Published March 13th, 2008
in Calcutta, Cricket and Silly.
As many of you may know, I have nothing but the highest regard for Shahrukh Khan’s intelligence and acting prowess and though I may refuse to acknowledge this in mixed company, an embarrassingly serious crush on his 6-pack abs. So when I heard that SRK had acquired the ownership of the Kolkata franchise of the IPL, I felt that indescribable sensation in an indescribable body part, the kind of which I first felt when I saw a bare-torsoed man,his essentials covered by a white towel, jump off the diving board in Baazigar.
In a way this was inevitable. Owning a company with the name “Red Chillies”, it was fated that the great Khan would plump for the “Red” bastion of Bengal.
But then I got a bit confused.
The “red” part was ok but what kind of chillies, red or small, could SRK possibly be interested in?
Continue reading ‘Knight Rider Korbo Re’
Published October 18th, 2007
in Calcutta and Memories.
It’s Durga Pujo (and no I will not spell it as “puja”). And that means being struck, once again, by what I referred to last year as the realization of how far away from home I am both in terms of time and space. Of course any walk down the path of Pujo reminiscence for someone growing up in South Calcutta in the mid-90s would be incomplete without a homage to THE Pujo destination—a place where the ethereal beauty of the Goddess in clay and the ephemeral iridescence of the angels of flesh and bone who flitted around Her, the sound of the dhak and the musical cadence of laughter , the smell of perfume and oil-dipped “telebhaja” (pakoras) all combined to cast a synaesthetic, magical spell on all those present—-especially if you were early 20s, male and single.
Continue reading ‘The Magic of Maddox Square’
Published June 16th, 2007
in Calcutta and Memories.
Growing up in Calcutta, one of the primary loci of my life was the neighbourhood sweet shop, Mahaprabhu Mistanna Bhandar (Mahaprabhu’s Cornucopia of Sweets). Lunch or dinner was always terminated by one of its products and whenever a guest came, that was the place I had to go to buy the chomchom and the chanar jilipi. My favourite Mahaprabhu sweet used to be the extremely saccharine gujiya (25 paise a piece) from which I graduated to what I called Mahaprabhu’s Ek takar mishti (the one rupee sweet) , the jewel in their crown whose quality was distinguished by virtue of it being priced at Re 1 whereas everything else was 50 paise or below.
As time went by, the prices went up, the size of the sweets went down and the people at the front counter became less generous in giving out extra rubber bands. But virtually everything else stayed the same: the peeling plaster on the walls, the slightly broken statue of Laxmi and Ganesh, the rickety sink on which was perched a plastic jug that contained potable water, the huge vats of rosogolla and pantooya floating about in a sea of syrup, the flies buzzing about, the bare-torsoed/baniyaned assistants with their exposed pot bellies and abundant nostril-and-cochlear hair taking your order, handing out change and packing the sweets
Till now.
Continue reading ‘Mahaprabhu Mistanna Bhandar’
Published December 21st, 2006
in Bengal, Calcutta and Memories.
What the hell is wrong with Mamata Banerjee? First she calls for a 48 hour Bandh and then postpones it (at least she has not cancelled it) taking into account the entreaties of her Christian brothers !
Postponing a bandh? What kind of lunacy is that? Don’t people understand that the bandh needed to be on 21st (Thursday), 22nd (Friday) so that with the weekend (23rd and 24th) and Christmas (25th) we would have a really really long weekend ? Why is noone thinking about the people who made advance plans based on the prospect of this “Bandh Break” —who will compensate them for their loss? [Left: Picture (from Times of India) of protesting Trinamool hunks]
Continue reading ‘In Praise of Bandhs’
Published December 5th, 2006
in Bengal, Calcutta and Politics.
One of the favouritest past-times of the argumentative Bengali, usually over noisy slurps of tea, bites of aloor chop and intermittent puffs on Gold Flake, is to apportion blame for Bengal’s marginalization in national politics, the economy and even culture in post-Independence India. For politics, the schism between Subhash Bose and Gandhi is considered to be the starting point of Bengal’s steadily decreasing influence over Delhi. The freight equalization policy that took away much of Bengal’s locational advantage and the Congress-party-held Center’s discriminatory fiscal policies towards CPM-ruled Bengal, both as retribution for repeatedly electing a non-Congress party as well as to favour Congress-held states (or states where they had a decent chance of winning) are considered universally (and rightfully) to be two of the major factors for Bengal’s economic marginalization. And lording over these factors is the ubiquitous, inexorable CPM-led militant trade unionism from the 60s to the 90s that led to a massive flight of industrial capital from the state—-though this contributory factor is likely to be debated vehemently by the hard-core Leftists, a breed that is thankfully being slowly supplanted by the pragmatic Leftist as exemplified by Buddhadeb Bhattacharya.
Continue reading ‘Bengali Passion’
Published September 24th, 2006
in Calcutta and Memories.
Whenever I am away from Kolkata, I impose a total media ban on anything related to the Pujo, taking a leaf out of the Government of India’s Ostrichian principle that if I bury my head in the sand and censor the flow of information about a certain thing, then that thing ceases to exist any more. [Picture to the left: Ballygunge Cultural Durga Pujo, Kolkata, 2005]
Which is why I refuse to do Protima Dorshon online (i.e. surf websites with pictures of pandals and images on them), do not appreciate being wished “Subho Mahalaya” and stay away from Probasi Pujos—–by blotting them out, I try to convince myself that Pujo does not exist and this illusion helps me to get over these few days. After all, as Durkheim demonstrated in Suicide, you feel miserable when everyone else is having fun, and you are not.
Continue reading ‘Durga Pujo Away From Home’
Published May 9th, 2006
in Calcutta and Politics.
As expected, the Communist Party of India Marxist is slated to win again the state elections in Bengal—increasing its hold upto a possible 3/4 majority. When you consider that this is the same party which has held sway for 30 odd years now, that is some feat in a democratic society.
Many readers of RTDM, on different occasions, have expressed their amazement as to why and how the CPM has remained in power for so many years without opposition of any sort, impervious to anti-incumbency, sympathy waves and other political opinion sweepers that have remoulded the landscape everywhere else.
Now may be a good time to look at that.
Continue reading ‘Buddha Bar’
Published February 1st, 2006
in Calcutta and Memories.
I am neither religious nor a big bibliophile. And yet the things I miss most about Calcutta and my old life , without doubt, are Durga Puja and the Calcutta Book Fair.
That is because Durga Puja is not only about religion. Just like the Book Fair isn’t merely about books.
People. Yes both of them are also about people. And the essence of Calcutta—my favoritest city in the whole wide world.
When I close my eyes and think of Book Fair, the sound of shehenai on the public-address system comes warbling back to me—through the many years that have passed. I am flooded by memories—the puddles of water on the Maidan, the discarded bamboo poles lying about, the dust everywhere stirred up by the peripatetic peregrinations of millions, the tattered newspapers flying around in a midafternoon vortex of air, the smell of freshly-printed books, the sense of peaceful hustle-and-bustle all around. All was well with the world.
Make no mistake. The Book Fair is about books. Only not just about it.
Continue reading ‘Memories of Calcutta Book Fair’
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