Apur Sansar

Jhinder Bandi: If the Tamils have their Rajani vs Kamal Hassan, the Bengalis had Soumitra vs Uttam. Who is the better actor? Who is more drool-worthy? The verdict is still divided, just like whether ilish tastes better with shorshe (mustard) or as a patla jhol (thin curry). Tapan Sinha’s adaptation of The Prisoner of Zenda, “Jhinder Bandi” pits the two demi-gods against each other in Douglas Fairbankian sword-play, with Uttam as the hero and Soumitra as the anti-hero. Who won this battle of performances?  Many think it was Soumitra.

Abhijaan:  Soumitra would go on to make his career playing the Bangali male ideal. In “Abhijaan”, definitely Ray’s darkest film, he goes absolutely against type to play an angry uber-macho Rajput cab-driver, who lives on the edge—whether it be speeding his cab on unsteady highways, walking on the wrong side of the law or getting involved with risky women. One of Soumitra’s most intriguing roles, purely because of how outside his comfort zone he is, “Abhijaan” highlights one of the most important attributes of a true artist. The courage to take a risk.

Saat Paake Bandha: One of the best non-Ray Bengali films of the era, sitting perfectly at the cusp of popular and arthouse, Ajoy Kar’s “Saat Paake Bandha” is a fascinatingly mature deconstruction of the break-up of a marriage . Cast opposite the legendary Suchitra Sen, a formidable actress herself and the one given the meatier part, Soumitra still manages to steal the show as the vulnerable, unyielding husband, too proud to compromise, even as the beautiful relationship he has his with his wife dissolves . Possibly, his most nuanced performance in a non-Ray film, he makes you feel for him and his internal conflict.

Charulata: Satyajit Ray’s greatest work. Soumitra plays a character modelled on Rabindranath Tagore, and if that is not challenge enough, the focus of the film is firmly on Charulata (played by Madhabi Mukherjee), the bored wife of an emotionally unavailable zamindar, whose lonely life is thrown into emotional tumult by the arrival of her husband’s brother, “Thakurpo” Amal. Playing a somewhat self-absorbed l‘homme fatale, nonchalantly unaware of the effect he has on women as he flits poetically about with dreams of Mediterranean in his eyes, this is yet another tour d’force from the master thespian.

Akash Kusum: A tragi-comedy about the lies we say for love, a show-case for freeze-frames and other Truffaut-inspired cinematic techniques considered “edgy” for the times,  and an extended Marxist metaphor for class-struggle, Mrinal Sen’s “Akash Kusum” is an eternal favorite for Soumitra-fans. Here he plays an urban, lower-middle-class Bengali man who borrows the trappings of affluence from his rich friend in order to impress the girl of his dreams. Many of you have seen the comparatively feeble Hindi re-make, “Manzil”, that finishes with Amitabh Bachchan reading a book titled Physics and winning back the object of his love. More bleak is the Bengali original wherein the tragedy of a man, trapped by birth and circumstance and yet brave enough to reach for the sky and accept the reality of his glorious failure with a last longing look, is brought out brilliantly by Soumitra.

Kapurush: An under-appreciated Ray classic, Soumitra plays a largely unlikeable hero, spineless and timid with a streak of absolute selfishness, who abandons his strong-willed girl-friend once and then, after a chance encounter, tries to win her back. It is a very difficult role, as Soumitra, like a master painter, takes the stereotype of the Bengali romantic hero and daubs it with strategic strokes of grey. A must-watch.

Teen Bhuboner Paarey: A rather standard issue story of the curative power of love, this is essential for the Soumitra experience purely because of how effectively he discards his cerebral serious image to embrace pure commercial cinema. One of his biggest commercial hits, it had amazing music, sizzling chemistry between him and Tanuja and Soumitro essaying the role of a wise-cracking chengra chele” (rough translation: bad boy). And yes he also dances the twist. He would go on to do a few more light frothy romantic comedies like this (“Basanta Bilaap” comes to mind where “Miss 1976″ Aparna Sen sings seductively about her “statistics” while Soumitra goofs around disguised as an old man), ,making out-and-out commerci al movies another vital part of his oeuvre.

Sonar Kella: Soumitra plays Feluda, the iconic Bengali detective. He plays it so well that he essentially kills the character—none of the actors who have tried to play Feluda after him could fill his shoes. The original is just too overpowering. Here the g reat man is timing personified—whether it be his significant silences, the sarcastic wisecrack thrown carelessly, the contemplative arch of the eyebrow or the whipping out of the pistol. Sonar Kella is all fun, and there are many fine reasons for watching it, none greater than of course Soumitra’s rugged suavity.

Aatanka: “Apni kichu dekhen ni”. You have not seen anything. A hellish vision of urban dystopia in modern-day Kolkata, Tapan Sinha’s terrifying “Aatanka” has the finest of Soumitra Chatterjee’s later performances. As the idealistic school-teacher whose family is plunged into an unending nightmare after he witnesses a political murder committed by an ex-student, Soumitra’s character becomes a metaphor for the Apu-generation, old and disillusioned in the 80s, their post-independence optimism replaced by bewilderment at a world whose unrelenting evil they can scarcely comprehend. Truly an acting masterclass.

[This post also appears here at IBNLive]

What we do observe is Kali Pujo.

This is precisely what we were told growing up in Kolkata. Kali Pujo is for Bangalis.

And Diwali is for “Marawaris”

Now “Marawaris”, for those of you not fortunate to have been born in Kolkata, was frequently a generic catch-all to denote anyone who was non-Bengali and did not wear a turban (anyone who wore a turban was, of course, a mandatory Singhji).

“But why does the Marawari family wear new clothes on Diwali and we don’t?”

“You wore your new clothes during Durga Pujo. Did they wear new ones then? No they did not.”

“Okay, but… why do they burst more crackers?”

“Well that’s because they are businessmen. Didn’t I tell you businessmen make more money? And this is their major festival. So..”

“But still why don’t we get one of those rockets that go up and then set off ten other rockets and then all of them come down as glowing parachutes?”

“Well isn’t it a shame buying all these expensive things and setting them on fire? How about that nice cut-piece Tapai got you for Durga Pujo—you can use it for years. Let the rush get over and we will go to Oriental Tailors and make a nice trouser for you from the cloth.”

” I wish I could set that on fire. Come on, you gave that to Tapai last year and this year he just gave us that back, forgetting who he had gotten it from.”

“Now now, one must not speak like that. It’s not that we don’t have anything. Kali Pujo. That’s for us. We have mutton. But they, they still eat vegetarian even today.”

“That’s all well and good. But, tell me, why aren’t we businessmen?”

“You ask too many questions. Really.”

Kali Pujo has always been my second most favorite festival after Durga Pujo (a very close second I should add). I never much cared for Saraswati Pujo—it was too white, too pristine, too sugary, an overtly “goody goody” celebration of the intellectualism that most Bengalis worship every day of the year. Kali Pujo was somehow different, darker, laden with protein, hands-on and strangely seductive, the closest an urban middle-class Bengali boy could come to something akin to danger—-the heat from the hand-charki flowing back on your face or the gust of air from the blast of a big chocolate bomb going off a bit closer than what was safe making you feel alive in a way that  anjali in Saraswati Pujo could never do.

Buying fireworks, and I was always preferred the bombs and the rockets and the dodomas (the rocket-bomb hybrid) to the sparklers, the rongmoshaals, the charkis and the tubris (flower-pots) [not that I did not like them] ,was eagerly looked forward to all through the year.

Usually my parents would buy our firecrackers from Gariahat market which was about a ten minutes walk from where we lived. The stuff  there was expensive and given the fixed Bengali budget I had, there was not much that could be bought, no matter how much haggling mother did (and she did a lot—-the shaking of the hand, the walking away, the coming back, the whole shebang). I tried to get around this problem by expanding my tax base, something I endeavored to do by begging Dimma for some money (a packet of chocolate bomb please) but even then my arsenal, those years we shopped at Gariahat, was not something I was entirely happy with.

Sometimes, and these were red-letter years, we would go to China Bazaar where the fireworks were sold “wholesale”. Now that was an expedition—serpentine lanes, throngs of customers (including the guys we would buy the stuff at Gariahat from), ceaselessly mind-numbing chatter,  shops wall-to-wall with the most wondrous things—-massive designer rockets that reportedly spawned a thousand sub-rockets once set alight, triple do-domas and huge strings of patakas arrayed like ammunition for automatic weapons. And the most fascinating collage of garish firecracker art one could hope to see, surreal like Dali on crack—-the proud red Cock of the famous Cock brand, masculine in its cockiness, several artistic renderings of Sridevi, Bhanupriya and Meenakshi Sheshadri with diaphanous saris and over-exaggerated dodomas holding the sparkler seductively above their eyes, rotund babies wearing commando fatigues and an elephant with a sparkler coming out of its behind (I kid you not). In China Bazar, your rupee went more, way more than it did at Gariahat. The only problem was that  asking for a packet of ground-charkis was sometimes met by a polite but firm shake of the head “I am sorry but we sell them in packs of a dozen” at which you would have to try to find a more retail-sale-friendly vendor. Which was easier said than done.

One of my many regrets in life was I never went to Nungi to buy my fireworks. Nungi was a village/townsip a few miles outside Kolkata that could be reached by local train. Nungi was, in the 80s and the 90s, one of the isolated pockets in Bengal that actually flourished because of its local industry. That was because Nungi specialized in making hand-bombs or “petos” (their street name), the demand of which was steady throughout the year in a state that always witnessed record levels of political violence. During Kali pujo, they just made consumer-versions of their industrial products and they were of very high quality, proving a lot of bang for your ruppee. It’s most famous name-brand was the Buri Ma (Old Mother) line of chocolate bombs, favorite principally for the washed-out, black and white photo of the mascot on the package, that of the legendary “Buri Ma” , a stern old lady in a white widow sari. There were many legends as to who Buri Ma actually was—-according to some versions, the mascot was a tribute to Gandhi-buri or Matangini Hajra. Another version was that Buri Ma was an expert local bomb-maker whose late husband was the first person to have experienced her bomb-crafting expertise first hand. Whoever she might have been, Buri Ma chocolate bombs were the best by far and while they would retail at Gariahat (with very high margins), the real macho thing was to buy them at source. Something I never managed to do.

Once you acquired the fireworks, you had to take care of them so that they remained dry and ready to crackle. Which meant putting them on metal trays and keeping them in the sun. I remember those beautiful moments, standing on the verandah, silently admiring the gold-foiled rongmoshaals, the silvery sparklers, the pink “electric wires”, the blue flowerpots, the red-green rockets, the multi-colored chocolate bombs, the ugly black tablets of saap-baaji (they would curl up like snakes when ignited and were called “Cancer pill” because of their noxious, supposedly carcinogenic fumes) and the lines of kali-patkas all  getting steamed up.

Kali Pujo was coming. Oh what fun I was going to have.

And I did. My fireworks I set off in two stages. The first one took place on the balcony with my parents and a favorite uncle of mine (favorite not just because he also bought me fireworks). The electric wires, the charkis, the rongmoshaals, the sparklers would be disposed off round about now. The second phase was with friends, up on the terrace, where the heavy artillery (chocolate bombs, flower-pots, rockets) would be brought out.

Even when one had run out of fireworks, one could just stand and soak in the celebrations as Kolkata was transformed into a peaceful war-zone, rockets like anti-aircraft fire lighting up the sky, bomb-blasts shaking the iron grilles of the windows , the overpowering smell of barood. Awash in the pleasant heartburn that a stomach full of mutton brings about, a sensation somewhat akin to falling in love for the first time, in a city overflowing with joy, I would be happy. Truly happy.

But nothing this good lasts for long.  As the night wore on, the frequency of the blasts would go down, the light in the sky would dim and the only excitement would be that of  two drunks fighting on the road. Then surely but slowly, waves of fear would rise up the spine —-school was going to open, the festive season was done, exams were nigh, I had not done half the work I was supposed to have done and I really shouldn’t have had all that mutton.

Now of course I don’t have exams. Neither do I have Kali Pujo any more. It’s been thirteen years I have been to one. Not that I actually want to go—my friends have all moved on and they outlawed crackers because they cause sound-pollution.

Things, I realize, will never be the same.

And the main reason for that, of course, is I have changed. The carefree kid who would stuff mutton till he burped and dance about as a charki whizzzed past his feet has been replaced by a carb-and-cholesterol-counting, red-meat-wary, middle-aged man. He worries if his health insurance would consider bursting fireworks an “adventure sport” and hence not cover any injuries that occur because of it. He is wise enough now to know that carcinogenic products are not to be laughed at. And experienced enough to realize that in Kali Pujo, as in life, careless people get burnt and there is nothing heroic in that.

Which is why I do not try to recreate my past.

I simply revel in it.

It didnt matter that I had read them, like a thousand times before. Like a favorite song or a favorite person, Amar Chitra Kathas had repeat-value, you could discover and re-discover them, marveling only at how much you missed last time.

Mahabharata and the Ramayanas, historical and mythical figures, Gods and monsters, all came alive on its pages creating images of such movement and drama  that I can recollect them clearly even today—-Narasimha bursting out of a pillar, Harshavardhana moving at the head of a huge ocean of people renouncing all his worldly possessions, the Devas and Asuras churning the ocean, Drona looking on sadly as Aswathama is teased by other children.

With my writer’s hat on now, I can now appreciate how brilliantly concise yet expressive Amar Chitra Kathas were and how effectively pictures and words were used to create  narratives, compelling enough to hold the attention of the notoriously fickle young adult. But then, an young adult myself, Amar Chitra Katha was simply great fun, and more importantly fun that parents and grandparents approved of, unlike Mandrake and Phantom which were simply “comics”.

Which explained why I had hundreds of Amar Chitra Kathas and only two Mandrakes, which incidentally I remember only for the way Narda used to be drawn.

Uncle Pai the magician behind the Amar Chitra Katha and the Tinkle legacy, died recently. The great thing about being an artist is that one never really passes away. For those of us who grew up reading him, he is still very much a part of our lives, in ways we often do not realize. Whenever hair falls in front of my eyes I think “Shikari Shambhu” (his cap always obscured his eyes), or whenever I see shorts of a particular type, the name that comes to mind is Supandi. Many historic characters, like Asoka and Gautama Buddha, I visualize exactly as Uncle Pai sketched them. Much of what I know about history and mythology is based on what he wrote. And I dare say that in my generation I am not the only one like that.

So this time, when I go back to Kolkata, I have promised to go and open that lower shelf once again. The book-shelf has now mercifully moved, else I could have no longer fit into that gap without some serious plastic surgery. Once I open it, I shall take those dusty magazines out, spray away the mothballs that I know cover them, and once again take that journey into the past.

A past which has kings, queens, angels, demons, crows, crocodiles and down below, squeezed into a little corner between the bed and the shelf pouring over reams of color, little old me.

Only when I have done this, can I have truly paid tribute to Uncle Pai.

The man who drew our imagination.

Waking up and reading about the demise of Tapen Chattopadhyay, the Bengali actor famous for playing the role of Goopy Gyne in Satyajit Ray’s Goopy-Bagha trilogy for children (the last was directed by Sandip Ray based on a story written by Satyajit Ray), the first thing I thought, like countless of Bengali people of my generation, was: “Goopy will sing no more”.

Rabi Ghosh, the freakishly gifted actor who played Goopy’s partner Bagha Byne, died ten years ago. But since he played many other memorable comic characters in Bengali movies, the conceptual connection between him and Bagha was not so ‘one-to-one’  as that between Tapen and Goopy Gyne.

Today with Tapen Chattapadhyay’s death however, one also remembers Rabi Ghosh and the partnership they forged as Goopy-Bagha, the endearing musical superheroes who would always save the day, no matter the odds. The sadness we feel today is not only for the passing of a true artist but also that of  a magical age when movies were works of art, stories were true and simple,  soul ruled over special effects, and characters stayed in our hearts long after the end credits had rolled.

Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (1968), the first in the trilogy based on characters created by Satyajit Ray’s grandfather Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury, was one of the first movies I ever saw in a cinema theatre, that air-conditioned house of light and shadow where I would enter a few Sundays in a year, clutching Baba’s sleeve in one hand and in the other a trusty Kwality Choco-bar, my most favorite ice-cream in the whole wide world.

For those who do not know the legend of Goopy-Bagha a little introduction. Singer Goopy and drummer Bagha were rural simpletons with two common traits, an unquenchable desire to express themselves musically and a total lack of any talent.  Thrown out from their respective villages by angry citizens and the king for their tuneless singing and rhythmless drumming, they retired to the forest. There however, their singing and drumming was music to the ear of the King of Ghosts (yes more than a bit of resemblance to the legend of Himesh Reshammiya) and his army of happy spirits. Being denizens of a higher plane of existence, they appreciated the netherwordly charms of Goopy and Bagha’s music and broke into a grand group dance.

Pleased by their ability, The King of Ghosts granted the duo three wishes—–the ability to get any clothes and  any food they want by merely clapping their hands, a pair of golden shoes by which they could be teleported anywhere in the world and the power to make such beautiful music that would make people stay frozen to the spot (shades of Harry Potter’s Petrificus Totalus). Armed with these magic spells, Goopy and Bagha walked the earth till they came to Shundi, a peaceful kingdom under threat from the kingdom of Halla. There with the help of song, dance, much bumbling and laughter, Goopy and Bagha spoil the plans of the evil war-mongering minister of Halla, the person who was precipitating the conflict (with whom I nowadays  find an uncanny resemblance to Dick Cheney), restore peace to the world and get married to the princesses.

I saw Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne in 1979 when I was four years old. I don’t remember much of what exactly I loved but I do remember laughing through all of it. After all a movie with magic, beautiful songs, the antics of Goopy and Bagha, the dance of  fat ghosts and memorably funny evil characters just could not go wrong. It was however on subsequent viewings of this classic, and I have seen it many times, that I not only saw the political subtext but appreciated the subtle nuances of Satyajit Ray’s craft—– his ability of underplaying humor and his use of irony, the poetry of the songs and the beauty of the music (he was the lyricist and music director), the genius of the “dance of the ghosts” special effects [Video]  and the magical “bringing-a-lump-to-the-throat” sequence when at the crack of dawn, Goopy and Bagha discover their metamorphosis into actual musicians, their faces alight with wonder, catching the rays of the sun as Anup Ghosal’s ethereal voice sings “Dekho re nayan mele jogoter bahaar” [Open your eyes and witness the beauty of the world], the most beautifully symbolic depiction of  artistic awakening I have seen captured on screen, a cinematic equivalent of Tagore’s “Nirjhorer Sopnobhongo”.

In 1980, the sequel Hirok Rajar Deshe (In the land of the Diamond King) released, twelve years after the original. The expectation was thick in the air, cinema halls were booked full. I remember going in with my parents and the moment Tapen Chattopadhyay and Rabi Ghosh came on the screen, in full color, the entire hall exploded. In this installment, Goopy and Bagha lock horns with the evil Hirok Raja (made unforgettable by the genius of Utpal Datta), a king who with the help of an equally wicked scientist-magician has made a Brainwashing machine into which he throws in his subjects and makes them into zombies. Then they are put to work in diamond mines, minting money for him. Goopy and Bagha join hands with the dissident Udayan Pandit, played by Ray favorite Soumitro Chatterjee, who is Hirok Raja’s enemy numero uno because he wants the citizens of the kingdom to be educated and liberated in spirit, something that Hirok Raja dreads. And again after a series of hilarious adventures including Goopy Bagha’s run-in with a tiger and the evil magician and his machine, Hirok Raja and his band of sycophantic ministers are overthrown and happiness reigns.

Hirok Rajar Deshe might not have the joyous simplicity of Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne but it more than makes up for it with its astringent satire and more nuanced political undertones, Hirok Raja being the archetypal corrupt and megalomaniac totalitarian ruler,who bases his rule on the “brain-washing” power of propaganda, mis-education,  re-writing of history and the merciless suppression of all dissent. The final scene of Hirak Rajar Deshe where liberated subjects rush out and pull down giant statues of Hirok Raja while singing “Dori dhore maaro taan, Raja hobe khaankhaan” (Pull at the rope and destroy the power of the King) was Ray’s prophecy for the regimes that ruled through the “cult of the personality”  and within a few years  identical scenes would be repeated across Europe as the Berlin Wall, statues of Lenin and  Ceaucescu would come down in exactly the same way.

The last movie of the trilogy Goopy Bagha Phire Elo (1991) was a disappointment. Directed by Sandip Ray, based on a story by Satyajit Ray at a time when the master was seriously ill, it did not match up cinematically to the standards of the preceding two. Storywise, it was excellent though—being the darkest of the three. Goopy and Bagha are getting old and when another evil sorcerer promises to turn their ages back twenty years if they steal for him, they give into the dark side of the force. But they ultimately realize the folly of their ways, guided by their moral compass—-the King of the Ghosts and foil the plans of the evil sorcerer. Goopy Bagha Phire Elo was beautiful in that it captured the tragedy of aging brilliantly with a sequence where  Goopy and Bagha make peace with the inevitability of 0ld age by saying “As long as one gets wiser and earns more respect, growing old is actually a step up” being a personal favorite of mine. Such moments of brilliance were however few and far in between, the acting from the side characters overtly theatrical, the direction from Sandip Ray not as sharp and the music, the life-blood of the series, quite definitely weak in comparison to the other two.

So what was the secret behind the success of the characters of Goopy and Bagha? First of all, they were golden-hearted simpletons—-one could empathize with them far easier than with two other popular literay creations of Ray—the super-genius Shanku and the uber-cool Feluda. Second, Tapen Chattopadhyay and Rabi Ghosh were masterful actors with brilliant comic timing, their chemistry unsurpassed and I wonder whether anyone else could have breathed so much life into these characters as they did. Third, Goopy and Bagha captured the essential Bengali character—–they would break out of prison by offering the guard a tasty head of fish and stop wars by raining magical milk-based sweets from the heavens. And like Bengalis, they had the wanderlust, wondering from place to place: bonete, pahare, moruprantore (in the forest, in the mountains and in the desert) whenever they felt frustrated with life. Food, sleep, travel and music—-that was all they had and all they wanted. What could be more heroic to a Bengali than that?

The characters we grow up with become an intrinsic part of who we are. So it is only natural that the demise of the faces we associate with those characters will cause us sorrow . At the same time, let us however take solace in the fact that Goopy has finally joined Bagha in the happy land of the ghosts where they shall  lighten up the world beyond with their sense of humor and song.

And maybe another generation of Goopys and Baghas, while wandering into the forest or surfing on Youtube, will encounter the King of Ghosts and be blessed once again with the “jobor jobor teen bor” (The Three Great Blessings) of friendship, music and innocence.

Continuing my series [Baba Deewana, Dheere Dheere Haulle Haulle ]on people who inspired me (a spin-off on the chapter in my book “May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss” on inspirational movies of the 90s) , I present to you another of my gurus.

A day in the nineties. The sun had set and evening was descending. I was waiting for a friend, sitting on the stairs of a building, not wanting to go upstairs to his place. The building’s guards and their friends were sitting in a circle listening to a song on the battery-operated cassette player. There was darkness all around because of a load-shedding (i.e. no power) and mosquitoes, the size of Shilpa Shirodhkar, were feasting on my neck.

It was then that I heard him, a marvelously mellifluous voice, dripping with romantic melancholia, overpowering me with the same intense emotion that assailed me when I listened to “Kal college bandh ho jayega tum apne ghar kho jayoge, Phir ek ladka ek ladki se judaa ho jayega toh mil nahee payega” from Jaan Tere Naam or watched Nayan Mongia, sent in a pinch-hitter, try to hit out.

The mark of a true musical genius is his ability to touch the pink emotional core inside each of us, burrowing through layers of societal conditioning. Very soon, everyone—the guards, the istri-wala (the person who irons clothes) and myself were enraptured by the voice, the lyrics with the clever turn of phrase “Raahein wafa pe thi tum waadon ki torch lekar” and in general the entire message of “Tum to There Pardesi”. As the singer sang “Lekin yeh kya batoon ab haal doosra hai [Pause for effect] woh saal doosra tha yeh saal doosra hai”, all of us were lost  in our private purgatories, reminiscing of love lost forever.

It was a few days later that while watching ATN I saw the video of the song, the album cover (copied from Raja Hindustani) and the man whose voice I heard that day—–Altaf Raja, who would soon emerge, imaan se,  as one of the musical icons in the golden age of the video song.

Most people associate Altaf Raja with soulful qawwalis of the type “Main kapde badal kar jayoon kahaan aur baal banayoon kis ke liye”  [Audio] and it is true, with his vocal texture, that tragedy was his forte.

But somehow for me the man was truly in his elements when he belted out his more philosophical songs.

Like “Yaroon maine panga le liya” with its “Usne dekha idhar, aur maine dekha udhar, aur usi darling ne mere gaal par, ek bhadpoor thappad diya” (though why a girl, on being referred to as “darling” by such a handsome man looking at her “udhar”, would give a tight slap I never understood [Video].

Like “Tu tu tu tu ruu ruuu, Yeh raat hai rangeen sharabi JHOOM  , chahne laga nasha hai gulabi JHOOM ” , the foot-stomping duet with Shweta Shetty, from Keemat which always made me get up from my seat and do the Altaf Raja step.

Like “Pyar gajaab ki cheez hai padh lo aaj subaah ka parcha, Pyar karoge to muft main ho jayega yaaron charcha” from Chandaal, a song that had sinister prophecy for Swami Nityananda should he have listened to it. [Video]

Like “Ishq aur pyar ka maza lijiye, Thoda intezaar ka maza lijiye” from Shapath which became a clarion call to all those engineering boys waiting  for years and years for some love, to enjoy this anticipation using whatever devices that lay in their hands. [The song also had Prabhuji and Jaggu-da locking steps with Altaf Raja, making it one of the most iconic videos of the 90s. (Video)]

Of course today, the golden days of Altaf Raja are long gone, his last magical creation being for the movie Company (he did turn music director for the movie “Market” noted for the dialog between a lady of commerce and her client—Zara halloo hallo kar).

But he still resides in my heart, not just as the person who taught me that our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought, but as someone who made me truly understand poetry, poetry of the sort “Marham lagane hum gaye, marham ke kasam marham na mila, marham ki jagaah mar hum gaye”, lines that warm the heart even on cold nights of self-doubt.

Dear Altaf sahaab, tum se kitna pyar hai, dil mein utarkar dekho lo.

Na yaakeen aaye to phir………dil badalkar dekh lo.

Bhagwan ke liye tujhe chod doon to main kya khayoon—Prasad?

-Shakti Kapoor (Insaniyat Ki Dushman)

Cricket provided role models and life lessons for people who were at their formative stages in the 90s. Vinod Kambli taught us that without self-control, one can keep on flunking Class 11 even when you are the second best boy in class, Azharuddin taught us why you should not spend so much time on the phone talking to friends and Inzamam showed us how you should never ever be provoked even when people called you a potato.

But the man who influenced me most was, without doubt, Venkatesh Prasad.

For starters, he convinced me never to go by appearances.

Now normally a person who Ravi Shastri would use the sobriquet “strong strapping lad” to describe and whose job description included the three words “Right arm fast” would be expected to bowl fast. Most of the time.

Not Prasad.

His shock ball was the slow-leg cutter till very soon it became his stock ball, with the shock ball now being the slower leg-cutter. A few years down the line that became his stock ball and yes you guess it his shock ball was now the even slower leg-cutter.

As a matter of fact, according to legend, once it seems the non-striker, Arjuna Ranatunga, had detected the leg-spin grip when Prasad was about to deliver the ball. Aware that the batsman facing up, Chaminda Vaas, was not skilled enough to read the finger position, Ranatunga walked to the other end(at Ranatungian pace), whispered in his ear “Warnakulasuriya Patabendige Ushantha Joseph Chaminda Vaas, this guy has bowled a leg-cutter”, Vaas  said “Thanks for telling me. Not a surprise though. After all what else could it be !” , then told Ranatunga two jokes about overweight, potbellied people which angered Ranatunga who then walked back to the popping crease, just in time for the ball to reach the batsman.

Someone once told me that Samuel Beckett, himself a very good cricketer, wrote En attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot), a play about people waiting for something that never arrives, after batting against Prasad (a homage line being “Come on, Gogo, return the ball, can’t you, once in a way?”), but I find that tough to believe.

Besides inspiring me to pace my life properly, Prasad also showed me the power of giving. Match after match, he would keep on giving to the batsmen till they got tired of hitting him round the park and gave up their wickets in sheer embarrassment. And yet the smile on his face would never vanish.

The true generational significance of Prasad, which is why I am such a fan, is because he exorcised India of the demons of defeat. Yes I am referring to the six off last ball at Sharjah that broke us totally—-so much so that teams never believed they could look at Pakistan in the eye. In 1996, on a magical night in one of the crucial games of the decade, the kind that comes rarely in history, when Aamir Sohail raised his bat to taunt India, Prasad, normally the angel of peace and giving, snapped in a way that made me stand up, my throat choked with emotion.  In real life, we may react to 26/11 by surrendering and licking boot in Sharm-el-Sheikh but at least on the cricket pitch, we will give as good as we get.  It was Venkatesh Prasad who sent that message with the uprooted stump and the earful that, to use a phrase from Gladiator, “echoed in eternity” and taught us once again that we can defeat Pakistan. At least on the field.

While many do remember that act of Prasad, what many forget is Prasad’s encore performance in the next World Cup in 1999. Against the same opposition. Akram had taunted India’s strength by calling it a practice match.  With the shadow of Kargil, the man who raised his arm was Venkatesh Prasad destroying the Pakistani batting line-up, then one of the strongest in the world, in another lethal display of “rising to the occasion” concluding the match, tellingly, with the wicket of Wasim Akram. Pakistan was advancing to the semis and we were almost out. But the magic of Prasad was that despite this, he made Pakistan feel defeated and us swell like champions.

It would not be unfair to say that Pakistan brought out the best in Prasad, including once taking five wickets for zero runs in a Test match in 1999. Of course Pakistan never forgave him for his repeated demolitions of their batting line-up with the Jang-iya group even carrying an article during IPL 1.0 saying that Prasad as a coach of Royal Challengers apologized for leaving out Misbah-ul-Haq. But we know better.

The 90s were a tumultous time— marked by increasing commercialization of the game, match fixing, collusion between opposing teams and other similar malfeasance. Now of course the game has changed a lot, match-fixing, money power, influence-peddling and politicking are a thing of the past and people like Sreesanth have emerged the role-models of today.

And yet the main man remains, a beacon of light to people like us, a living lesson that while slow and steady may not  hit the target always, it sure does make the ride worth taking.

[Picture courtesy the Hindu]

When you were called to the senior teacher staff room in South Point High School on the orders of the legendary ADG (Anjan-babu) you knew immediately that a few things might have happened—-that you had been spied upon smoking (which I did not), you had been found out going to private coaching classes (which I did) or you had been discovered to be going out with a girl (which I tried to do but without much success)

So imagine my surprise when ADG asked me, in that booming voice of his old South-Pointers so love to reminisce about,—–”So Quiz do you like Baba Sehgal?” (His name for me was Quiz because I was on the school quiz team, an activity he thoroughly disapproved of because to him “quizzing” was for pseudos who hid their lack of depth of knowledge by “chaliyati” [oversmartness]).

I knew the answer that was expected from me—-I was supposed to look vacant as if I had never heard that name. However unlike Peter I did not want to deny my Christ.

“Yes I do. He is pretty good.”

ADG turned to Subhendu-babu and raised his hand in exasperation.

“Somehow I had figured out that Quiz here would love Baba Sehgal. The moment I saw that….. on TV the first person I thought of was Quiz” he said, pointing an accusatory finger at me.

I of course felt proud at the association between us. In the early 90s, when DD Metro was revolutionizing the entertainment landscape in India with Superhit Muqabla (a show he was the DJ of till he moved to ATN with Superhit Hungama), Baba Sehgal had come into my life. It was actually on Superhit Muqabla that I had first seen him, in the Ken Ghosh-directed music video  “Dil Dhadke” [Video] which had caught my eye based on the oomph provided by the then-scandalous Pooja “Bodi” (Her Kamasutra ad and her Monroe-style blowing skirt in “Pahela Nasha” had firmly imprinted her in the consciousness of high-school kids like yours truly). However on multiple listenings, I became more and more drawn to the artistic talents of the man standing near the industrial fan baring his pigeon-like chest, his white shirt open, showing the world that you dont need strong pectoral muscles but just attitude to strut your stuff.

And what lovely music was that ! Yeh koi naheen bolta hai , main bhi naheen bolunga, yeh tune kaisa jana mere yaar, He He….dekho dekho kaisi chalti hain woh haseena jaise chale dekho hirnee ki chaal. Soon I found myself sitting during Statistics paper 1 class, shaking my head and whispering the lyrics to myself as the teacher droned on about standard and mean deviation.

As an aside, a few days later after that interaction with ADG, he brought me a bunch of pictures of Baba Sehgal as a “gift” and I was officially rechristened from “Quiz” to “Baba”.

Coming back to the topic, most artists find it difficult to live upto a sensational debut. Not Baba Sehgal. I bought “Main Bhi Madonna” purely because of the cassette picture which had Baba Sehgal dressed in drag. The video of “Baba Deewana” [Audio] ,which showed him trapped in a TV trying to look at a girl taking a bath, got enormous playtime, though I accept that it was the beautiful words especially the reference to “mera figure 36 24 36″ that was specially pleasing for the scientist in me. I can remember, as clearly as yesterday, coming back from Prithwish-Babu’s mathematics tuition at night singing  happily “Shopping karne main jaati Hong Kong, Mathematics mein main kabhi naheen wrong” (I dont know whether these were the actual lyrics though, since the genius of Baba’s fast rapping was that the song lyrics appeared to be different every time you heard it) after a particularly satisfying problem-solving session.

Maybe it was just that time in my life, buried upto my neck in Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics for engineering entrance exams which forged a direct connection to my heart with Baba’s mellifluousness. If he gave me a voice in Mathematics, he also blessed me with one for Chemistry. Baba Sehgal’s song “Manjula” from his album “Dr. Dhingra” had a video wherein a mad scientist makes a beautiful girl come in a chemistry experiment, through a combination of dry and wet tests. That became my anthem song for Chemisty practicals and much merriment resulted when dressed in a white lab coat like Dr. Dhingra, I vocalized lustily the innocent lyrics—-”Danda pakadke khada hua hai Manjula”, “Dudh peeyega Raja aja Manjula”, “Khol de tu darwaza aaja Manjula”  with a nudge and a wink (of course when the chemistry professor had left the lab).

This was the golden age of Indian private albums, an age where Poornima and Sonu Nigam sung “Mera Payon Bhari Ho Gya” and Mandakini had “I am sorry Handsome there is no vacancy”. Needless to say, in this plethora of artists there were people trying to copy the great Baba.  There was the Vodoo rapper whose lame trick lay in always wearing a mask in his videos and of course Style-Bhai whose song I never quite internalized in the same way I did Baba Sehgal’s because I was too eager following the trajectory of the golden key tied around Ashwini Bhave’s waist in the video. In any case, with the amount of original material he was producing (in one of his songs Sehgal had defensed having copying Ice Ice Baby as Thanda Thanda Pani because even Ice Ice Baby had been copied from Under Pressure—-a logic of transitiveness if there ever was one), it would only be a matter of months before he caught the attention of mainstream Bollywood.

Most people’s exposure to Baba Sehgal has been through the song “Rukmani Rukmani” where the sensual way he pronounces the “khatiya pe dheere dheere khat khat hone lagi” was what I think led A R Rehman to select him as playback. It was an inspired choice—few other people would be able to put that feeling behind those words, definitely not Hariharan. However it was in Akashdeep’s great movie “Miss 420″  where Baba Sehgal appeared as a hero and playback that his talents as an actor and artist were given proper room to play. Rarely has been the act of picking up women in cars as beautifully depicted as in “Aja meri gadi main baith ja” [Video] with its sinisterly-meaningful “Pom Pom” squeezing of horn or the simple joys of “keeping it up” as in “So gya to khada hona hoga mushkil” from “Gora chehra, kala til” [Video]

However times were changing and the golden days of Indipop were coming to a close. Horrendous servants of Sauron were remixing classic oldies and pure talent like Baba Sehgal gradually became side-lined. The last really great song from Baba Sehgal I remember was “Tora Tora” [Video], a very clever tribute both to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour (“Tora Tora” being the code message transmitted to denote the success of the surprise attack) as well as to well-endowed women (kudiya maalamaal hai yaaron) before he vanished into marginality, occasionally popping up on reality shows or in soundtracks of movies like 13B with songs like “Oh sexy mama wont you do the saregama”.

And today when we have Babas like Baba Kamdev Swami Nityananda who truly brings to life words like “Aage aage ladki peeche main siyana, duniya kahe Baba ho gya hai deewana” and Baba Ramdev who prescribes the death penalty for adulterers [Link] and considers homosexuality a a genetic disorder  that can be cured through proper breathing [Video], then one does truly miss the innocence of the greatest Baba of them all, whose only crime, one could say, was his wicked rhyme.

Baba I love you.

It was during those mornings, as the cassette player blasted out Jhankar-beat-mixed songs and Bappida-r iconic “Chale aana tu paan ki dukaan pe saare teen baaje” (a line I always wanted to tell someone but somehow never got around to) and its “Pa-pa-pa Paan Paan Paan” refrain, that my mind set flight away from the world of men blackening their hair or getting a champi tel maalish or a warm wet shave.

And alighted in dream worlds of Rajesh Khanna and Tina Munim, of Reena Roy and Mohsin Khan. Hours passed as I turned the pages,my heart beating fast,  reading “Dimple’s Shattering Confessions” or examining ,with the interest of an art connoisseur,  pictures of Sonu Walia in “Akarshan” or wondering the future of humanity with “Marc Zuber–Is He the Next Big Thing?” or understanding how in a solar eclipse a small body can cover a much larger heavenly one by studying carefully Mamata Kulkarni’s famous “hands in front” picture.

Sometimes while looking intently at pictures of Neeta Puri in “her hottest photo shoot yet” I would suddenly be startled on discovering neighbourhood uncle sitting close to me, glancing over my shoulder with an angry expression on his face. Looking down in embarassment at having been caught  gaping open-mouthed at pictures good kids did not, I would put the magazine down by my side only to have uncle pick it up quickly and start leafing through to the center. Which is when I would understand why he looked angry in the first place.

The shop was owned by three Bihari brothers, all of whom looked identical with big dacoo-type moustaches, gruff and taciturn men, all of them afflicted with that disease that all barbers have—-they refuse to cut your hair beyond a certain point, threatening that your hair will stand up if they snip one additional strand of hair. That I have learnt, is just a threat, delivered in order for them to move onto the next customer and for you to need a haircut as soon as possible. Since I loved coming to the barber, I would play along. Which made me their favorite. I was quick and easy.

But my favorite was a boy they had brought from the village, younger than the three brothers, with a barely-growing moustache who was also in charge of getting tea for the other brothers from time to time. I liked him the most not because he was a good hair-cutter (he was the worst in the store) but he was the most crazed Anil Kapoor fan (he would dispense change by saying “One two ka Phour. Phour two ka one”) I had ever seen. He had stuck four pictures of Jhakass in the store right next to pictures of Ganesh and Laxmi at which he would look reverentially from time to time, no doubt because Mr. Kapoor is considered the patron saint of those who spend their life with hair. And if a song of his “hairo” would come on the radio, he would shake his head Anil Kapoor style as his scissors started snipping madly in the air, causing tremors in my heart as I came to realize the truth of the song “Zindagi ek jua hai” , fearing for my ears.

Once I came to the US, I however started dreading going to the barber. First of all, a hair cut in Stonybrook cost USD 13 + tips which was godawful amount of money for a graduate student in 1999. On top of that, the only nearby (walking-distance) hair-cutting place, colored almost totally in pink and silver,  was manned by 50-plus women, who were unfailing polite but kept on talking while cutting your hair—about the weather, about the strawberry patch in her house, about how her grandson didnt quite like football—to which I was obliged to make some polite exclamation or a “That’s marvelous” where all I wanted to was to left alone, contemplating the effect on my finances on losing USD 13 + tips. There was this time in Rochester I was seduced by a shop which advertised 5 dollar haircuts. Going inside I saw my “hair-stylist”, a teenage girl in full Goth attire, who within a blink reduced my mane to a vision of post-apocalyptic forest-land with clumps of hair standing up amidst patches of near-barren ground.

For the past few years in Maryland, I have found a guy who is fairly decent. He hardly talks and that is his greatest asset. He does play the “hair will stand up game” but I am pretty insistent in getting my way.

Needless to say, I no longer need to go to the barbershop for my share of “other woman” scandals and hot pictures—-I get them off the front pages of TOI. And perhaps my barber-friend, the inveterate Anil Kapoor-fan, has now changed beyond recognition watching his hero on “Twenty Four Season Eight” on FX and swearing by “Slumdog Millionaire” instead of “Benaam Badshah”.

Who knows?

Because in today’s world, a kiss is just a kiss. A sigh is just a sigh. And a barber’s just a place where you cut your hair.

Salesmen.

“Sale boudi sale” [not to be translated as Bhabhis for sale but Bhabhi, we have a sale"] they would shout, a never-dying cacophony that seemed to emanate from the bowels of Hell. As you tried negotiating the narrow rope that was left of the sidewalk, you would bump into people standing and bargaining, their sweat mingling with yours, with directed howls of “Ashun dada ashun notun shirt wholesale” [Come Dada come new shirts at "wholesale" prices] aimed at your eardrums making you stop in your tracks, just in time for someone to stomp your right toe.

This tedium would sometimes be broken by comic relief provided by cries of “Boudi boudi blouse niye chole jacchen” [Bhabhi is running off with blouse] as a hook of some garment hanging from the rope strung across the footpath would catch the hair of some lady walking by or by a violent diversion  provided by two shopkeepers, angry at being undercut by the other, hurling the most poetic of abuses. And no sooner had you crossed the zone of clothes-salesman would you be set upon by the “greeters” of illegal egg-roll shops that lined the footpaths. They would literally hold you by the arm and with avancular words of empathy (“Boy, you look tired after school, why don’t you have some chicken cho-men with extra sauce?” or “Going to tuition son? Ei Bhola whip up an egg roll double pronto for this gentleman right away”) entreating you to sample their wares while you tried to extricate yourself from their grasp, your senses nevertheless drawn to the chunks of meat of doubtful provenance sizzling like a seductress on the tawa .

You were not safe from salesmen even if you vowed never to go out on the streets. They would come a-knocking right when you were going to take your afternoon siesta or when you were bang in the midst of it, or when you were sitting down for lunch with your hand dripping with daal or just when you were going to put the first mugful of water on your back . No they would not go away easily, banging on the door and assaulting the bell. Nor would they be satisfied by “Barite keu nei” (No one is at home) as they would retort, somewhat logically,  “But you are there.” And some of them would not stop even there—for instance sellers of “products for leddies” would sometimes start doing their sales pitch from the other side of the door, in their loudest voice so that the neighbors giggled, till the “leddy” in concern would open the door out of embarrassment.

Salesmen. Sometimes the object of irritation, sometimes of anger, and sometimes of awe. It takes something special to be able to take the first step, to reach out to a stranger, suppressing ego in the face of possible rejection, often conveyed in a manner that is hardly gentlemanly. All this in order to make a sale.

My favorite salesmen however were those whom one encountered in the book fair (an old post I wrote about them) , authors and poets who would roam around, engage book-hunters in banter and then sell them their writings. They were my favorite because of the quiet dignity they bought to the joy of writing, radiating an earnestness and love of what they do in a way that would touch even the most cynical of us.

And now I find myself, in a very different context and using a very different medium and using words like “buzz creation” , in the ranks of those who sell their words, peddling my own book “May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss”  as I use my own little corner of the cyberfootpath to block your virtual surf path for a second, entreating you to do the needful.

Yes the book has gone on pre-order. Come this way please.Sale. Sale.

A feature on “May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss” in the Indian Express today (February 18, 2010)

Durga Pujo.

Jostling amidst insane crowds. Craning necks trying to catch a glimpse of the protima (the idol). Getting my feet trampled by 200 lb mashima from Titagarh. Having my behind worked over by the pickpocket expecting his pujo bonus. Consuming boiled rice sold as “biriyani” and canine meat as mutton roll. Being awash in the bleary-eyed punch-drunkenness that comes not from good old bubbly but from the positive energy that pervades the air.

Not for me.Not any more.

Settled across the Atlantic in Obamaland, a “family man” no less, things are very different.

Very much so.

Durga Pujo is now a social event, something that no longer knots the stomach in expectation, something that no longer quickens the heart. No it is not. It is  just yet another diversion on an autumn weekend (Lord Rama may have done “akaal bodhon” but the NRIs go one step further—”weekend bodhon”) when you bring out that kurta (“Punjabi” we Bangalis call it) get into your Honda Civic, consult Mapquest and drive to the venue (usually a temple or a school rented out for the purpose).Once there you nod your head, fold your palms and smile vacantly at assorted strangers, do a few “stop and chat”s, take a Patel shot in front of the protima to be sent back home (“What did you do during Pujos?”), stand in the line for the  food and then drive back, stop at Giant Supermarket to pick up milk, bread and turkey slices for Monday lunch and sink down in front of the TV, just in time for Dateline NBC.

Of course this is just my experience. I am sure many people thoroughly enjoy the whole rigmarole of the  NRI Durgapujo, especially the Bangali Association types, the “organizer”s who bark the orders and the “performers” who put on the programs and the “editor” s who compile the Pujo brochure.

It’s just that I am not one of them.

Not that I don’t enjoy anything. Far from it.

For instance there is the unalloyed joy I derive from reading the “supposedly intellectual” Bangla “poems” (my sure shot formula for enjoying those lines of airy nonsense is to do the old Jadavpur edit i.e. inserting rhyming swear words every third word. Trust me it gives a whole new meaning for even the most moronic juxtaposition of words). Then there is  the sheer assault on sensibilities otherwise known as “singing by local talent”, an euphemism for the wife/daughter of one of the Pujo’s chief patrons given the privilege of hogging the mic before the “guest artists” come on to the stage. Not to forget the vicarious pleasure of watching energetic Bangali bhodrolok and bhodromohila trying to be “Punjabi” hep by dancing in a ring-a-ring-a roses pocket full of poses style to the tune of Bhoomi’s “Barandaye Roddur”.

But all this gets boring after a few minutes as I sit on a chair surrounded by other men, whom I just got introduced to (but who all know each other quite well) as they discuss mortgage refinance rates, proposed H1B legislation, Green Card retrogression, spelling bees and IRA accounts. Totally out of it, I overhear scraps of female spousal conversation—animated discussions of  mothers-in-law, house decorations, saris and jewelery, where in Germantown do you get Pabda fish and why their kids just cannot speak a word of Bangla.

To break the tedium, I look desultorily over the room—–I see kids running around and harried fathers running after them while some of the other born-in-the-USAs stand in front of a table and enjoy a typically Bengali meal of chicken pizza and Mountain Dew, brought especially for those kids who just cannot eat Bangali food (Jaano to amar Khokon-sona na just cannot eat any bhaat babaah….how so naughty. He wants only peeja and McDeee).

And around this time, my mind starts wandering blotting out the surroundings as I get transported to another place. Another time.  Of that Pujo where a friend got lost from our group of seven and announced on the public address system that his six friends are lost in Muhammed Ali Park (yes such was his self-confidence that he was convinced that it was not he who was lost but the six other people who were with him).  And of that time when another friend was accosted by an irate father for staring at his daughter and his fumbled attempt at conciliation consisted of saying ” What is the problem sir? This is Pujo. You are here to look. I am here to look. Let us both look.”  And this other Pujo when I had a mutton cutlet and ate something that was slightly alive inside it.

My reverie is interrupted by a Pizza-chomping kid running into me, excusing himself with a quick “Sorry uncle” as he keeps hopping about. Giving him a benign avuncular smile I realize I have been engaging in the stereotypical nostalgia for ‘good old times’, the kind typically engaged in by the “uncle” types, those whom we used to keep at arm’s length many years ago, the ones who while they rail at the world changing refuse to recognize the fact that they themselves have changed.

Yes yes I know.

But surely you will accept that I am allowed this indulgence.

Because after all it’s that time of the year.

Durga Pujo.