by this year’s joint Noble laureates Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzay , that of eradicating oppression against children and upholding their fundamental right to education.
We didn’t start the fire,
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning.
We didn’t start the fire,
No we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it.
~ Billy Joel – “We Didn’t Start The Fire”.
In 2014’s sci-fi movie Interstellar, the director Christopher Nolan directs a scene where low on fuel, the space-ship Endurance can only visit one more planet before returning to Earth. After a tense vote, the team selects Mann’s planet, as Mann is still transmitting. However, they find it to be icy and inhospitable; Mann (Matt Damon) always knew Plan B (start humanity anew) was the mission’s true goal, and faked data about his planet’s viability so Endurance would rescue him. Mann breaks Cooper’s spacesuit visor and leaves him to die, and flees to Endurance on a shuttle. How can a man of Mann’s stature and intellect and refined sensibilities, try to kill a fellow cosmonaut without batting an eye-lid. The survival instinct or is it an inherent strain of DNA which can explain such an act, dormant in some while active in others …
Today’s dastardly act is once again a chilling reminder that the world we inhabit has become more violent than ever. I find myself asking this question over and over again .. Is it in our nature to commit such terrible acts without an iota of remorse? Shooting down children at point-blank range , can it get any worse .. hang on .. Peshawar is just another blot on what can be considered a never-ending saga of mindless acts of barbarity which have been perpetrated with cold-blooded precision since we don’t know when. The same scene unfolds in Palestine every now and then or in Ukraine where a Malaysian Airlines passenger plane is shot down or in Swat Valley where a child is shot because she stood for girl’s education. That girl became the world’s youngest Noble laureate and continues her fight undeterred.
Or is it a different strain of human reaction, when a father kills her daughter, a Delhi University student who dared to tarnish the family’s honour by marrying a boy from a different caste. Or when a policeman pumps multiple bullets into an unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson , Missouri. Or when Nirbhaya pays the ultimate price with her life in the nation’s capital on another December 16, exactly 2 years back. Is it not the same mindset that made Baby Moshe an orphan when his parents were gunned down at the Chabad house during the nightmare of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks.
Recently read a moving article published in the NY Times about a person who protested against Israel’s continued indiscriminate bombardment of the Gaza strip, by actually giving up all the laurels that Israel had bestowed upon him as a mark of gratitude for his role in saving Jews during the Holocaust.
Of-course strategic analysts, experts and the Haryana khaps will very well explain these horrific incidents with theories ranging from Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations theory to the CIA funding of Mujahideen to counter Soviet occupation of Afghanistan or for that matter wearing jeans to rising incidents of extreme brutality against women in a country which actually worships the Divine Mother as Adi Shakti. In an air-conditioned television studio, some retired Pakistani general will blame today’s massacre on non-state actors.But these theories simply don’t add up. Do they ??
Filmmaker Michael Moore, in his award-winning documentary film Bowling for Columbine , explores the circumstances that lead to the 1999 Columbine High School massacre and, more broadly, the proliferation of guns and the high homicide rate in America. Early in the film, Moore links the violent behavior of the Columbine shooters to the presence of a large defense establishment manufacturing rocket technology in Littleton. It is implied that the presence of this facility within the community, and the acceptance of institutionalized violence as a solution to conflict, contributed to the mindset that led to the massacre.
As the new TV channel on air, Zindagi has shown, people on the other side of the border are almost our mirror images. They speak almost the same language and face the same issues in their daily grind for survival. The 132 children who died today in that army school in Peshawar , had the same aspirations like any school-going kid in my own country.
The world has failed its children, I dare say. What is the use of teaching Gandhi , Khan Abdul Gaffer Khan and Martin Luther King in classrooms when coffins have to be carried out of a school’s premise.
That brings me again to the question. Why were these children snuffed out of their lives ? Still don’t have the answer. Are the Malalas and the Satyarthis of this world fighting a losing battle.
An eye for an eye …. the MAHATMA had said, but the narrative hasn’t changed a bit. Of-course we did reach MARS and discover the GOD particle somewhere in-between all this but we never stopped being violent, did we? Blood will be spilled , in the name of honour, in the name of race, in the name of unearthing imaginary Mass Weapons of Destruction, and of-course in the name of religion !!
As I came back from office today, with all these disturbing thoughts hovering in my mind, I noticed my neighbour’s 2-year-old daughter playing in their courtyard. Seeing her, I could only manage a wry smile. For she is blissfully unaware of how admirably the so-called adults conduct their worldly affairs or growing up what kind of strife-torn world she would inherit..
Maybe it is futile to look for answers, my guess .. it is human nature , maybe something else which made sure that 132 flowers were nipped in the bud.
I usually end my musings on a slightly positive note. But today it is hard to betray the emotions , ok .. maybe a tad optimistic by quoting the song that Haider’s doctor father used to hymn amidst all the gloom and doom that surrounded his beautiful valley.
~ Chale bhi aao ke gulshan ka kaarobaar chale
Gulon mein rang bhare baad-e-naubahaar chale ~
In the Picture: Schindler’s List: While the film is shot primarily in black and white, a red coat is used to distinguish a little girl in the scene depicting the liquidation of the Kraków ghetto.
Calcutta Chromosome 