I sat in Prospect Park on a sunny afternoon, watching Fall just about to set in. The leaves were turning yellow at the tips- the rest of the body crisp and charming green after a bout of rain the night before. I was carrying the Heart of India with me- Mark Tully's journeys into the hinterlands of UP and Bihar- his accounts of watching caste wars and greedy zamindars in action or barren women going to old temples to pray for a child. For the most part, the book felt like a revisiting of childhood stories that any Indian child would read in Panchatantra or Amar Chitra Katha- the tone was of Once upon a time tales. Hardly any dramatic writing or heavy metaphorical language that Indians are so famous for. What was most fascinating was Tully's definition of fiction and non-fiction writing. The stories seemed true. They were observational more than evidence-based.
I noticed how alone I was in Prospect Park. A vast open space in the middle of one of the busiest cities in the world. And I thought of home, the streets of Delhi, the connections that had broken off in the two years that I had been away from home. What evidence would emerge true for my writing- if I were to pick up a pen and paper and start scribbling at that very moment? How can we classify writing that emerges from the gaps in memory and in retrospect? Who would believe in these frail images of a past life?
The street that I start to remember does not have a name. It exists, but as a concept. It is where people fight for parking space. A soiled red and black tent , rented from caterers emerges occasionally from the houses when birthday parties, anniversaries, weddings or annual harvest festivals take place. The vegetable sellers push their cart through the celebrating bodies and in the midst of it all, children clamor for space and attention as they play cricket. There are mango trees and overgrown shrubs outside some houses and the colorful flowers and seasonal fruits are the cause of much friction between the neighbors.
The street is not just a street...it is the locus of my imagination, the place I start writing from.
I often return to the house on the street, but with great difficulty at times because the directions to the landmarks keep changing. At one time there was an open tea stall to the left of the street. But the owner managed to make a lot of money and moved a little further down the road in to the fish market. The sky was no longer visible from his shop, but had red plastic chairs inside it and a badly made sign board hung outside said " Tea and Snakes".
The street of this year, in which I tell my story has a monster that my sister and I were always cautioned against. There is a shop, sharing the wall of a house, with an asbestos sheet covering, propped up by bamboo canes. Hand painted posters of women with bulging cleavages flap in the gentle breeze. It is difficult to guess who they are. We lower our eyes and rush past it as we walk home from the bus stop, the film songs blaring from a radio, filling the empty weekday afternoon. At times, we stand watching from a distance as our grandfather quickly buys a cigarette from there. He hides them in his shirt pocket, and clutches our hands to take us home.
The home of this year is being painted and the exterior is effervescent, the white shines in the golden sun. The smell is of the arrival of a new blue awning, of a new season and a new color, as the black door frames are replaced by a pleasant yellow. My house resembles an ice cream parlor, but I don't mind it at all.
On a Sunday in the home of this year, my sister and I play with Lego blocks. We place the small potted plants first, but they keep getting knocked over by our skinny elbows. The house has red, yellow and green brick walls and a red chimney. I wonder why our house does not have a chimney...the long snout, placed on the roof through which Mary Poppins traveled in and out. I think she got stuck in the chimney once, and that is why we never got a chimney. The one story house grew in to two, as the blocks vanished from the box. I turn my attention to the ladybug that my uncle has sent from England. I hold it in my hands and wind the tiny key as it sputters and crawls on the cool floor. Big feet suddenly appear in front of my eyes, dusty soles and hard nails, that leave a trail of dust at the entrance of the yellow door. I look up and a pair of bloody red protruding eyes stare back at me. A smile that has a missing front tooth and a couple of more at the side, breaks in to a maniacal laugh as it bends down to grab my shoulders. In the background I hear my sister yell in fright as she grabs my hand and we run to my grandparent's bedroom and hide under their bed. It is the Missing Tooth plumber she says, and both of us sit in the darkness, hoping that the ants would not give away our secret. A layer of dust lies on the boxes and I try to open them. A sneeze shakes the earth and the ants shift their trail. The game is over.
At an hour on a Sunday in the home of this year as the day is settling in, I return to my home's childhood again ,when my sister and I wear identical clothes ( she is in pink and I am in blue, but that is the only difference) and run out to the sunny porch. My grandmother has taken out a new sari, a white one with a red border., but her hair is still messy, the comb stuck in it as she settles on a brown wicker chair. My grandfather reads a red book, with brown withering papers, as the golden rays glisten on his silk shirt. At this very minute of the hour, my mother comes hurrying out putting the clasp on her silver watch and runs her hand over her black hair, tied up in a bun.
At this second of the minute of the hour of the day of the month of this year of the dream... when we scramble to sit in position, the small in the front and the tall at the back..my father cranks the camera. It whirs and clicks..as we move from the land of messy blue, red, pink, green and gold to just those two- black and white. I wander in the day and think in my dreams. And I want to have this dream tonight.
******
The street has a name- of a revolutionary freedom fighter who fought for independence. The house is located in the colony of people displaced from East Pakistan. I lost the ladybird one day and could never find it again. The plumber with the missing tooth, disappeared around the corner and was never found again. The house stopped glowing as the two stories grew up in to three.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Lost in the city- NRB adventures in Kolkata Part 2
The next morning, I found out that the CEO, Mr. Ghosh stayed in the guest house. He stood brushing his teeth at the basin near the foot of the staircase. The early morning attire consisted of not a safari suit, but a white turned grey vest and a checked green dhoti. He nodded at me and tried to grin, digging shamelessly into his crotch and the toothpaste foaming at his open mouth.
A small porcelain cup, covered with brown cracks stood waiting for me in the room marked “DINING HALL”. A single table with six chairs was occupied by a boisterous family of ten. Two wailing kids ran around the table, chasing one another for a toy. My tea didn't look very appetizing and I stayed just long enough to know that the family's excitement bordered around a marriage they had come to attend.
I asked Gopal if Pintuda was waiting for me. He said a quick no and disappeared around the corner. Then he yelled from the passage that the driver often drank in to the night at the street corner stall. I left Monalisa behind for the day- alone and without any orientation and annoyed at having trusted the driver so easily.
The city had woken up to the hot day. The imminent traffic jams. A sudden bend. And then an empty brown road, separated by a tram track. The new driver asked me the address of my destination for the third time in a row. And I replied yet again- Ballygunge, adding the Mime Academy and “55 by 4”. I said the numbers in English, because I had always been confused about reciting numbers in Bengali.
Numbers...5...6..7. I gathered that we were heading in the wrong direction. So we turned back again. A mall with a glass exterior reflected light on the dusty brown road. Blonde models staring out from Marks and Spencer windows and Revlon salons looked upon the rest of the buildings that stood low, without walls, melting in to one another. An overwhelming number of cables, wires, battered telephone polls and aged hoardings tied this mass of concrete and glass together. The driver told me at this point that it was not profitable for him to help me in this search. The black and yellow taxi sped off as I stood on the road, and read the address boards, hoping that the number 4 would magically appear somewhere.
In desperation, I walked in to one of the bicycle repair shops to ask find the whereabouts of the “Academy”. The shop owner looked with interest at my diary, and kept saying that the name was familiar. He went out in to the next shop. The second shopkeeper went out to ask a man on the street.
They argued for a couple of minutes and then the original shopkeeper finally led the way in to a narrow alley between two shops. The drain was choked, the earth semi dry under the sun now.
I could already see the camera man sneering at this pitiful “location”. Location had to be sublime beauty for him. A white board with faded letters said- JOGESH DUTTA MIME ACADEMY.
The sunlight reflected off the jagged edges of broken windows on a forlorn building. A nylon rope hung low around the compound, displaying underwear of varying sizes but there was no sign of any family member. A door half open seemed like the only entry. I entered a dark interior.
The shopkeeper disappeared and so did the sounds of the street. Slightly unsure,I made my way up a flight of staircase. There must be a nice auditorium somewhere, I assured myself.
“Hello! How can I help you?”. It was so dark that I hadn't noticed a man sitting there. Medium build, puffy faced and hair parted in the center. The room looked like an attic. There were posters with painted faces and I couldn't really be sure if this was the same man, but in a moment of nervousness I said, “Hello! Mr. Dutta. I have come from Delhi to meet you.”
His face remained expressionless, “I am not Mr. Dutta. I am his assistant Somesh.”
“Will Mr. Dutta come anytime soon? It is really important that I meet him. I am a producer for a children's program. Sesame Street. It is quite famous...it is shown in the US as well..” I rattled on. The assistant didn't look impressed.
He started patronizingly, “Well, Mr Dutta is 90 years old now. Great man!”
“Umm..I know,” I said, my heart starting to sink.
“He does not come to the Academy anymore. So I manage it on my own. We are facing a hard time...no money,” he paused and then said, “Which channel did you say you are from?”
“Cartoon network.”
Smoothing his parting, he continued, “Channels pay a lot of money..right? Well, we charge atleast 5000 rupees for using our auditorium. We are planning a children's workshop in August....”
“I don't want to shoot a workshop...” I tried to cut in. The program had to be on air in August I thought to myself. But it seemed as if he hadn't heard me and continued talking in his monotone, “I am off to Edinburgh today for a performance. When I come back we can talk.”
Be a persistent journalist, my boss had said. So I tried asking a final question, “Where is your auditorium?” The question seemed to have shaken him up. Irritatedly he replied, “Oh..I could have shown you...but I seem to have lost the keys. But you can see it from here..” pointing to an hollow spot on the wall. The beam of sunlight brought out the shape of a pile of broken chairs and moth eaten curtains. I looked back at Somesh and gave him a weak smile. He stared back unsmiling, the middle parting on his scalp glimmering like a frozen river bed.
The idea of a story on mime had evaporated. His beady, empty eyes stared back. I said a hasty goodbye and started to walk away. "You want water..Ms..?" Somesh started to ask, walking towards me.
"No..no..I am fine.."
I could feel sweat trickling down my spine. I backed towards the staircase and knocked myself against something hard and wooden. There was a gnawing pain somewhere.
"Be careful..these stairs are old," he was walking towards me with his hands outstretched. Psycho. Psycho. My head was pounding. You are over reacting. This happens only in movies. Wait..you are here to make movies. Move, you idiot. Move!
Out on the street, I ran past a family who probably owned the displayed clothes. I stopped only when I had come back to the spot where I had been dropped off before. I was breathing hard. But I was more worried that my first idea had fallen through. I walked down the road- aimless and less certain now. Day 1 was half way through and the story count was still zilch. My boss wouldn't really care that some assistant had turned out turned out to be a psychpath cum serial killer. He would probably make a joke that all Bengali men had a psycho streak in them.
A sign across the street said Calcutta Information Center. On an instinct I walked in.
Clusters of twenty-somethings burst out laughing at the computer screen. The information bureau seemed more like a seedy cyber cafe. I picked up a city catalogue and flipped the pages to the section of “Important people in the city”. Thankfully the catalogue was in both English and Bengali. Musicians. Painters. Politicians. Magicians. Jugglers. A whole family of jugglers.
“Hi. I am Moushumi speaking.” I recognized her as the daughter of the head juggler and gave my usual introduction- that I had come from to Delhi to meet them for my film, since they were famous in the country. “Do you have children?” I asked her a little bluntly. “Yes, I have a daughter. She is six.”
“Can she juggle?” I asked.
“Not too much, but she can do some tricks. But she is really good at studies and painting too.”
“Oh! Great...!” I replied back. I wasn't really interested in her academics or painting skills. Ruthless as it seemed, I just wanted the child to be a juggler.
“I am visiting my father right now. You can come and meet us all tomorrow.”
I gave a silent sigh of relief and hailed a taxi back to Monalisa Guest house.A child juggler- this would be the best story ever!
More adventures coming up readers..not quite the Byomkesh Bakshi stuff..but oh well!
Cheerio!
Travel Bee
A small porcelain cup, covered with brown cracks stood waiting for me in the room marked “DINING HALL”. A single table with six chairs was occupied by a boisterous family of ten. Two wailing kids ran around the table, chasing one another for a toy. My tea didn't look very appetizing and I stayed just long enough to know that the family's excitement bordered around a marriage they had come to attend.
I asked Gopal if Pintuda was waiting for me. He said a quick no and disappeared around the corner. Then he yelled from the passage that the driver often drank in to the night at the street corner stall. I left Monalisa behind for the day- alone and without any orientation and annoyed at having trusted the driver so easily.
The city had woken up to the hot day. The imminent traffic jams. A sudden bend. And then an empty brown road, separated by a tram track. The new driver asked me the address of my destination for the third time in a row. And I replied yet again- Ballygunge, adding the Mime Academy and “55 by 4”. I said the numbers in English, because I had always been confused about reciting numbers in Bengali.
Numbers...5...6..7. I gathered that we were heading in the wrong direction. So we turned back again. A mall with a glass exterior reflected light on the dusty brown road. Blonde models staring out from Marks and Spencer windows and Revlon salons looked upon the rest of the buildings that stood low, without walls, melting in to one another. An overwhelming number of cables, wires, battered telephone polls and aged hoardings tied this mass of concrete and glass together. The driver told me at this point that it was not profitable for him to help me in this search. The black and yellow taxi sped off as I stood on the road, and read the address boards, hoping that the number 4 would magically appear somewhere.
In desperation, I walked in to one of the bicycle repair shops to ask find the whereabouts of the “Academy”. The shop owner looked with interest at my diary, and kept saying that the name was familiar. He went out in to the next shop. The second shopkeeper went out to ask a man on the street.
They argued for a couple of minutes and then the original shopkeeper finally led the way in to a narrow alley between two shops. The drain was choked, the earth semi dry under the sun now.
I could already see the camera man sneering at this pitiful “location”. Location had to be sublime beauty for him. A white board with faded letters said- JOGESH DUTTA MIME ACADEMY.
The sunlight reflected off the jagged edges of broken windows on a forlorn building. A nylon rope hung low around the compound, displaying underwear of varying sizes but there was no sign of any family member. A door half open seemed like the only entry. I entered a dark interior.
The shopkeeper disappeared and so did the sounds of the street. Slightly unsure,I made my way up a flight of staircase. There must be a nice auditorium somewhere, I assured myself.
“Hello! How can I help you?”. It was so dark that I hadn't noticed a man sitting there. Medium build, puffy faced and hair parted in the center. The room looked like an attic. There were posters with painted faces and I couldn't really be sure if this was the same man, but in a moment of nervousness I said, “Hello! Mr. Dutta. I have come from Delhi to meet you.”
His face remained expressionless, “I am not Mr. Dutta. I am his assistant Somesh.”
“Will Mr. Dutta come anytime soon? It is really important that I meet him. I am a producer for a children's program. Sesame Street. It is quite famous...it is shown in the US as well..” I rattled on. The assistant didn't look impressed.
He started patronizingly, “Well, Mr Dutta is 90 years old now. Great man!”
“Umm..I know,” I said, my heart starting to sink.
“He does not come to the Academy anymore. So I manage it on my own. We are facing a hard time...no money,” he paused and then said, “Which channel did you say you are from?”
“Cartoon network.”
Smoothing his parting, he continued, “Channels pay a lot of money..right? Well, we charge atleast 5000 rupees for using our auditorium. We are planning a children's workshop in August....”
“I don't want to shoot a workshop...” I tried to cut in. The program had to be on air in August I thought to myself. But it seemed as if he hadn't heard me and continued talking in his monotone, “I am off to Edinburgh today for a performance. When I come back we can talk.”
Be a persistent journalist, my boss had said. So I tried asking a final question, “Where is your auditorium?” The question seemed to have shaken him up. Irritatedly he replied, “Oh..I could have shown you...but I seem to have lost the keys. But you can see it from here..” pointing to an hollow spot on the wall. The beam of sunlight brought out the shape of a pile of broken chairs and moth eaten curtains. I looked back at Somesh and gave him a weak smile. He stared back unsmiling, the middle parting on his scalp glimmering like a frozen river bed.
The idea of a story on mime had evaporated. His beady, empty eyes stared back. I said a hasty goodbye and started to walk away. "You want water..Ms..?" Somesh started to ask, walking towards me.
"No..no..I am fine.."
I could feel sweat trickling down my spine. I backed towards the staircase and knocked myself against something hard and wooden. There was a gnawing pain somewhere.
"Be careful..these stairs are old," he was walking towards me with his hands outstretched. Psycho. Psycho. My head was pounding. You are over reacting. This happens only in movies. Wait..you are here to make movies. Move, you idiot. Move!
Out on the street, I ran past a family who probably owned the displayed clothes. I stopped only when I had come back to the spot where I had been dropped off before. I was breathing hard. But I was more worried that my first idea had fallen through. I walked down the road- aimless and less certain now. Day 1 was half way through and the story count was still zilch. My boss wouldn't really care that some assistant had turned out turned out to be a psychpath cum serial killer. He would probably make a joke that all Bengali men had a psycho streak in them.
A sign across the street said Calcutta Information Center. On an instinct I walked in.
Clusters of twenty-somethings burst out laughing at the computer screen. The information bureau seemed more like a seedy cyber cafe. I picked up a city catalogue and flipped the pages to the section of “Important people in the city”. Thankfully the catalogue was in both English and Bengali. Musicians. Painters. Politicians. Magicians. Jugglers. A whole family of jugglers.
“Hi. I am Moushumi speaking.” I recognized her as the daughter of the head juggler and gave my usual introduction- that I had come from to Delhi to meet them for my film, since they were famous in the country. “Do you have children?” I asked her a little bluntly. “Yes, I have a daughter. She is six.”
“Can she juggle?” I asked.
“Not too much, but she can do some tricks. But she is really good at studies and painting too.”
“Oh! Great...!” I replied back. I wasn't really interested in her academics or painting skills. Ruthless as it seemed, I just wanted the child to be a juggler.
“I am visiting my father right now. You can come and meet us all tomorrow.”
I gave a silent sigh of relief and hailed a taxi back to Monalisa Guest house.A child juggler- this would be the best story ever!
More adventures coming up readers..not quite the Byomkesh Bakshi stuff..but oh well!
Cheerio!
Travel Bee
Thursday, September 2, 2010
The Non resident Bengali's adventures in Kolkata- Part 1
Most Probashi Bangalis or the Non Resident Bengalis (henceforth known as NRBs) are a strange specimen in Kolkata. They are meant to be treated with utter disdain because of the horrendously Punjufied Bengali accents. But if you are a NRB from CR Park you might save yourself some of the disgrace. If you are a woman NRB from CR Park you will score some brownie points because Delhi women give the gossipy men at tea stalls something to talk about. And if you are a NRB woman from CR Park with a camera crew in tow- well, you can be assured that the whole town will be following you AND think of you as nothing less than Sushmita Sen- who cares if she hasn't produced a single hit film in her life and you are a lowly producer for an Indian version of a American TV muppet show that Indians kids don't even like watching. Here are some funny anecdotal moments that the the muppet show would never dare to tell (yes, funny only in retrospect). I am going to try and recall them as distinctly as possible. But as it happens with memory, any resemblance to characters (dead, alive or barely alive) and events is not coincidental- it is completely intentional, but with a dash of good humor and the tricks that my memory decided to play in the moment of writing.
In 2007, as a part of the Sesame Street India team, I was asked to shoot a series of short films in Kolkata.My boss said, “You have to capture the flavor of Calcutta, OK? Who else would know the city but a Bengali?” I hated to break it to him that people speaking the language “Bengali” and people who have grown up in Calcutta as “Bengalis” were completely diverse. And that I was a Bengali who had grown up in Delhi. The last time I had been to Calcutta was twenty years back. My knowledge of the city, its history and culture was perhaps as superficial as his.
“It is not easy being a Live Action film producer,” my boss said with an air of certainty at one of our pre-departure meetings, as he glanced at my notes for probable stories in Calcutta:
Probable ideas for shooting:
1.Jogesh Dutta Mime Academy---- Ballygunge Circular Road.
2. Painting- Patachitra at the Kalighat Temple
3. Find a mansion near North Calcutta- organize a treasure hunt.
4. Shadow show by Geyon Theater- They make shadow puppets from cardboard, colour papers and waste materials. (no address in directory)
5. Clock towers of Calcutta: a family maintains the clock tower of St. Paul's Cathedral. The child of the family travels up the winding stairs to see his grandfather at work. **
6. Football match in the Maidan.
7. Horse ride/ Tram ride/ Boat ride in the city- show Victoria Memorial/ Princep Ghat
8. A trip to the flower market.
9. Food:
It was a humble beginning. In a tiny, obscure corner of Bagbazar in North Kolkata, Nobin Chandra set up a sweet shop in 1866, but the last thing he wanted was to run a mere sales counter. The passion to create something of his very own haunted him. His ambition was to create a completely original sweet, that would bring new excitement to the Bengali palate. There was in him an intense desire to create a sweetmeat that was never there before... the ultimate delicacy. He toiled for months, armed with imagination, skill and tenacity, and sometime in the year 1868, his labours paid off. He made small balls of casein (cottage cheese) and boiled them in hot sugar syrup. The result was a succulent, spongy sweet with a unique, distinctive taste. Nobin Das christened it the “Rossogolla” and a legend
was born.- http://originofrasgulla.blogspot.com/
10. Learning Katha embroidery
11. Trip to the science city
**(Refer to Indian Express news- the grandfather was 80 years old in 1997!- no phone number or contact information)
My boss sighed and then after a moment of silence, his red face looked at me with irritation to say-“Well...Sukanya. These are all so overdone!” He used the word overdone with great frequency. “Science City will be boring! What will the child do there? He can't stand just stand there and watch.And music is super overdone on Sesame...” His voice started to grow louder and his face redder- “Painting is overdone too. And wait..you actually thought of football. The cameraman is lazy and bulky. Do you think he will actually run around and fall with a child on a football field? The clock tower story is your best bet...I want that one!” He was on the verge
of standing up now, sweat beginning to break out on his plump face as he said, “ But even then, where is the story and the drive, the motivation for the child! What is the take-away factor for the child? I repeat-look for the flavor of Calcutta...Kolkata..whatever!”
The tirade stopped as he fixed me with a hard stare. “Oh..and by the way, the budget has been slashed down. You need to take a look at your hotel booking again. It is 1000 rupees a day now for the hotel..Calcutta is cheap right?”, he said with nonchalance. “ And take the early morning or late night flight...!” he added.
Monalisa Guesthouse~
An uncle of mine, on returning from one of his trips remarked to me, “ You know
all sorts of strange things happen to me when I travel”. I stared at him, not quite sure what to make of this statement. And he went on, “ You know.. there will be water splattered on my seat or it wont have a seat number...or worst still, my berth might have been taken by someone else.” He added almost gleefully that this time while on his trip to Darjeeling, someone stole his slippers on the train, and I pictured him walking around bare feet in the town. My plane got ready to land in Calcutta's Netaji Subhash Airport, and the big rain drops smeared on the tiny window. I wondered if strange things happening on travels ran in the family. The night before I was to leave, the airline's ground staff had gone on a strike and Calcutta had recorded its maximum rainfall for the season.
As I stepped out from the air-conditioned dome on to the damp earth of the city, I felt swamped by the tide of taxi drivers and auto-rickshaw drivers,standing at the side rails calling out to hassled travelers. My father, a veteran traveler to this city, had given me a set of instructions to follow and one of them had been to make a beeline for the prepaid taxi stand. The drivers in the city are rogues he had warned. My driver however had a half smile playing on his face as he helped me with my luggage, but remembering my father's warning I didn't smile back. An overpowering smell of petroleum clung on to the hot, blackened interior of the Ambassador car. I sat on the edge of the grimy seat, sweat now beginning to break out on my face.
We sped in to the city with swaying coconut tress, past billboards and past signs of familiar cell phone companies, but the rounded shape of the Bengali alphabets that dotted the skyline, made me realize how different this city was from mine. I had never learnt to read the Bengali alphabets and my city-guide map with the English words strewn across, seemed strangely out of place.
The maniacal car veered, and the loud sounds of the city crept in, as we went from the suburban Eastern Metropolitan Bypass in to the dense territory of South Calcutta. The drive yelled and asked me, “Didi...first time in our Kolkata?”. Not wanting to make conversation I replied, “Can I get breakfast somewhere?”. Too happy to comply and be of some assistance, he said that he would take me to his favourite eating joint.
The car stopped in a narrow jumble of bikes and other cars. A bazaar of paranoia greeted me. The driver's lanky frame with the hollow cheeks kept getting swallowed by the crowd, emerging a couple of times and then his long strides fell back in the giant's mouth yet again. Yelling out his name would do no good, still I called out “Pintuda..wait!!”. He didn't wait and several men standing at the grey and brown tea stall snickered. And I followed like a detective on a criminal's trail.
Sweet tea in small brown earthen cups, orange lozenges wrapped in slightly blackened
plastic, Lays chips in bright yellow bags that had gathered dust, deep fried fish rolls and mutton cutlets, scrambled eggs and omelette with extra chillies, plastic yo-yo balls that gave out a blue light, pirated DVDs of “KING KOG” and “STAR WAS”, bright red night gowns with polka dots and crochet at the hem, fake silk batik kurtas with wooden buttons and pink fishnet vests all stood united in one place- on the streets of Gariahat Bazaar in Calcutta.
A black and yellow taxi skidded to hit the side rails of the footpath as it just about missed the bus which had no place demarcated as its stop. The angry, irritated honking continued as the sweaty bodies descending from the bus, filled up the moist air, trying to avoid the open drain, the beggars pleading for alms, vociferous college kids and the hassled women with shopping bags who had hitched up their cotton saris to their ankles revealing plain sandals falling soundlessly on the city grime. People fought for every inch and gap and hole. The excess, it seemed was sacred for the city.
Being a finicky person didn't really help in this situation, as I shriveled up my body and pressed my arms at my sides, and watched helplessly as my blue slippers got caught between people and rain puddles. In a fit of frustration, I abandoned the careful gait, and ran behind the driver, who had stopped in front of the restaurant “Bhojohori Manna”. “He was a world conquering hero-chef”, my driver said, rightly gauging my befuddled expression and happy to pass on this trivia.
I didn't remember inviting him for breakfast. I scanned the menu to realize that he really had gotten me to his favorite restaurant. The place had no eggs and toast that I wanted, but specialized in kebabs, Biriyani, fish curries and chicken dishes. He ate a whole plate of Biriyani- which I would later realize is a favorite with Calcuttans while I fiddled on a glass of fresh lime soda. He asked me if I ate and drank only this much for breakfast. I replied, “Sometimes..”. From then on we shifted topics quickly. He asked me where I stayed in Delhi. “Chittaranjan Park”, I said. He looked as if he found a long lost friend as he said “That is where all Bengalis of Delhi stay right..! That is why your Bengali is so good..!” he concluded, slapping his thighs with the oily hands, pleased to have finally completed the jigsaw puzzle. I gave a weak smile, as the frayed menu card stared back at me with its incomprehensible letters. The child like excitement spread further across his face when he got to know that I had come to Calcutta to make films. “Didi..have you gone to Bombay and met any of the superstars?”, he asked me expectantly. I just replied in a plain no, not wanting to elucidate details that I made only documentary films, thinking he would not understand them anyway.
While going back to the car, he decided to take me through a shortcut and we walked through a dingy back lane. Hawkers cooked in the open. Their pots and pans stood tilted and skewed, bending under the weight of the gathering rain water. Men bathed openly from a community tap, and children played with pebbles on the moss covered ground. My house had always had a back lane but I had forgotten what it looked like,always having been forbidden to play there as a child. “It is dangerous for a girl to be there alone", everyone would say. The rusty door remained shut for years till someone remembered to open the massive lock and sweep away the brittle leaves gathered at the corners, during a spring cleaning session. I felt adventurous and delight in walking and watching this locked up world after so many years. But shooting in this rough margin would be out of question. The ideology of Sesame Street was different.
The humidity seemed to be on the rise as we walked through the lane. Some women stopped washing the clothes and men standing at tea stalls stared at this odd couple go by. I kept my eyes down and walked quickly, not noticing a man pulling a rickshaw running towards me. Being stared at is common in Indian towns and cities. Men stare at women and women stare away in to nothing.
I suddenly felt a jerk on my arms as Pintuda pulled me aside, screeching “Didi..”, his voice getting hammered by the noisy wheels of the rickshaw on the unpaved road. He hollered at the receeding back of the rickshaw puller who had not bothered to stop.. “Be careful...didi has come here to make a film ok!!”.
Perhaps, feeling that this incident had brought us closer, he turned on some Bengali music in the car, composed by a well-known pop musician, Bappi Lahiri. Pintuda seemed pleased to know that I had recognized the composer. Jhoom jhoom jhoom baba “Bappida stays in Bombay right..?”, he asked me from the rear view mirror. I nodded and started to give a set of vague directions to Monalisa Guest House. Next to the Rowing Club. Close to Marco Polo Restaurant.
Without any hesitation, the taxi turned and merrily threw water on the hassled pedestrians. It sped past a road named Ballygunge Circular Road and I remembered reading the name somewhere.
I kept trying to locate the place in my mind as I fished around for my diary in my bag. The taxi screeched to a halt. I hit on my head on the front seat. A disgusting smell filled my nostrils.
A decayed monster with cracked green walls and a clogged driveway floating in knee deep water stared back. “Monalisa Guest House..Didi”, Pintuda said somewhat apologetically. I couldn't really have expected a boutique hotel in thousand rupees a day.
I was annoyed not knowing how I would navigate this driveway, and asked the driver to pull up to the front door. I tiptoed on to the ground, not wanting to get my feet muddy. A man sitting at the reception desk, wearing a brown safari suit stared at me with interest, his gaze challenging me to find the dry spots. Behind him, I could see through an alcove, a tiny, smoky kitchen at work.
He yelled “Ayeee...Gopal...Gopaaal!!”. His shout cut through the dim noise of the street and the kitchen, and I toppled over. My knees sank in the murk. A small scrawny boy came running out of the door, wearing a thin T-shirt over a cloth wrapped around his thighs, the hem high enough to avoid the water. He splashed his way towards the car, and with ease carried my suitcase back to the front desk. The water dripped from my jeans, as I managed to smile at the man in the safari suit. He introduced himself as Mr. Bimal Ghosh- CEO of the guest house.
In a moment of anxiety and fear of facing an unknown city, I asked Pintuda to return the next day and take me around. He would be only too glad he said, and promised to reach the guest house at 10 am sharp.
I sat in the quiet of the small room of the same green shade. A thin bed had a lumpy
mattress and a dowdy bed cover with brown flowers that matched the curtains hanging from the window. There was no shower in the bathroom, but pink plastic buckets, with broken handles and scratched bodies. An enormous task stood before me. The crew from Delhi would arrive soon and I had to find those children in this eccentric city.
For no particular reason, Ballygunge Circular Road came back to mind. I referred to the Lonely Planet Guide and then my diary which mentioned the Mime Academy on the same road.
The Lonely Planet guide was clearly not meant for a film producer, hunting for children. Needless to say the “Places to Visit” section had no mention of this Academy or its whereabouts. Instead it listed botanical gardens, art museums and buildings that were the glorious remnants of the British Empire.
My father had remarked in the passing about Jogesh Dutta as being a famous mime artist. However, my boss had seemed skeptical on hearing this information, and said that he had never heard of this “man” before. “Bengalis have a way of making everybody famous”, he had added.
Historically, Bengal had always been a mecca for intellectual renaissance and artistic practices, boasting of geniuses such as the poet Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian Nobel laureate and Satyajit Ray, who gave India a privileged position in world cinema. Though there are many more who can be recounted, these two figures have remained much revered and a common love- tying together the Bengalis of the home and the world. A film made by Satyajit Ray once encapsulated the three great loves of the Bengali community- eating great food, traveling around the world and lastly, engaging in culture and the arts. It is almost a rite of passage for children of Bengali descent, no matter which part of the world they are in, to learn music and especially Rabindra Sangeet. I remembered learning music from someone whose name I can never remember, but we called him the grandfather who teaches music. At the age of seven, I never quite understood what the grandiose words meant and ran away from the class once. Sitting in the room that day, I regretted not having gone back. Perhaps the songs would have helped me understand the city and its people better.
A wishful picture came to mind. A shiny, wooden auditorium. Children with faces painted white, practicing the art of mime. That would be my first stop the next morning.
Will keep the stories rolling, dear readers!It is night for now..
Cheers (aka Ullash in Bengali since we are in the thick of Bong land and spirit)
Travel Bee
In 2007, as a part of the Sesame Street India team, I was asked to shoot a series of short films in Kolkata.My boss said, “You have to capture the flavor of Calcutta, OK? Who else would know the city but a Bengali?” I hated to break it to him that people speaking the language “Bengali” and people who have grown up in Calcutta as “Bengalis” were completely diverse. And that I was a Bengali who had grown up in Delhi. The last time I had been to Calcutta was twenty years back. My knowledge of the city, its history and culture was perhaps as superficial as his.
“It is not easy being a Live Action film producer,” my boss said with an air of certainty at one of our pre-departure meetings, as he glanced at my notes for probable stories in Calcutta:
Probable ideas for shooting:
1.Jogesh Dutta Mime Academy---- Ballygunge Circular Road.
2. Painting- Patachitra at the Kalighat Temple
3. Find a mansion near North Calcutta- organize a treasure hunt.
4. Shadow show by Geyon Theater- They make shadow puppets from cardboard, colour papers and waste materials. (no address in directory)
5. Clock towers of Calcutta: a family maintains the clock tower of St. Paul's Cathedral. The child of the family travels up the winding stairs to see his grandfather at work. **
6. Football match in the Maidan.
7. Horse ride/ Tram ride/ Boat ride in the city- show Victoria Memorial/ Princep Ghat
8. A trip to the flower market.
9. Food:
It was a humble beginning. In a tiny, obscure corner of Bagbazar in North Kolkata, Nobin Chandra set up a sweet shop in 1866, but the last thing he wanted was to run a mere sales counter. The passion to create something of his very own haunted him. His ambition was to create a completely original sweet, that would bring new excitement to the Bengali palate. There was in him an intense desire to create a sweetmeat that was never there before... the ultimate delicacy. He toiled for months, armed with imagination, skill and tenacity, and sometime in the year 1868, his labours paid off. He made small balls of casein (cottage cheese) and boiled them in hot sugar syrup. The result was a succulent, spongy sweet with a unique, distinctive taste. Nobin Das christened it the “Rossogolla” and a legend
was born.- http://originofrasgulla.blogspot.com/
10. Learning Katha embroidery
11. Trip to the science city
**(Refer to Indian Express news- the grandfather was 80 years old in 1997!- no phone number or contact information)
My boss sighed and then after a moment of silence, his red face looked at me with irritation to say-“Well...Sukanya. These are all so overdone!” He used the word overdone with great frequency. “Science City will be boring! What will the child do there? He can't stand just stand there and watch.And music is super overdone on Sesame...” His voice started to grow louder and his face redder- “Painting is overdone too. And wait..you actually thought of football. The cameraman is lazy and bulky. Do you think he will actually run around and fall with a child on a football field? The clock tower story is your best bet...I want that one!” He was on the verge
of standing up now, sweat beginning to break out on his plump face as he said, “ But even then, where is the story and the drive, the motivation for the child! What is the take-away factor for the child? I repeat-look for the flavor of Calcutta...Kolkata..whatever!”
The tirade stopped as he fixed me with a hard stare. “Oh..and by the way, the budget has been slashed down. You need to take a look at your hotel booking again. It is 1000 rupees a day now for the hotel..Calcutta is cheap right?”, he said with nonchalance. “ And take the early morning or late night flight...!” he added.
Monalisa Guesthouse~
An uncle of mine, on returning from one of his trips remarked to me, “ You know
all sorts of strange things happen to me when I travel”. I stared at him, not quite sure what to make of this statement. And he went on, “ You know.. there will be water splattered on my seat or it wont have a seat number...or worst still, my berth might have been taken by someone else.” He added almost gleefully that this time while on his trip to Darjeeling, someone stole his slippers on the train, and I pictured him walking around bare feet in the town. My plane got ready to land in Calcutta's Netaji Subhash Airport, and the big rain drops smeared on the tiny window. I wondered if strange things happening on travels ran in the family. The night before I was to leave, the airline's ground staff had gone on a strike and Calcutta had recorded its maximum rainfall for the season.
As I stepped out from the air-conditioned dome on to the damp earth of the city, I felt swamped by the tide of taxi drivers and auto-rickshaw drivers,standing at the side rails calling out to hassled travelers. My father, a veteran traveler to this city, had given me a set of instructions to follow and one of them had been to make a beeline for the prepaid taxi stand. The drivers in the city are rogues he had warned. My driver however had a half smile playing on his face as he helped me with my luggage, but remembering my father's warning I didn't smile back. An overpowering smell of petroleum clung on to the hot, blackened interior of the Ambassador car. I sat on the edge of the grimy seat, sweat now beginning to break out on my face.
We sped in to the city with swaying coconut tress, past billboards and past signs of familiar cell phone companies, but the rounded shape of the Bengali alphabets that dotted the skyline, made me realize how different this city was from mine. I had never learnt to read the Bengali alphabets and my city-guide map with the English words strewn across, seemed strangely out of place.
The maniacal car veered, and the loud sounds of the city crept in, as we went from the suburban Eastern Metropolitan Bypass in to the dense territory of South Calcutta. The drive yelled and asked me, “Didi...first time in our Kolkata?”. Not wanting to make conversation I replied, “Can I get breakfast somewhere?”. Too happy to comply and be of some assistance, he said that he would take me to his favourite eating joint.
The car stopped in a narrow jumble of bikes and other cars. A bazaar of paranoia greeted me. The driver's lanky frame with the hollow cheeks kept getting swallowed by the crowd, emerging a couple of times and then his long strides fell back in the giant's mouth yet again. Yelling out his name would do no good, still I called out “Pintuda..wait!!”. He didn't wait and several men standing at the grey and brown tea stall snickered. And I followed like a detective on a criminal's trail.
Sweet tea in small brown earthen cups, orange lozenges wrapped in slightly blackened
plastic, Lays chips in bright yellow bags that had gathered dust, deep fried fish rolls and mutton cutlets, scrambled eggs and omelette with extra chillies, plastic yo-yo balls that gave out a blue light, pirated DVDs of “KING KOG” and “STAR WAS”, bright red night gowns with polka dots and crochet at the hem, fake silk batik kurtas with wooden buttons and pink fishnet vests all stood united in one place- on the streets of Gariahat Bazaar in Calcutta.
A black and yellow taxi skidded to hit the side rails of the footpath as it just about missed the bus which had no place demarcated as its stop. The angry, irritated honking continued as the sweaty bodies descending from the bus, filled up the moist air, trying to avoid the open drain, the beggars pleading for alms, vociferous college kids and the hassled women with shopping bags who had hitched up their cotton saris to their ankles revealing plain sandals falling soundlessly on the city grime. People fought for every inch and gap and hole. The excess, it seemed was sacred for the city.
Being a finicky person didn't really help in this situation, as I shriveled up my body and pressed my arms at my sides, and watched helplessly as my blue slippers got caught between people and rain puddles. In a fit of frustration, I abandoned the careful gait, and ran behind the driver, who had stopped in front of the restaurant “Bhojohori Manna”. “He was a world conquering hero-chef”, my driver said, rightly gauging my befuddled expression and happy to pass on this trivia.
I didn't remember inviting him for breakfast. I scanned the menu to realize that he really had gotten me to his favorite restaurant. The place had no eggs and toast that I wanted, but specialized in kebabs, Biriyani, fish curries and chicken dishes. He ate a whole plate of Biriyani- which I would later realize is a favorite with Calcuttans while I fiddled on a glass of fresh lime soda. He asked me if I ate and drank only this much for breakfast. I replied, “Sometimes..”. From then on we shifted topics quickly. He asked me where I stayed in Delhi. “Chittaranjan Park”, I said. He looked as if he found a long lost friend as he said “That is where all Bengalis of Delhi stay right..! That is why your Bengali is so good..!” he concluded, slapping his thighs with the oily hands, pleased to have finally completed the jigsaw puzzle. I gave a weak smile, as the frayed menu card stared back at me with its incomprehensible letters. The child like excitement spread further across his face when he got to know that I had come to Calcutta to make films. “Didi..have you gone to Bombay and met any of the superstars?”, he asked me expectantly. I just replied in a plain no, not wanting to elucidate details that I made only documentary films, thinking he would not understand them anyway.
While going back to the car, he decided to take me through a shortcut and we walked through a dingy back lane. Hawkers cooked in the open. Their pots and pans stood tilted and skewed, bending under the weight of the gathering rain water. Men bathed openly from a community tap, and children played with pebbles on the moss covered ground. My house had always had a back lane but I had forgotten what it looked like,always having been forbidden to play there as a child. “It is dangerous for a girl to be there alone", everyone would say. The rusty door remained shut for years till someone remembered to open the massive lock and sweep away the brittle leaves gathered at the corners, during a spring cleaning session. I felt adventurous and delight in walking and watching this locked up world after so many years. But shooting in this rough margin would be out of question. The ideology of Sesame Street was different.
The humidity seemed to be on the rise as we walked through the lane. Some women stopped washing the clothes and men standing at tea stalls stared at this odd couple go by. I kept my eyes down and walked quickly, not noticing a man pulling a rickshaw running towards me. Being stared at is common in Indian towns and cities. Men stare at women and women stare away in to nothing.
I suddenly felt a jerk on my arms as Pintuda pulled me aside, screeching “Didi..”, his voice getting hammered by the noisy wheels of the rickshaw on the unpaved road. He hollered at the receeding back of the rickshaw puller who had not bothered to stop.. “Be careful...didi has come here to make a film ok!!”.
Perhaps, feeling that this incident had brought us closer, he turned on some Bengali music in the car, composed by a well-known pop musician, Bappi Lahiri. Pintuda seemed pleased to know that I had recognized the composer. Jhoom jhoom jhoom baba “Bappida stays in Bombay right..?”, he asked me from the rear view mirror. I nodded and started to give a set of vague directions to Monalisa Guest House. Next to the Rowing Club. Close to Marco Polo Restaurant.
Without any hesitation, the taxi turned and merrily threw water on the hassled pedestrians. It sped past a road named Ballygunge Circular Road and I remembered reading the name somewhere.
I kept trying to locate the place in my mind as I fished around for my diary in my bag. The taxi screeched to a halt. I hit on my head on the front seat. A disgusting smell filled my nostrils.
A decayed monster with cracked green walls and a clogged driveway floating in knee deep water stared back. “Monalisa Guest House..Didi”, Pintuda said somewhat apologetically. I couldn't really have expected a boutique hotel in thousand rupees a day.
I was annoyed not knowing how I would navigate this driveway, and asked the driver to pull up to the front door. I tiptoed on to the ground, not wanting to get my feet muddy. A man sitting at the reception desk, wearing a brown safari suit stared at me with interest, his gaze challenging me to find the dry spots. Behind him, I could see through an alcove, a tiny, smoky kitchen at work.
He yelled “Ayeee...Gopal...Gopaaal!!”. His shout cut through the dim noise of the street and the kitchen, and I toppled over. My knees sank in the murk. A small scrawny boy came running out of the door, wearing a thin T-shirt over a cloth wrapped around his thighs, the hem high enough to avoid the water. He splashed his way towards the car, and with ease carried my suitcase back to the front desk. The water dripped from my jeans, as I managed to smile at the man in the safari suit. He introduced himself as Mr. Bimal Ghosh- CEO of the guest house.
In a moment of anxiety and fear of facing an unknown city, I asked Pintuda to return the next day and take me around. He would be only too glad he said, and promised to reach the guest house at 10 am sharp.
I sat in the quiet of the small room of the same green shade. A thin bed had a lumpy
mattress and a dowdy bed cover with brown flowers that matched the curtains hanging from the window. There was no shower in the bathroom, but pink plastic buckets, with broken handles and scratched bodies. An enormous task stood before me. The crew from Delhi would arrive soon and I had to find those children in this eccentric city.
For no particular reason, Ballygunge Circular Road came back to mind. I referred to the Lonely Planet Guide and then my diary which mentioned the Mime Academy on the same road.
The Lonely Planet guide was clearly not meant for a film producer, hunting for children. Needless to say the “Places to Visit” section had no mention of this Academy or its whereabouts. Instead it listed botanical gardens, art museums and buildings that were the glorious remnants of the British Empire.
My father had remarked in the passing about Jogesh Dutta as being a famous mime artist. However, my boss had seemed skeptical on hearing this information, and said that he had never heard of this “man” before. “Bengalis have a way of making everybody famous”, he had added.
Historically, Bengal had always been a mecca for intellectual renaissance and artistic practices, boasting of geniuses such as the poet Rabindranath Tagore, the first Asian Nobel laureate and Satyajit Ray, who gave India a privileged position in world cinema. Though there are many more who can be recounted, these two figures have remained much revered and a common love- tying together the Bengalis of the home and the world. A film made by Satyajit Ray once encapsulated the three great loves of the Bengali community- eating great food, traveling around the world and lastly, engaging in culture and the arts. It is almost a rite of passage for children of Bengali descent, no matter which part of the world they are in, to learn music and especially Rabindra Sangeet. I remembered learning music from someone whose name I can never remember, but we called him the grandfather who teaches music. At the age of seven, I never quite understood what the grandiose words meant and ran away from the class once. Sitting in the room that day, I regretted not having gone back. Perhaps the songs would have helped me understand the city and its people better.
A wishful picture came to mind. A shiny, wooden auditorium. Children with faces painted white, practicing the art of mime. That would be my first stop the next morning.
Will keep the stories rolling, dear readers!It is night for now..
Cheers (aka Ullash in Bengali since we are in the thick of Bong land and spirit)
Travel Bee
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