Archive for the 'Calcutta' Category

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Durga Durga

Published on September 16, 2008 in Calcutta. 49 Comments

[Inspired by this article in the Telegraph about sponsorship strategies of Durga Pujas including a Puja committee that has sold all branding rights to an US company and another that has a promotional music video and about Zee Bangla coming up with the ultimate business plan, telecasting live the beautiful people at Maddox Square, my field of Pujo dreams.]

Setting: A Puja committee meeting, somewhere in Kolkata. Circa 2010.

Sujit-da (Mamata-fan and president of Puja committee) : Nontu, so have the people from Sheyal TV Bangla (Fox TV’s Bangla venture) sent in the 30 lac check for the Pujo sponsorship?

Nontu, secretary: Sujit-da this year we decided to do things a little bit differently. Do you remember Habla?

Sujit-da: Of course how can I not remember Habla? A Jadavpur engineer but still so committed to the cause. During the Singur andolon, he was a front-line warrior with us, beating up the people who tried to enter the plant. I still remember Habla standing in the afternoon sun, throwing stones at the Nano plant and shouting Tata-Bye Bye. So what about him?

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Knight Rider Korbo Re

Published on March 13, 2008 in Calcutta, Cricket and Silly. 87 Comments

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?

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The Magic of Maddox Square

Published on October 18, 2007 in Calcutta and Memories. 92 Comments

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.

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Mahaprabhu Mistanna Bhandar

Published on June 16, 2007 in Calcutta and Memories. 101 Comments

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.

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In Praise of Bandhs

Published on December 21, 2006 in Bengal, Calcutta and Memories. 47 Comments

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]

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