A brush with BanglaMy interest in Kolkata had always been strong, so when I fixed a return to the city this year, I decided I would have to learn some of the Mother Tongue. It seemed a natural choice, and an important task, if I was to get the most from my experience. Taxi drivers: movers and shakers at the wheelTaxi drivers are usually as churlish as the belching rattletraps they steer by the injudicious overuse of biceps and forearms, and lazy feet. But their degree of tetchiness varies from country to country, and within a country, from city to city. IWhat will happen to "Aam Admi" ?Inflation rate is going high day by day. Today it is above 11.4%. Prices of all the essential commodities are going high. Steel, Cement prices are beyond reach. Now no one is thinking what will happen to "aam admi". Govt. and Private officials get Dearness Allowances(D.A.), but what about the thousands of retired employees of Govt and Private Undertakings who don't even get any Pension? Their only income is Monthly Income Schemes of Post Offices, whose interest rate is fixed at meagre 8% P.A. Purchasing power of these people are decreasing day by day. Prices of medicine is touching the sky, how these people will manage the increasing medical expenses due to old age? No answer.....Kolkata goes up in smokeI returned to Kolkata late last year after a gap of a decade to find the city – smoking. I mean, literally. Strangely enough, I cannot recall if this was the case ten years ago, when I left the city as a young college student, though common sense tells me there’s no reason for it to have been otherwise. I daresay growing up in the city meant taking a lot of things for granted – things that my absence has rendered all too visible. A poacher's approachIt was during those two decades of the Bodo movement, that Manas became inaccessible to visitors, the state machinery, and finally in 1992, earned the sobriquet of a ‘World Heritage Site in Danger’. Sixteen years later, I was sitting deep inside the jungle at a forest camp, face to face with a very shy old man, who, the others at the camp tell me was a poacher. He is a forest guard now—has a small hut and an old wife. That's about as much as he has. And he barely survives. His lot, like the lots of others, has not changed much. Sixteen years back, they had poverty and police to deal with. Now, they at least have peace of mind. It's ten at night, the jungle is alive with all sorts of sounds, there's a crackling fire flickering on the faces of everybody who huddles close to it. Everybody at the camp has gathered for a little fireside story.Politics that ruined a forestI have been planning to write on this for long, but somehow never ended up putting a finger on the keyboard—for this at least. That the intention was there is of course beyond doubt. You guys out there, who care to check out the ILK albums, must have noticed a few snapshots of Manas, posted by yours truly Sudip Ghosh. The plan was to back that up with a bit of journalistic dough, which I’m finally being able to do now.They, as usual came, after it was dark(Names of Bodo characters have been changed for obvious reasons) The answer came to me in front of a camp fire one evening, when my friend and guide Sunny told me his story. It's been a few years since Help Tourism and Sabyasachi ChakrGargi bites the yatra dustFinally, another one bites the dust. That's Gargi Roy Chowdhury. On Fri-day, the day of rathayatra, vernacular dailies were full of yatra ads, and Gargi's face was pretty prominent among a host of other TV stars.
Two years back, when she was returning to the stage, we had got talking at the South Club lawns over a couple of fish fries— done in the anglo-bangla style, with enough batter and a chunk of well marinated bekti inside. She was doing the central character of an adapted Brechtian play directed by Ramaprasad Banik,then. The fish-fry was tasty, and it was, as always a treat to be with a sweet lady with the periodic plonk of raquet hitting ball in the background. A pleasing experience.
One of the points that we discussed that day centered round the prospects of her trying out a Chitpore venture, now that, after Tollywood, she had thought of returning to Academy again.
Gargi, as is typical of her, had played her cards cautiosly. "Let us see," is all that she had allowed.
However, a couple of years down the line, and I see her well entrenched into the Chitpore brigade— hogging a half page colour ad with Subhashis, rubbing shoulders with Kanchan Mullick and Chandreyee Ghosh, Locket Chatterjee, Abhishek Chatterjee among others. All of them her colleagues. Some also yatra veterans.
So? I call her and ask. You too finally bite the dust.
"Oh, the requests were coming for quite some time, but I had decided to join yatra only in 2008."
Why? Anything special about 2008?
"Because that gives me a chance to prove that it is not always an out-of-work actor who take a yatra offer. Am working in main roles in three megas, and here I am doing a yatra too," she answers.
But what about the fatigue? Rehearsals are to start in August and she will have to finish her episodes well in advance for the shows, which will start around October.
"True, but I have six hours extra every day. You see, I don't have a family to look after. The only thing I do is work, right? So why shouldn't I work more?" she throws back the question at me. "Besides, am not doing films you see."
What she left unsaid was something else. A few days back, when I was interviewing Prosenjit Chatterjee, he had indicated how yatra offers come pouring in when a star has less work. His point though was different. He was explaining why a film star should fight shy of yatra offers even during hard times. That interview was published a couple of weeks back.
And here was Gargi, bringing up the same topic.
Hello, who was she getting even with?
Nobody perhaps, because she has already said she is not doing films after all. Gargi plays her cards real cautiously. Villagers, farmers... poachers, loggers(Names of Bodo characters have been changed for obvious reasons.)Learning science the mad wayA scientific principle can be taught as scores of black letters and a couple of diagrams. Or it could take the form of a discovery, leaping out of books through exciting experiments. Instead of reading about a rocket, one could also build one thatSchool of rockFor the budding musicians of St James’ School, picking up trophies at prestigious rock competitions in the city is a fairly routine affair. With the guitar, drums, keyboard and the vocalist synchronising in a perfect crescendo, they are a hard team to beat in the fest circuit.Bye bye Bypass?The day was June 30. The time was past 11.15 am. I was still on the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass, close to the newly inaugurated Mani Square shopping mall. I was a bundle of nerves, as I had to reach Belgharia for my university exams. At the moment, ILocked in a war of wordsIt was a pitched battle as 16 students locked horns over the topic ‘The women’s reservation bill is a threat to male dominance’, at the eastern zonal finals of the ninth inter- institutional L N Birla Memorial debate, held at the Vidya Mandir auditorium.Art for nature’s sakeYuksum is a five and half hour journey from Gangtok. The government senior school of Yuksum doesn’t have an auditorium. The only kind of theatre youngsters get to see are street plays. Yet the students were at the Birla Industrial and Technological Museum, staging their play Resurrection of a Mummy, written and directed by their biology teacher Sanjay Acharya.Unholy actions by holy menTwo school kids went missing from the ashram of a noted spiritual guru, their dead bodies were subsequently discovered near a river bed. It was said that the kids had drowned even though the depth of water in the vicinity did not justify that reasoning. Exchange of knowledgeClassroom lessons for students of Calcutta International School (CIS) goes beyond the chalk-and-talk method. Working in collaboration with College Marx Dormoy in Paris, the two institutions publish French magazines every year and exchange it between themselves.Book world boundWith the Internet, television and video games claiming students’ short attention span, books are being relegated to the background. The Cambridge School, near Hazra, has come up with a novel concept for taking youngsters back to the written word. Mental math, the Vedic wayHave you ever tried to do not-so-simple calculations in your head? Chances are you had to either reach for a piece of paper or worse, a calculator. But there is a method that lets you develop high speed calculation skills — without external aid. UPA wins trust voteThe political upheavals of the past few days have finally come to an end with the UPA Government winning the trust vote. There were tense moments and, when the final results were declared, there was a sigh of relief and smiling faces. The difference was expected to be miniscule and there were assumptions that the speaker might have to give the casting vote for a positive result. But, that was not necessary – the difference was a healthy 19 votes. Obviously, in spite of assurances given to the party leaders by their members, there was cross voting. That has not made the leaders happy. The situation now is that one cannot trust his own people! Manas, back to lifeThe circle was not easy to come by. But now that they have, the Bodos are not going to give away. And the best example of this is the MMES and their small, almost rudimentary tourist promotion effort. The huts, the common canteen, the villages just beyond the som plantation on the edge of the forest, all contribute to it. They live a hard life, but they do not compromise on the quality of their hospitality. At least not as of now. Otherwise they would not have gone out of their way to bring me a bowl of pork curry for lunch. This is how it happened:
The pork curry that the Bodos make is truly re-markable. At least there is nothing better in pork that I have tasted as yet and I pride myself to be quite a hog at pork. It defies all established preperations. Pork, chopped like mut-ton, potatoes chopped, then cooked in a paste of onion, garlic, green and red chillies, spiced with cardamom, daruchini and cumin leaves. And then pressure cooked with wa-ter. As simple as it can get. The secret lies in the quality of the pork. It's from home-bred variety, that is a cross-breed of the Australian pig and the local variety. The result is the softness of the flesh (believe that comes from the Australian side) with a taste that's far from farm-bred blandness (that must be coming from the genes coming from the local variety).
This I had tasted on the first day of my visit. But knowing that the rest of the party were not pork eaters, the boys simply had not prepared the dish for the rest of our stay. On the last day, I could not keep myself but enquired about it. It wasn't prepared on that day too. But, a request from the guest is a request. And there was the bowl of pork curry waiting for me at my table at lunch. They had arranged it from the kitchen of a fellow Bodo in the village. That's hospitality personalised for you at the MMES.
Hospitality that will take you deep into the forest, on foot, guarded by the locals and a forest guard. The Bodos will never harness an elephant for the whim of the tour-ists expecting an elephant safari. They will rather make you face the ele-phant on foot, and fire in the air to drive it off. The downside, you can be at-tacked by a raging bull. But your friends know how to fend it off, if need be with their own life. The upside, you get to experi-ence an elephant towering in front of you for the first time in your life. It's one thing to look down upon the jungle from an ele-phant's back. It's another thing to look up and measure yourself against a wild elephant. If you are seeking the kick of adven-ture, then this is pure al-cohol.
And there are other as-pects to this hospitality too.
Hospitality, that will make the Bodos break into a spontaneous folk dance in front of you in the light of the pick-up trucks, sim-ply because you offered to share their drink with them in their midst. Hospi-tality, that will keep them awake till the time you have not been tucked up for bed. Hospitality that will wake them up much before you, so that when you wake up, you get your morning cup of piping hot tea.
All these from boys aged between 18 and 25. Most of whom can't speak your language, but under-stand it.
Most of whom have no idea of issues plaguing world environment, but have sure pledged to re-turn their forest what their forefathers and fathers have taken.
All of them have come full circle. And they hope to bring Manas back to life. Again.Food and the City –– A Singapore DiaryHow do I explain the shock of sitting down to a very homely lunch of bhaat, daal and maach bhaja (our very own fried fish) one morning and sitting down to lunch the following day only to find the whole sea aquarium “cooke