No time for you man...Good news or bad, I don't know, but this one comes from June—who can on any given day boast of shaping a chunk of Calcutta's P3 culture. After all, she has often left one baffled. Shall one call her an actress, a so-cialite or an event man-ager? Bottomline is, her days starte...

Poor Boy, he won't survive this Game

Talking of DVDs, this one just fell into my hands. In the most literal sense. I was shifting through the stacks of my local DVD library. Mine, situated deep inside a winding lane that opens into one of the busiest crossings in old North Calcutta, stocks an interesting collect...

Sorry Mr Dutt, my fault

It happened simply by chance. Watching two films back-to-back is nothing singular. But when the two are such that they deal with almost the same subject, the occasion requires mention. Something that happened to me a few days back. The first film was 'Chalo, Let's Go' directed...

Prosenjit and the attitude shift

The other day, I was talking to Prosenjit Chatterjee in a surrounding that has, as of now, been largely unfamiliar to the Tollywood-based scribe brigade.
It may be a purana practice in Bollywood, to have your personal PR, but over here it's a direct contact bet...

A poacher's approach

It 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...

Politics that ruined a forest

I 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 ...

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 Chakraborty had put their respectiv...

Gargi bites the yatra dust

Finally, 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 ...

Villagers, farmers... poachers, loggers

(Names of Bodo characters have been changed for obvious reasons.)

The evening I reached the Kokilabari resort in Manas, I was introduced to Tau (not his real name, that's what the others at the camp resort called this man). He drove a run-down Maruti Gypsy pick-up—on...

Manas, back to life

The 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...