Bollywood's 'poster boys' making a comeback!

It rarely happens that the ‘first look’ of a film poster creates such a buzz — getting 7,800 ‘likes’, 2087 ‘comments’ and 926 ‘shares’ on a social networking site. But Sanjay Leela Bhansali seems to have managed to do just that with the hand-painted posters of his upcoming film Rowdy Rathore. A tribute to over-the-top action films of the 80s, the Faulad Ki Aulad poster almost instantly brings back memories of walls plastered with faces of angry action heroes in bold red brush strokes and nubile beauties oozing pink paint. Magical, dreamy (and usually huge!), these posters were the mash up of advertising, art and storyboard depiction, all rolled into one canvas.

Bollywood’s poster art came into its own in the 1930s under the studio system that employed artists to paint posters and banners. And, after the decline of the studios, this art was created by a network of painters, photography studios and billboard workshops.

It all started with the publicity artists going through the trial screening and zeroing down on the aspects that need to be highlighted. However, in many cases they were just given albums of random production stills and from there they would choose the right images and do the sketches based on those. The sketches were sent to the producer for approval and then began the work of imbuing life to the final posters through oil paints or gouache.

Apart from highlighting the central theme of the movie, great deal of attention was paid to present the actors and actresses in new avatars. Another visual strategy employed by the Bollywood artists was dictated by the audience’s taste for paisa vasool entertainment and an item in every square inch is what masala posters and billboards offered. Not content with showing off just the lead pair, it incorporated the character actors, the villains and the vamps replete with the background dancers, and the spaces in-between filled with throbbing vignettes of a sleek car-chase scene or a sexy dance number or an action-packed climax scene.

The colour schemes of these posters were distinct (though not too different). If red signified revenge or anger, blue was synonymous with evil and pink portrayed love. But, it was the traditional style of mixing the colours and creating unique shades that made these posters alive. Often, New painting techniques were invented to bring out the right emotions and the posters more dramatic. One such was painting with a knife to add textures and contours to faces thereby making the heroes appear more macho and rugged. In the case of the poster of Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai, the artist creates a peculiar Van Gogh-like quality through its brush strokes in order to reproduce the delirium of elm trees on the Gangetic plain. The psychedelic Andy Warhol-like poster of Bobby and the pointillist style poster of Zehreela Insaan are few examples of some brilliant use of technique in film posters. Even M F Hussain, regarded as the Picasso of India, started his career in Bollywood where he used to paint film divas like Kanan Devi and Durga Khote on giant sizeposters along with painting film sets.

In the 1970’s, when a fleet of young directors and actors moved away from Bollywood ‘commercial cinema’ to explore radical new themes, a new kind of no-frills approach in posters came into being.These minimalist style posters of the ‘art house cinema’ were often created by graphic designers and illustrators from outside Bollywood and one such instance is the booklet cover for Ardh Satya by cartoonist Manjula Padmanabhan.

In 1980s new photo-reproduction technologies arrived in India that could blow up smaller artworks to the size of a 30-by-40-inch poster with superior quality. Painted posters started getting replaced by photo collages which had minimal work for the painters and scissors became more important than paint brushes. But, even this was short-lived.

In the early 1990’s, computer aided graphics slowly started replacing photo-collages and with Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, one of the first movie posters to use digital artwork, becoming as massive a hit as it did, photoshop made the paintbrush almost obsolete. Most artists had to clean their brush and palettes of the garish colours almost overnight and take up odd jobs or diversify by producing portraits of politicians and election hoardings.


However, in true Bollywood ishtyle, within a decade, hand-painted posters made a comeback. And, from huge billboards to forgotten stacks of some dilapidated closed studio to the walls of some of the most high-profile art galleries, the journey was no less dramatic.

Considered nothing more than just a vehicle of film promotion in Bollywood, these posters became coveted art in cities like Paris, Toronto, London and Berlin and almost like a ripple effect, India too slowly began to appreciate these as art form and initiatives began to revive it.

However, young entrepreneurs like Hinesh Jethwani, founder of Indian Hippy, believe that the beauty of film poster art should not be limited to an elite few and hence Indian Hippy came to existence two years back. “We wanted to present this art once again in front of people, albeit on a fresh canvas and a fair price,” says Hinesh.

Besides a line-up of very innovative and funky fashion accessories and small furniture and décor items such as hand-painted chairs and coffee tables, Indian Hippy offers unique custom painted film posters that allow individuals to bring their fantasy to life on canvas.

“Very few film poster artists remain in India who hasn’t given up the paintbrush entirely and I am glad to have found a few of them. Working with them is a continuous challenge. These billboard and poster artists were used to painting on supersized canvases with large brushes,” says Hinesh.

For Nida Mahmood, fashion designer, graphic artist and co-founder of New India Bioscope Co, which is a design conglomerate set up to revive the art and the artists of hand-painted Bollywood posters, it all started in 2009 while making a few mixed media frames inspired from the posters of Deewar. “While talking to my my business partner Raul Chandra, we suddenly had the same question, where have all these poster artists disappeared? With immense difficulty and several dead ends, we managed to find a few poster artists in their late 70s and 80s and convinced them to pass on their art to our generations. Initially unwilling, sceptical and cynical they agreed once we set up a corpus for them. We took a risk and made an attempt to bring film poster art, away from its usual hoardings, onto wearable garments.”

Her brand offers two lines. The affordable line consists reprints of digital works inspired from poster art, while the collector’s line comprises objects that are hand-painted by poster artists and include trunk tables, chairs, hand-painted jackets, tote bags etc. “I do see a huge change in the modern thinking. People are appreciative of the bygone era. It is just about presenting it to them and making them aware. Kitsch is an all pervasive word, which is not defined by filling in a handful of colours to an image downloaded from the internet. I find myself bringing kitsch and poster art together and the results are phenomenal,” says Nida.

“With quirky being the mantra of the day I feel that there is nothing more interesting and colourful than hand-painted posters. The best part about them is the fact that they can be used on almost anything ranging from cell phone covers to bed sheets to garments and even shoes,” says accessory designer Rohan Arora.

Rohan’s shoe line Naya Daur, that walked the LFW Winter/Festive 2010 ramps, had old Hindi film posters hand-painted on khadi, and chicken legs leather and became an instant hit. He has three poster artists working for him. “They are all very old today and doing odd jobs due to the digitalization of the art. One of them was pulling rickshaws in College Street, one of them working as a waiter in a roadside restaurant on Moulali and the third one was selling baby toys at the Park Circus traffic signal. Initially, it was very difficult to get them and then convince them to paint the posters on shoes instead of large canvasses. But when they did, the response was amazing,” says Rohan.

An ardent fan of Bollywood, hand-painted posters has always fascinated Rohan: “I think digital techniques are no match to brush and canvas. Painted poster brings out a lot more emotion and is far more original than a digital print. Every poster has a story of its own. Even two posters from the same film are different. And I guess it is due to this that a lot of new film directors are going back to hand -painted posters today.”

A current bunch of contemporary artists are also taking inspiration from poster art. Sharmistha Dutta’s ‘Yaadon Ki Baaraat’, which concluded this week in Delhi, was a tribute to the lost art of hand-painted posters, while Vinita Dasgupta’s ‘Bollywood Reverie’, which is on in the national capital till December 18, is a collection of paintings inspired by Bollywood and the posters. “I have presented it in a manner similar to western pop art but the theme very much belongs to the mainstream. I have used mixed mediums,” says Vinita.

Be it old art work discovered by some enthusiastic 'relic hunter' or the ones smelling of fresh paints, be it customised posters starring at you as Don or wearing Gabber on your boots, be it digital prints of old hand-painted posters or incorporating posters in digital art, or film directors going old-school again, it seems the fate of hand-painted posters is taking quite an interesting turn break ke baad!

The dream sellers of Calcutta

The feriwalas, on a sweltering afternoon, not only enticed women and children of the household with their goods, but also like magicians would cast a spell on them

Even with the monsoon being officially over, it is still raining at times and my favourite umbrella has a spike jutting out. For the last one week not a single repairwala could be spotted in the vicinity. It was Sunday morning, the best time to catch a repairwala or a feriwala. I sat myself by the window keeping a hawk’s eye and an owl’s ear on the street to grab one. One hour into the ordeal and suddenly realisation dawns: the Sunday soundscape has ceased to be what it was even four or five years ago.
There is no prabhat feri. The sound of Disney cartoons merging with old Hindi film songs and mythological serials only to be broken by an occasional “G-O-A-L” from the nearby football ground and the cacophony of a cricket match is no more. And the street that used to be abuzz with hawkers shouting on top of their voices to sell their products and services has faded making way for an eerie silence of a claustrophobic sophistication.
Yet, I could almost hear the voices:
“Aataa oyiiiiiiiiiiii...” whenever I would hear this scream, I would run to the verandah to catch hold of the custard apple (aata) seller but all I could see would be some old newspaperwala or some random hawker. To me it seemed the most surreal event on this planet. It seemed nobody else but me could hear the custard applewala’s shrill loud cry. But Ma never took this seriously. Older people never take children seriously. Not until one hot summer morning, when Ma caught me running from one window to another trying to spot the fruit vendor once again. “Certainly, this is not the season for custard apples!” But I was not convinced. I made her listen carefully: “Of course you can hear his shout! Aaataaa oyiiiii... it is loud enough!” And then she bursts out laughing: “Of course it is loud enough and it says “Purono khata boi’! It is the chap who buys old newspapers and books.” But, even after so many years I am not absolutely convinced.
Feriwalas or hawkers selling glass bangles, ice-lollies, plastic dolls, balls and cameras, Kashmiri shawls, mangoes, fish, jasmine garlands, mattresses, sweets, brooms and dreams were an integral part of the streets and the soundscape of the city till a few years ago. Every house would have their set of fixed feriwalas who would pay a visit to the household just when you ‘need’ them.
Ma would often tell stories of the Magnolia ice-cream vendors, the bel phoolwalas and the chanachurwala who was so ecstatic to have extracted some compliment from my rather reserved and strict grandfather once, that for the next few months his usual hawking chant boasted an addendum: ‘D-a-k-ta-r b-a-b-u kh-e-ye b-o-l-e-che-n bh-a-l-o h-ye-chhe! (Doctor babu said it’s good).
The cacophony of these different distinctive calls created the background score of the drama of daily life and social essayists, poets, dramatists used these characters and their cries copiously to recreate the city streets in their works. Rabindranath Tagore immortalised the simple but scary-looking, tall, bearded, Afghan dry-fruit sellers who were a common site on the streets of Calcutta in his classic short story Kabuliwala, and in Gora he brings to life a typical old Calcutta residential area replete with the distinctive calls of street vendors. And who can forget the Doiwala (curd seller) whose chants mesmerised little Amal in Dakghar! The monotony of the slow-paced, black and white ‘opera binoculared’ world of Satyajit Ray’s Charulata is often broken by the calls of street vendors. But the most noted works on hawkers and their cries are by Amritlal Basu, Kaliprasanna Sinha, Ishwar Gupta and Sashi Chandra Dutta.
However, the first hand-painted depiction of the hawkers of Calcutta was probably by Balthazar Solvyns. Published as early as 1799 from Calcutta, A collection of 250 coloured etchings descriptive of the manners, customs and dresses of the Hindoos, this book provides a glimpse into the streets of European Calcutta. This was followed by Twenty-four Plates illustrative of Hindoo and European Manners in Bengal, published in 1832 by a certain Mrs S C Belnos. The book, which later received the approval of the Royal Asiatic Society of London, has three plates dedicated to the hawkers. Titled The Pedlar, Cloth Merchant and The Boxwallah, the paintings not only give us an insight into the trade but also stress the importance and prominence of these people in the society. Mrs Belnos writes that these vendors were accompanied by three/four coolies laden with huge boxes stacked with almost all things imaginable-ribbons, gloves, plastic beads, pearls, French satin, Dhakai muslin and what not and thus earned the name ‘boxwallah’.
A vivid account of these boxwallas is found in William Tayler, Thirty Eight years in India, published in 1881, where he writes: “The Bengal Boxwalla is an animal per se; hawker, pedlar, itinerant, no known word of civilised or uncivilised vocabulary will truly and befittingly describe the phenomenon. Isolate him from the angular appendage of tin and padlock, he sinks into a cipher mingling with the mass of brown humanity in which he lives.
After gaining entrance to a house, he peeps into the room or knocks at the door with confidence, sufficient for him is the listless and unequivocal assent of the unoccupied matron or an idle damsel, and in another minute he is in the middle of the room, while at his heel, two, three or four semi-nude followers, with capacious boxes on their heads enter and with silent and stealthy action deposit, in turn their freighted burdens and their own bodies. Their presence for a time is hardly noticed, but the head-man commences his exhibition by removing the choicest specimens of his goods; the quiet perseverance of the boxwallah triumphs in the end. Some attractive objects are produced and forced upon her attention. The love of bargaining or the desire of possession, forces itself on her mind and she condescends to examine one or more of the articles.”
Apart from boxwallahs and vendors, hawkers included street show artistes like jugglers, snake charmers, magicians, monkey players, tight-rope walkers etc boasting various levels of ‘bizarre’ quotient. And then there were the various ‘service providers’ and the most sought after among them were the kuor ghoti tola walas. Most houses in those days had paat kuo (water wells) and every now and then the ‘favourite’ earring of the wife, or the ‘precious’ plastic doll of the daughter, or the ‘ancestral’ brass bucket, or the ‘goodluck charm’ ladle of the servant would fall into the deep dark gorge of the well and these bounty hunters would be called and entrusted with the job to bring the treasures back from their watery graves! Although wells were long replaced by Hindware taps, and kuor ghoti tola walas by plumbers, there are still some ‘service providers’ like sheel kataowala, chhuri kaanchi shaan deoawala, chhata sharaiwala, purono ghori, gramophone sharaiwala, purono khata, shishi botolwala, chaabi katawala, khaat palong toierwala, toshok, balish toierwala, etc remain as indispensible as ever.
But the hawkers were often elusive — when you are in dire need of one, you would hear their cries and keep waiting impatiently on the street only to realise that they have passed by or changed their route.
Often every member of the family along with the neighbours, extended neighbours, visitors, servants, roadside shop keepers — all would join in this ‘feriwala spotting’ exercise. However, it was us, kids, who would usually win the challenge. But of course, we didn’t believe in free service and our parents would have to place formal requests along with the promise to buy us one 25-paise worth orange lozenge each (the deal worked fine with both the parties).
Most of these hawkers were men but when it came to popularity, it was those few non-Bengali ladies, with huge rag bundles on their heads, who stole the show. Usually tagged along by one or two young lads with tubs full of utensils, these ladies would take old clothes and give new utensils in exchange and the dupurer meyeli adda (women indulging in afternoon chats) would often revolve around who got the best deal and what they are planning to exchange next.
However, it was always the kulfiwala and the gas balloonwala who made me go weak in my knees. Then of course there was the ghotigoromwala who always seemed to arrive from nowhere on rain-drenched evenings!
And with that it starts pouring again soaking my train of thoughts. I rush back to my present and immediate concern — how to get my leopard-print umbrella repaired.

Back to U.S.S.R and Baba Yaga

It was a Friday twenty years ago. Moscow woke to the sound of tanks in the streets. The television channels went off. Troops were deployed in all major cities of Soviet Russia. President Mikhail Gorbachev, vacationing in Crimea, was taken under house arrest. There was a military coup in the USSR. And it failed within 72 hours. But, this changed the world as we knew forever. Four months later, on Christmas Day, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics disintegrated into fifteen separate countries. The breakup of the Soviet Union led to a complete reformulation of political, economic and military alliances all over the globe. The United States of America celebrated as its most formidable enemy was brought to its knees. The Cold War between the two superpowers finally ended. The newly formed Russian countries faced an overwhelming task to develop their economies, reorganize their political systems, and, in many cases, settle bitter territorial disputes.
But, none of these really had any effect on the little girl in Kolkata who was sitting by her window waiting for her latest copy of Misha—a Russian children’s magazine translated in English. Named upon Misha, the bear mascot of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games, the magazine within its colourful glossy papers had a world of stories, news of sports, discoveries, science and technology, cartoons, pictures, fun games and craft ideas, ’How and Why’ s, poems, riddles, and what not!
The big black and white television was saying something about Russia—the snow-covered hand-painted land where the wise Elena, the witty Alyonushka, the dashing Ivan and the wicked Baba Yaga (in her hut on chicken legs) live. She runs to get a glimpse of the wonderland and all that flickers are heavy boots, blood, canons and chaos on streets—this was certainly not the Soviet Russia she knew. But then she was just ten and fairy tales were more real than reality.
I had grown up on Roosh Desher Upokotha (The folklores of Russia). My very first memories on this planet are of my dida telling me the story of the cunning ‘Chhotto Gol Ruti’ (The Doughnut) that escapes from the window of the old lady who bakes it and as it starts rolling through the streets it meets many hungry animals who lust at it but it escapes all by singing:
‘I am a doughnut round.
I was fried and browned.
From a flour bin scraped.
From a corn bin swept,
I have sour cream inside,
In butter I am fried.
They left me to cool,
But I am not fool,
Grandpa didn’t get me,
Gandma didn’t get me,
And, you Hare, won’t get me either! (Adapted by Aleksei Tolstoy)
After a rather adventurous journey the bread meets a fox who tricks it into sitting on his tongue and eats it up as soon as it lands there and with that dida would trick me into having one more morsel of food. Eventually, the black and white sketch of the haughty, cute, round bread became what the bell was to Mr. Pavlov’s dog!
However, this beautifully illustrated book with fascinating stories of Ojani desher najani ki (Go i know not where, bring I know not what), Jholmoley Baaj Finist (Fenist the falcon), Alyonoushka bon ar Ivanushka bhai (Sister Alyonushka and brother Ivanushka), Borof Buro (Father Frost), Byang Rajkumari (The Tale of Frog Tsarevna) managed to keep me under their magic spell for the first few years of my life. I would listen to the same stories each day and at times the same one twice or thrice in a single day and knew almost all the rhymes by heart!
The stories were all translated in Bengali and translated so well that for many years I had this notion that Russians are actually fur-coat clad bongs with weird names who lived north in a big blob of land of snow-capped fern forests throbbing with all kinds of weird but friendly animals. Russia on the small tin globe didn’t seem too far from India—the tiny triangle where I was told we lived. I would dream of going to Russia and talk Baba Yaga into letting me take a peek inside her ‘bone-fenced hut spinning on a chicken leg’. I was mesmerised by this creepy witch with iron teeth who rode a large mortar with her knees almost touching her chin, used a pestle to push the vehicle across the forest floor and swept away her tracks with a broom as she moved. Although she was notorious for kidnapping and even eating children, I was never scared of her. I was simply in awe of her sheer wisdom and I was convinced that there was a reindeer-drawn sledge car service from Calcutta to Russia and I was sure if searched properly one such car can be found amid the rows of horse-drawn cars that stay lined in front of Victoria Memorial—after all reindeers were nothing but horses with long-branched horns!
It is important to be literate and it is even more important to have a chhotomashi and I realised this pretty early in life. I was in upper nursery when chhotomashi got me a copy of Anari (Dunno) and after that there was no looking back! With each book I realised that there was more to Russia than snow, sledge-cars, magicians, witches and Ivans. In the colourfully illustrated (by Boris Kalaushin) pages I discovered Dunno and his clever antithesis Doono and their friends Blob, Gunky, Swifty, Rolly-Polly; Flower City—an Utopian land located by the Cucumber River where Dunno and his friends live; the tech savvy world of Sun City where Dunno goes on a road trip; Greenville¬¬, inhabited only by ‘girl-Mites’ where Dunno’d balloon crash-lands; and the spirit of adventure. These Nikolai Nosov books were a unique mix of fairytales, adventure stories, school stories and science fictions.
Slowly, stories from around the world started making their way into my life. But none could measure up to the Russian genius for storytelling coupled with quirky and intricate art and design. Published largely by Progress, Mir or Raduga, these included a variety of topics ranging from fables of Leo Tolstoy, fairytales of Alexandar Pushkin, folktales of Alexandar Afanasiev, adventures of Two toreadors from Vasukovka Village by Vsevolod Nestaiko, adventures of the curious little curious Pochemuchka by Boris Zhitkov, short stories written in verse by Samuil Marshak, story of Legging the robber by Leonid Yakhnin, Hello, I am robot by Stanislav Zigunenko (with wonderfully detailed illustrations by Eric Benyaminsona that elucidated the Soviet view in the late 80′s of the future of robotics) to stories of Lenin, Revolution, Communism and the Red Stars of Kremlin. Illustrated by stalwarts like Yuri Cherepanov, Ivan Bilibin, Vladimir Lebedev, Evgeny Rachev, Igor Yershov, the books were translated in Bengali mostly by Nani Bhowmik, Supriya Ghosh and among the English translators were Irina Zheleznova, Fainna Glagoleva, Benard Isaacs, Olga Shartse, Miriam Morton and others.
The Bolshevik regime regarded children’s books as major vehicles for transmitting Soviet ideology and propaganda among the future ‘soldiers’ of Russia and by 1924, two years after the Soviet Union was formed, the Central Committee of the Party rejected the pre-Revolutionary era, children’s literature that primarily consisted fairytales, legends, and fantasy stories. Children were the great red hope for the Marxist-Leninist and as early as 1918 Pravda affirmed: “the children’s book as a major weapon for education must receive the widest possible distribution.” And Soviet educator believed: “Even if the child cannot read . . . [pictures] will stimulate an interest in study and the child will to learn to read.” However, it was not until 1934 that the new regime granted folktales, fairytales and magic was a new lease of life.
My heart always remained loyal to Vasilisa the Beautiful and Baba Yaga. These folktales, fairytales and fables of Chukchi, Nanian, Nenet, Caucasian, Belorussian, Moldovian, Ukranian, Turkmenian,Yakut origin seemed more interesting and multidimensional than Hans Christian Andersen’s and Disney’s. The stories exuded an earthly charm and it somehow seemed as if these were stories about ‘real’ people. Each story reflected the culture, customs and costumes of the region it was set in. Unlike its Western counterparts these characters had variety in their wardrobe and not all wore tuxedos, leggings and long gowns. These were not typical stories of a hero rescuing his damsel in distress-- the stories were mostly centred on a girl who wins battles and hearts through her kindness and wit. Magic and sorcery could be triumphed through intelligence. And even the evil usually had a kinder side and can become quite lovable creatures at times! The vivid description of the locations and the hand-painted pictures would often transport me to the snowy Tundra,’ a barren realm of fierce frosts and howling blizzards’ and I would dream of living in a ‘choom’ (tent made of animal skin), wear deer-skin boots and have a gold-feathered ‘finist’(Falcon) as my pet.
But, it all changed after that Friday. Soviet Union seized to exist and the publishing houses that churned out ingredients for my dreams slowly pulled down their shutters. ‘The next issue of Misha’ never arrived, what happened to Dunno when he finally landed on the Moon remained a mystery, nobody ever knocked on Baba Yaga’s ‘spinning hut-on-chicken-legs’ again and frost accumulated on the memory of Tundra. And the man, who once eked out a living by selling these books on the trains of a small far-off city called Calcutta, lost his only source of income (only to be found 20 years later begging on the platform of a railway station).
Today, Russia is still trying hard to stand back on its feet and according to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century and even Boris Nemtsov who participated in the opposition to the coup attempt and later became deputy Russian prime minister admits: “We were very naive -- not only me, but Yeltsin and all of our team. ... Unfortunately, reality looks much more serious and much more complicated than we believed at that time.” The coup had many casualties and among them was the thriving children’s book industry. There has been much debate on the deep impact of the collapse of USSR on world politics and economics and diplomatic relations between countries, but, one of the best kept secrets of the fall was perhaps the expunged legacy of its innovative children's book industry that had revolutionized art and design and captured the hearts of young readers all over the world. And it was a sheer delight to discover a few reprints of these nostalgia-laden treasures on the streets of College Street after two decades!

A Graphic Makeover!

A dark blue night, a perfect moon, and a werewolf on the roof about to Howl--sharp-edged ghostly creatures in a gothic background-- if we are to go by the axiom, ‘always judge a book from its cover’, this certainly looks like an interesting ‘read’! And indeed! The first and the most interesting part was the name of the author...Allen Ginsberg...can this possibly be THE HOWL? Considered to be one of the defining works of the Beat Generation? Indeed it was! But why would anyone turn such an epic poem into a picture book? In Ginsberg’s words : “I thought that with today's lowered attention span TV consciousness, this would be a kind of updating of the presentation of my work.”
Hence, “Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!” finds a new home on the dark, dimly-lit pages of Eric Drooker who takes small but complete units from the poem and places it alongside the illustrations which sometimes refer directly to the words and sometimes reflect a psychological or philosophic interpretation of them. The impact is powerful and an effective attempt to tempt a twittering generation to Howl!
But, while in Howl, Drooker stays true to the text, Nick Hayes in his recently released The Rime of the Modern Mariner -a graphic novel based on the Coleridge classic Rime of the Ancient Mariner – turns the 1798 poem into a modern day fable set in today’s world. Apart from being a visual treat, Modern Marine raises some serious contemporary concerns. However, this is not the Mariner’s first brush with the form. Way back in 1989, the same poem was done into a comic book by veteran British comics artist Hunt Emerson, whose Lady Chatterley’s Lover published in 1986, is another brilliant example of a classic novel being turned into a comic book.

Turning existing texts into comic books or graphic novels is not a new trend. It has its predecessor in the Classics Illustrated –a 1941 comic book series featuring adaptations of literary classics such as Moby Dick, Hamlet, and The Iliad created by Albert Kanter. In 2007, Marvel under the banner of ‘Illustrated Classics’, published its first comic book version of Last of the Mohicans and since then there has been no looking back. From Oscar Wilde to Charles Dickens, from Lewis Carol to Paulo Coelho, from Kafka to Dostoevsky, from Agatha Christie to Victor Hugo, almost everyone has been getting a visual makeover alibi making the classics more ’accessible ’ to the younger lot. And not only the classics, even best sellers like of Stephen King and Peter Straub's The Talisman: The Road of Trials, Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, James Patterson's Maximum Ride, Janet Evanovich’s Troublemaker and teen sensations like Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Twilight series and Vampire Academy have made it to the of graphic novel sections of the bookstores.
Last year, The Anne Frank House Museum in Amsterdam, published a graphic novel version of the diary of a 13-year old Holocaust victim which till date remains one of the most widely read books across the globe. The year also saw a grotesquely gothic graphic novel version of very Victorian Austen in the form of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies-A Graphic Novel (imagine You’ve Got Mail’s Kathleen waiting for Joe Fox in the cafe holding the Zombies version...even Meg Ryan couldn’t have saved the shot!).
In the last few years this subgenre has become exceedingly adventurous and varied with its choice of subjects and visual styles. Some are more of picture books drenched in colour suited for the 4-year-olds, some use cubism to create mindboggling visuals, some dig deep and bring out the complex psychological interpretation, while some are just plain waste of money. The speech-bubbled soliloquies of a Manga Macbeth or the Classical Comics’s version of it may have become an instant hit with the young lot, but when Lady Macbeth places a tight slap on her husband’s face as she says: “Why did you bring these daggers from the place?” (replete with the action sound “slaaap!!!), the critics cringe at the fate of the bard.

But, what is the reason behind the soaring popularity of these as the great Art Spiegelman, creator of the special Pulitzer winning graphic novel Maus calls them: “strange doppelganger of the original book”s? Can the speech-bubbled Shakespeare possibly depict the complexities and various layers of the great masterpieces? The critics may opine that simplifying works like Hamlet and Macbeth for the sake of making them ‘accessible’ to the mass is the death of the tragedies, but it seems end justifies the means here-as long as the bubbles don’t burst!
Moving closer to home, following the footsteps of Amar Chitra Katha’s comic books based on Jatka, Ramayan, Mahabharata and other mythologies and folktales, emerging companies like Virgin Comics (now Liquid comics) Level 10, Vimanika, Campfire and old favorites like Raj Comics coming into the market with a new slew of exciting works.
According to Campfire, a Delhi based publishing house that focuses on turning existing classics into graphic novels, “With the rising popularity of digital media like iPads/iPhones, e-book readers, etc people are losing interest in physical format, so in order to turn their attention from ‘softcopies’ we aim at producing informative and interesting graphic novels. Also, as originals, these titles are of a few hundred pages and it is difficult to get children to read these books. Classics as graphic novels are a good way of introducing children or reluctant readers to the habit of reading and to Classic literature.”
And hence, bookstores are overflowing with such graphic novels. But the quality of the work remains an area of serious concern. As city-based author Rimi B Chatterjee, who apart from working on her mega project Kalpa: Shadowfalls, is also working on Abinindranath Tagore’s Buro Angla with Scholastic, points out: “Turning existing texts into graphic novels is a challenging job. In deft hand this can lead to beautiful art. However, one has to be sensitive to each medium and imaginative to ‘transcreate’ one into the other. It is like making a film, only more difficult.”

According to Amruta Patil, the 'writer and artist' of the much-appreciated graphic novel Kari, who is all set for her next release Parva (a multiple-viewpoint rendition of the Mahabharata), the problem lies with the publishers as well: “The most significant difference between India and the West is in the editorial process. Most publishers here are still gingerly about it. The text is scrutinized, but the visual style, treatment, use of space and tempo - these are seldom up for discussion, because editors don't feel qualified to comment. The medium is just too new here.” However, she is quick to add: “One of the positive aspects of the unfamiliarity is that we are delightfully free of template.”
But not all are enthused by the idea of turning existing texts into graphic novels. As Shamik Dasgupta, known for his work for Virgin Comics, specifically for his work in Deepak Chopra and Shekhar Kapur collaboration Ramayan 3392 AD, reasons, “I feel there is not much prospect in it, because the story is already known to people hence all they get to appreciate is the art, which is just half of the deal. Comics is just the launching pad, if a character gets popular then there can be a number of major off-shooting businesses like games, animation and even movies.
Unfortunately just turning novels into graphic novel will miss such opportunities and limit the scope of creativity. ” But when it comes to turning the epics and stories from Indian mythology into graphic novels, which is increasingly catching the fascination of the graphic novelists of India and is doing great business abroad, he reasons: “The familiarity of the core story always helps in garnering more interest. To us Ramayan and Mahabharat are like Star Wars and Indiana Jones-it is the basis of our popular culture.”

But, be it the epics, the classics or the best-sellers, the world of words seem to be facing a competition from the illustrated world. Even the highbrow city of Kolkata seems to be slowly opening its bookshelves to these ‘doppelgangers’ and even existing Bengali books have started making it to the ‘panels’.
The first to fall victim was one of the most loved characters of the city- Prodosh C Mitter, aka Feluda and next came the comic book version of Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay’s Gosain Baganer Bhoot. But, most publishers are still to loosen up to the idea. As Sayan Mukherjee, a visualiser with Ogilvy, who is currently working on a graphic novel based on one of the cult classics of Bengali literature, says: “English graphic novels priced as high as Rs 800-1000 sell off the racks here but when it comes to a Bengali book, people are reluctant to shell out more than 200 bucks. Hence the publishers are ok till it is a 120-page comic book. But, when it comes to a full-length coloured graphic novel in Bengali, they shrug away. Even if they agree to publish there are constraints laid down on the use of space-every page has to be a busy page and that kills the very essence of a graphic novel.” But why venture into this market with a translated work? “If it is a well-known book, it creates the initial interest in people.”
So, while publishers like Ananda and Starmark work on their new projects, and literary giant fall prey to graphic novelists mushrooming on every nook and corner, it is yet to be seen how Tagore’s city reacts to a speech-bubbled Shesher Kobita!
Some of the most critically acclaimed works (in random order):

1. City of Glass by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli (Spiegelman calls the graphic novel "a breakthrough work.")
2. Crime and Punishment by David Zane Mairowitz and Alain Korkos
3. Fahrenheit 451 by Tim Hamilton
4. Macbeth by John McDonald’s Artists Jon Howard, Gary Erskine, and Nigel Dobbyn
5. The Trial by Chantal Montellier
6. On The Origin Of Species by Michael Keller
7. The Jungle by Peter Kuper
8. The Stories Of Oscar Wilde by Antonella Caputo and Rich Rainey
9. The Divine Comedy by Seymour Chwast
10. Gravity's Rainbow by Zak Smith

The curious case of Indian superheroes

Disney’s recently released superhero Zokkomon has yielded a lukewarm response and Anurag Kashyap’s mega budget spectacle Doga (Based on Nagraj comics) and Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Talisman (India’s answer to Lord of the Rings) have already been shelved. The 30-second- teaser of Shahrukh Khan’s most ambitious project Ra One leaves you in a state of déjà vu with its eerie resemblance to Endhiran (The Robot) ...and Krrish and Matrix. Yet it seems that Indian market is suddenly being invaded by a legion of superheroes and not all are spandex-clad B-grade versions of Superman. Even if Toonpur ka Superhero’s super powers did not work too well in Bollywood, spoofs of superheroes like the Tamil vegetarian cowboy Quick Gun Murugun won the audience’s heart with his over-the-top histrionics. Endhiran-The Robot wowed the audience with its superlative special effects and after its stupendous success, Rajnikanth has already started working on his next animated superhero avatar Rana. Saif Ali Khan is almost ready with his superhero venture-Agent Vinod. Salman Khan, a self-proclaimed non-believer in the genre, has also fallen prey to the latest craze and signed a superhero movie -and that too in 3D! Another movie to watch out for would be Prince Vaali-arguably the costliest film under production in the new superhero/sci-fi genre.
It is no denying the fact that Krrish (touted as the first Indian superhero movie) started the trend of mega budget superhero movies; but it is indeed Mr India that till date remains a cult favourite. Unlike RaOne, Mr India didn’t have the luxury to don a 1-crore suit; dressed in a simple jacket over a simple shirt and trouser, and a cricket hat, this common man became the most loved superhero of the country. Another unusual superhero duo is Satyajit Ray’s immortal characters (based on Upendra Kishore Roychowdhury’s book)-Goopi Gayen and Bagha Bayen.
However, as far as apna Bollywood is concerned it was the asli angry young man Amitabh Bachchan who had donned the cape and the spandex way back in the 80s when he subjected the audience to not one but three B-grade superhero movies-Ajooba, Toofan and Jaadugar (some might even prefer Drona over these...or maybe not!) along with a comic book avatar Supremo- a superman-like alter ego of Amitabh Bachchan clad in pink latex body suit and a lungi wrapped over it. This rather popular comic series had Gulzar as the script consultant! And Big B was not the only one to have a comic book superhero version! Sunil Gavaskar also battled cricketers from Bandookstan and England on the field and, between games, took on evil magicians in Sunny the Super sleuth.
Right from the half-forgotten to the super-hit Nagraj (each Nagraj comic used to print at least 3 lakh copies in the 90s) and Chacha Chudhary and his friend from Jupiter-Sabu, there was never a dearth of comic book superheroes. But, most of the comics were in Hindi and was hence not accessible to a large portion of Indian population. Even Doordarshan had its own superheroes in the form of the droolicious Captain Vyom and the ‘Indian Superman trained in Kundalini yoga’ Shaktiman (which apparently had children falling of buildings/ busses/ beds trying to imitate ‘the spin’). However, as India opened its windows to the virtual world, and terraces to dish antennas, most of these superheroes died a slow and painful death.
Meanwhile, in the West, superheroes inspired by Indian mythological characters or with an Indian ancestry began to crop up. However, most of these were no better than ‘American superheroes’ created in India barring the likes of Chandi Gupta, better known as "Maya,” of Justice League and Neal Shara aka Thunderbird in X-men.
In 2006 Virgin Group’s Sir Richard Branson, author Deepak Chopra, filmmaker Shekhar Kapur and Gotham Entertainment Group collaborated and formed Virgin Comics LLC(which became Liquid Comics in 2008) with the aim to create content based on Indian mythology and reach a global audience as well as start a creative renaissance in India. Virgin Comics gave the much needed push to revive Indian comic industry and came up with three superheroes: Devi, The Sadhu and Snake Woman.
With the comic industry getting a complete makeover, the superhero culture slowly started rising from its ashes in India. While old players like Raj comic tied up with Planet41 to deliver animated films starring Nagraj, Dhruv and Doga to 3G handsets and started contemporising the content(with Nagraj battling 26/11 terrorists), and new superheroes are also making their presence felt. And these new breed of superheroes are as different form each other as chalk and cheese. While Saurav Mohapatra’s Jimmy Zhinchak is “a spoof and homage to the Disco zeitgeist in 80's Bollywood (which made Mithun da + Bhappi Lahiri "world phemos" in India),” Rimi B Chatterjee’s (yet to be pulished) Kalpa: Shadowfalls has an unusual super hero who can inhabit the memory traces of the dead. But, Chatterjee is reluctant to call Kalpa a superhero: “I don't think Kalpa qualifies as a superhero. She doesn't have a costume or a secret identity”.
Level 10 comics’ Shaurya is a superhero story based on the Mumbai train blast. “Currently in its 7th issue, Shaurya is a team of five “gifted” teenagers from across India. We wanted to truly capture what it lifestyle of today’s college going crowd,” explains Suhas Sundar, the creative head of Level10comics. The publishing house is also working on San anti-hero title and their dark hero is set for an August re-debut.
The recent Comic Con India saw the launch of - Uud Bilaw Manus (Uud Bilaw Manus: Back with a Vengeance) aka UbiMa. The half-otter, half human superhero is the protector of the city of ‘Beehar’. With characters like Kitty, Kala Kutta, Bhade ke tattuu, Kung Fu Girgit , Kan Khajura and the language a hilarious mishmash of English, Hindi, Bhojpuri, UbiMa promises to take you on a laughter riot. According to Adhiraj Singh, the creator of the character, “This is a spoof on the superheroes and draws its inspiration from the quintessential action movies of the 80s.”
Jatin Varma, the director of Twenty Onwards Media, theUbiMa’s publisher has high expectations from the otterman: “I do see a long term investment in UbiMa, with more volumes of the comic series and maybe animated shorts in the future.”
However, he lives in no Utopian world and is quick to add: “Building a superhero character takes a very long time and huge investments. It is not something that can be done overnight with just a few volumes. The superheroes that are brand names have been around since our great-grandparents times.” Suhas points towards the lack of adaptations across different media and platforms as one of the main reasons behind the lack of a superhero brand in India. But, according to Mohapatra there is still a lack of original ideas. Not all have managed to come out of the western mould: “Frankly, you can't take Batman and make him wear a “mukut” and make him an "Indian" superhero.”
However, Shamik Dasgupta of Ramayana 3392 AD fame is optimistic: “The appeal of superheroes has been steadily growing from the last decade; all we need is a well done superhero befitting the modern youth of India.”
Though there is no doubt that the new breed of superhero breeders are increasingly concentrating on original content, a parallel trend of taking up characters and theme from Indian mythologies is also emerging. Adhiraj explains this phenomenon: “Indian mythology already has a rich bank of archetypes and themes to draw from. It takes less of a 'leap' from a reader (or a writer for that matter) for that story.” But, what is heartening to see is that the comics writers are becoming increasingly experimental with these age-old stories and giving them their own spin. Apart from the most common preys like Hanuman, Ganesh, Krishna, Raam, the superhero-hunters are looking out for unsuspecting victims in the half-yellow pages of Indian mythologies. Shamik’s Daksh- a story of a Gothic superhero inspired from the epic poem Meghadutam by Kalidasa. “I wanted Daksh to be dark and scary- a complete badass. He is the son of Yama and the gatekeeper of hell. Because of his negligence a hundred sinners escape from hell and as a punishment he is sent to earth to bring back all the escapees (and the hit-list includes the likes of General Hideki Tojo, Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Elizabeth Bathory, Idi Amin, Ghengis Khan, Caligula!),” explains Shamik.
Another interesting project in this genre is Vimanica comics’s The Sixth-Karan Vir (KV), the protagonist of the series is the reincarnation of Mahabharat’s Karna. He is a businessman who meets Ved Vyas, the author f the epic, and learns about the tumultuous life of the sixth son of Kunti. “As KV delves deep into the legend of Karna, he acquires certain super powers and as Ved Vyas finishes his narration, KV turns into a true superhero,” explains Karan Vir Arora, Ceo/founder, Vimanika comics. “Through this series we are not only telling a story of a superhero but also presenting an authentic, much-researched piece of history in a much entertaining way,” says Karan. The series also sees the first Sardar superhero Dev Daljit Singh who is KV’s side-kick.
Well, be it educative, gothic, serious, dark, funny- it seems this new generation of superheroes are finally breaking the shackles of the stereotypical underwear-on-leotard mould (and becoming hip if not anything else!). But, as the Indian superhero industry flexes its muscle to take on the likes of Superman, Batman and Sandman, let’s not forget that the baap of all super heroes is an unassuming Indian and he lives in no comic book but in Chennai, and Grady Hendrix of Slate magazine introduces him as: “A force of nature. If a tiger had sex with a tornado and then their tiger-nado baby got married to an earthquake, their offspring would be something like this.” Indeed he is talking about our very own Rajinikanth. He can kill the Spiderman with mere bug spray. Yanna rascal, Mind it!

The Kali Katha of Kolkata

Kalikatha!
She is mad. She is wild. She wears garland of human skulls around her neck and human limbs around her waist. She drinks blood. She is a rebel. She is an embodiment of raw power. She is an epitome of women’s liberation. Her dance is the dance of destruction. She creates maya. Her favourite haunt are the crematoriums. She feeds on the mortal remains of the dead. She is like a dark night. She is like a bad omen. Hers is a world that is dark, evil and gory. Kali, an incarnation of Dashamahavidya, is hardly the benevolent, loving, mother goddess. Yet, she is one of the most prominent and powerful figures of the Hindu pantheon today.
However, it would not be inapt to say that Kali is a subaltern goddess. Tribals, Dacoits and the marginal people living away from so called civilization and amid hostile conditions needed a warrior as their god to protect them from the natural and man-made calamities. Lord Shiva was still too much a God of the genteel class. And Kali fitted the bill. Her ‘fearful symmetry’ aroused faith—faith to triumph over various evil forces. Kali became the God of these people and her temples came up in the unlikeliest of places amid thick jungles where only the lion-hearted dared. It was much later, perhaps when these forests were encroached upon, that Kali got a place in the alters of the Babus.
What’s in a name?
Kali is the presiding goddess of the city of Kolkata and it is Kali which gives the city its name. If Nawab Siraj-Ud-Daulah was as lucky as the Left Front government and Mir Jafar and Omichand weren’t so blatantly influenced by Brutus, it might have just been a reality--much before Calcutta became Kolkata, Siraj-Ud-Daulah had rechristened it to Alinagar in 1756. However, this new move infuriated the vindictive dark goddess Kali upon whose name the city was named Kalikata (later anglicized to Calcutta) and her wrath fell on the young nawab leading to his devastating defeat in the Battle of Plassey. And the rest is history (of colonial Calcutta).
There are many theories regarding the source and etymology of the word ‘Kalikata’. Kalikata may have got its name from ‘khal kata’—after the great canal dug to prevent the Maratha Bargi invasions. But, then again, the place was known for manufacturing of shell-lime and the name could have been derived from lime (kali) and burnt shell (kata). According to some historians the name ‘Kolikata’ was derived from the Bengali term kilkila (“flat area”). But the most widely accepted theory is that it is linked with Goddess Kali. Kali is to Kalikata what Mumba devi is to Mumbai and Athena is to Athens --it is not only the presiding deity of the city, but also what has given the city its identity and its name.
The term ‘Kalikata’ may have come from Kali Kota which means ‘temple of Kali’. The temple of Kalighat, regarded as one of the 51 shakti peethas, has found mention in texts written as early as 15th century.
Many believe Kalikata was where ‘Kalika thha’ or kalika was. Some legends say there was a Kali temple and a ghaat made of stone (the name Pathuriyaghata came from this stone embankment) at the north of Posta. For reasons unknown, the Kapaliks took the Kali from this temple to Kalighat which was then a forest and built a temple there--hence where Goddess Kalika or Kali originally resided became Kalika thha or Kalikata.
Another popular belief is that Kalikata may have derived its name from Kali Khsetra.
As per Peethmala and Nigama Granth Goddess Kali herself told that there is a bow shaped land (khshetra) stretched from Dakshineswar to Bahulapur (now Behala). This triangular land is the abode of Bramha, Vishnu and Maheswar—the holy trinity. At the centre of this resides Kali and the whole area is Kali Khsetra –the chosen land of the goddess and hence one of the holiest.
Age of Kali
River Ganga took a left turn near Princep Ghat and past through Kalighat, Tollygunge, Garia, Baishnabghata and merged with River Bidhyadhari before flowing to the sea. This was one of the major business route of the time and finds mentions in the Mangalkabyas. The area was mostly a dense forest but the banks of the river boasted quite a few Kali temples where the merchants would stop by to offer prayers before starting their sea voyage. Later the river changed its course and today it is difficult to even imagine the Tully Nulla as a part of that Ganga where boats laden with merchandise rowed up and down.
Among these temples the most prominent was the temple at Kalighat. Kalighat area was previously a part of Sundarbans and was a dense forest infested with dacoits and kapaliks most of whom were ardent devotees of Kali. During this time human sacrifice was almost a regular ritual. As legends go the present Dakshina Kali idol was installed by two saints called Brahmananda Giri and Atmaram Giri who discovered fossils of fingers of Devi Sati's feet from the pond called Kalikunda. Later, a small temple was constructed by Raja Mansingha (alternatively Raja Basanta Roy )in the early Sixteenth century on the bank of the river Adi Ganga where traders used to stop over and pay their obeisance. The present structure was however, built much later in 1809 by Santosh Roy Choudhury-- a member of the Sabarna Roy Choudhury Family.
Kalighat temple, regarded as one of the most important of the 51 Shakti Peethas was however not the only Kali temple when the British landed in Kalikata. There was the temple of Goddess Chitreswari or Chitriteshwari or Chitteshwari on the banks of Ganga at present day Bagbazar. It is said that the original temple was built by an infamous dacoit name Chite and has a rather gory past. After the death of Chite this temple lay abandoned until 1586 when a tantrik named Nrishingha Bamhachari arrived here and revived the puja. But, the present temple was erected much later in 1610 by the then zamindar Manohar Ghosh.
The name Chitpur was derived from this temple and along with Sutanuti, Gobindapur and Kalikata, this was the fourth village that existed during that time. And connecting the two grand temples was a pathway Chitpur road-- regarded as the oldest of Kolkata was then the ‘road to Kalighat’. On the way in the middle of the jungle of Chowrangi, where the new building of Asiatic Society is situated, was a shiva temple—probably erected by Chowranga giri—the same hermit who is at times credited to have built the original Kalighat temple. However, according to some the name Chowrangi came from the village-god Chowranginath-(Shiv); while others believe Chowrangi to be a derivative of Chirangi or Chirnagi –another name for Kali.
There is another Kali temple in Chitpur which finds mention in Bipradas Pilpai’s Manasa Vijaya written in 1495—‘Chitpurey pujey raja Sharbamangala’. Situated just half a mile from Adi Chitteshwari temple, the present Chitteswari Sharbamangala temple is said to be built after the ‘Robinhood of Bengal’ Raghu dakat found a stone idol in a nearby pond around 400 years back. According to the present priest, around the same time Ramsharan Shimlai, a Bangladeshi merchant was travelling past the place in his boat when he stopped by to offer prayers and stayed back. Later, when Raghu Dakat surrendered to the East India Company, he willed all his property along with the temple to Shimlai.
Another important temple of Kalikata is the Firingi Kalibari at Bowbazar. According to some this shrine was established by a man named Srimanta Dom. He also used to treat local people suffering from small pox and most of his patient were the newly arrived Europeans (Firingi ) of the locality. Many patients would also stop by and offer prayers in this temple and hence the temple became popular as Firingi Kalibari. However, the plaque on the outer wall of the temple suggests that this temple was erected in 904 Bangabda, (1498 AD) which makes it far older than the European settlement in Kalikata. According to the present priest the temple was initially a Shiva temple where the idol of Kali was installed on “Panchamundi Asan” much later most probably by Antony Kabial popularly known as Antony Firingi. Indeed under the main dome of the temple is a Shivling and the idol of Kali stand quite far from it, almost at one corner of the temple.
Birth of a City
Laxmikanta Roy Choudhury (1570-1649) received the ownership of eight villages, including Kalikata from Emperor Akbar. Job Charnock, East India Company’s Chief agent in Bengal, set up camp on the swampy banks of the Hooghly river on August 24, 1690 and bought three villages from Sabarna Roy Choudhury a descendent of the Laxmikanta Roy Choudhury’s for Rs 1,300 on November 10, 1698 and the city of Calcutta started rising over these three hamlets—Sutanuti, Gobindapur and Kalikata and in 1772 became the capital of British India. However, although Kalikata turned into Calcutta, the Kali katha of the city didn’t end.
In 1703 one Shankar Ghosh erected a Shiddheshwari Kali temple in Thanthania. However, according to legends the temple is older than this and was handed over to Ghosh by a tantric. The area was a dense forest then. It is said that in the 19th century Sri Ramkrishna Paramhansa and his disciples including Swami Vivekananda and Girish Ghosh became a regular here. The present temple is a new one and has no architectural significance. However, it remains one of the most famous Kali temples of the city.
In 1760 Nandadulal Roy Choudhury of Shabarna Roy Chaudhury built a Kali temple in Tollygunge after his beloved daughter Karunamoyee passed away. It is said Kali in the guise of his daughter visited the grieving Nandadulal in his dream and comforted him. After this incident he erected a Navaratna Kali temple along with twelve aatchala Shiva temples. Although, the present temple was built much later the idol of the Goddess is the ancient one. At a stone’s throw distance situated on the banks of Adi Ganga is another temple dedicated to Shiddheshwari Kali. This 200 year old Kali was installed by one Saraswatibabu and according to local people he was a warrior who lived amid what was then a dense forest and a den of dacoits.
The Shiddheshwari Kali temple at Ratan Babu’r Ghat in Baranagar is around 300 years old and was established by Khudiram Chattyopadhyaye. The idol here is made of neem wood. Close to this at Kuthighat is the majestic temple built by Joy Chandra Mitra in 1850 upon a Dutch cemetary. It is a navaratna temple with a nat mandir and 12 Shiv mandirs. Here the Goddess is Kripamoyee and the Shiv and Kali is curved from one single stone. Built 6 years after this, it is said that Rani Rashmoni’s famous Bhabatarini Kali temple at Dakkhineshwar used this temple as a blue-print and the same person is supposed to have built the three idols—Siddheshwari of Ratanbabu Ghaat, Kripamoyee of Kuthi Ghaat and Bhabatarini of Dakkhineshwar.
The small temple complex at the South Eastern Railway headquarters in Garden Reach looks like any other small roadside temple but enter the Kali temple and you’d be in for a surprise. The Kali idol here is as dark as a moonless night and yet as bright as the blazing sun. According to the priest of the temple the Kali is 800 years old and was discovered floating in the river. Until a few years back it was a crude wooden idol but even now the trimmings of modernity have not been able to fade the radiance of its raw power. Then there is the Dakatiya Kalibari at –around 150 years old this rather small Kali temple is said to be built by one Manohar dakat.
Later as Kali become one of the most popular and most worshipped Goddess, temples cropped up at almost every nook and corner of the city including a Chinese Kali temple at Tangra. Today, Kali continues to be the life force behind Kolkata and Kali temples can be discerned even at the most non-descript corners of the city
Kali’s city
Kolkata to many is all about naked starving children, dark and dingy lanes piled with garbage, streets soiled with blood, and it seems with its squalor, muck, madness, decay, suffering and rebellion Kolkata reflects the very spirit of its presiding goddess. Just like Kali, the city which seems malevolent and grim. But at the same time, like Kali it is a city that dispels the evil through destruction, her insanity brings back order, she is dark yet beautiful, she is terrifying yet she protects, to her own she brings assurance and is a source of strength, courage and inspiration. No city could have been more apt for Kali and no goddess better than Kali to own a city like Kolkata. Kolkata is Kali and Kali is Kolkata.

SHONAAR KELLAA!!! (Jaisalmer)

My tongue was still savouring the heavenly taste of the last crumbs of my Pyaz ki kachouri, it was raining outside and the bus was passing through lush green meadows replete with ponds-but wait! This was supposed to be an arid, barren land riddled with cactus, there ought to be a railway-track somewhere and the road was supposed to be strewn with broken glasses. Something is surely wrong. I should have checked where the bus is heading, it would have been the most obvious thing to do but then I was too busy buying kachouris. My autowalah, who had made it his responsibility to board me to the right bus, had got me the ticket and almost hurled me into the already moving vehicle (I have always depended on the kindness of strangers!).
The bus was packed but a ‘girl travelling alone’ has her advantages! And the ‘helper’ obliged me with his own seat (the lone ‘single sitter’) to make sure ‘Madam’ doesn’t have to huddle with rustic passengers. I was on my way to the Mecca of Bong travellers but 3 hours into the journey and things were getting too green for comfort. What if this is all part of some sinister plan? What if all these people are part of some bandit group and I am being abducted? It was 4 in the afternoon and the highway was empty. There was no network on my mobile phone. I am trapped.
Then suddenly I saw the sign! Pokaran! Wasn’t this the place where the evil Mandar Bose and the fake Dr. Hajra had their secret rendezvous? So, I was on the right bus and was not being abducted (I was a tad disappointed though…it is not every day that you get the chance to play the helpless princess).
After Pokaran the landscape began to change and looked every bit like what it was supposed to look like! -the lush green melted into rocky brown and then turned rough sepia. A few camels started appearing now and then and I could almost hear Mr.Lalmohan Ganguly’s famous lines: ‘Utera ki kanta bechhey khaye?’ But, thankfully, there was no broken glass on the road (guess Mandar Bose now works in some IT firm and is happy in his ‘cubicled’ life!) and within an hour we crossed a road sign that said: ‘Welcome to Jaisalmer’! So, I was finally there!
Bengals love-affair with this sleepy speck of a hamlet amid the Thar Desert began way back in 1971 with Satyajit Ray’s famous detective novel, Sonar Kella and turned into an obsession with the release of its movie version. And this had spawned the phenomenon of mass migration of bongs to this once obscure place.
I do not remember when I first saw or read the book. Born a decade after Prodosh Mitter aka Feluda- the famous detective and one of the most loved characters of Bengali literature-had chased the goons in the narrow alleys of Shonar Kella (Golden Fortress); I like every Bong born after 1971, inherited the legacy of Ray and knew the lanes and by-lanes of the majestic sand-stoned fort of Jaisalmer like the back of my palm.
But, almost half an hour into Jaisalmer and all I could see was a vast expanse of monochromatic landscape-and then suddenly it rose from the sand! It rose from nowhere! And it rose like magic! The first glimpse of the magnificent edifice that has become a cynosure of a state 2000km away from the sandy hues of Rajasthan and shimmering under the last rays of a fading sun Ray’s Shonar Kella shimmered like a dream...and disappeared like a dream-of course the bus had to take a turn into bumpy reality. When I reached RTDC’s Moomal it was 7pm.The hotel looked straight out of some Walter de la Mare poem! When I finally managed to find the manager and he found the keys of my room, I was too tired to do anything and the soft white bed was too tempting to even try anything else. So, I sold all my horses and donkeys and went off to sleep.
The autowalah arrived sharp at 6 am. After a quick breakfast I started off for the holy land and when we reached the gates of Eden, the new-born sun had imbued the yellow sandstones with an ethereal golden glow and the castle emanated fairytale. Like Mukul, I gasped and heard myself say: S-H-O-N-A-R K-E-L-L-A! Was this really real? The willing suspension of disbelief was short-lived. As I walked into the ‘walled city’ the shrill voice of a bargaining Bong spoiled my slow-mo dream sequence-the supposedly deserted desert fort of the crime-thriller is actually a buzzing town! The 800-year-old citadel is home to several thousand people and is in fact the only fort in India where people still live in - the chaiwalah enlightened me and in the next few hours I discovered a whole new Jaisalmer where intricately carved sand-stone havelis still speak of traders with long trains of camels loaded with silvers, rugs, and perfumes travelling to far off lands and of riches unimaginable while the narrow strips of streets speak in all languages possible-Rajasthani, Bengali, Hebrew, Hindi, Gibberish. It was a heady mix of fairytale, folklore, urban legend strewn with mirror-worked lehenga-clad village belles, dhakai saree wrapped mashimas and tattoo-covered lonely-planet hippies.
As I wandered through what I thought I knew like the back of my palm I suddenly heard Mukul whisper into my ears: ‘Eta Mondir’-I was standing right in front of the breathtakingly beautiful Jain temple which Mukul had remembered from his past life! I can feel a gush of chill run through my spine! Mukul took my hand and led me through the dingy by-lane next to the temple. We crossed Ratan’s house and Giridhari’s house and the place where they played holi. But, he abandoned me just as we reached the lane that led to his house. I turned around. The whole town was made of same yellow sandstone and was glistening like gold! Ray couldn’t have possibly found a better setting for his story about a 7-year-old boy who was suddenly getting visions from his past life where he had precious stones lying in his house and the walls were made of gold. The ‘dushtu lok’ (evil guys) kidnap the boy and embark on a treasure trail only to find out that the fort of gold was in reality a fort made of yellow sandstone and Mukul was no prince but a son of a jeweller and there was no treasure hidden in the ruins of his house.
Indeed, Mukul was no prince, but whoever was must have been pretty lucky living in such an intricately carved, seven-storey haveli. And the view from the roof-top was stunning-the sprawling sand-stoned town, hemmed by a desert of melted gold, was dazzling under the mid-day sun.
The priest at the Jain temple had recommended three must-visit havelis. First was the Patwon-ki-haveli-if the finesse of the stone filigree of a mere trader’s house astonished me, the price of the fine fabric they sell to the tourists almost gave me a heart-attack! Next was Salim Singh’s haveli . The architecture is exquisite- there are 38 odd balconies and each distinctly different from the other. The owner was a nice and knowledgeable man in his mid-forties and patiently took me through each of the rooms, explaining the exquisite architecture in intricate details.
Nathmalji-ki-haveli was less touristy and a bit difficult to find. But, the carvings were like poetry on stone and arguably the most grand and intricate of the havelis! Like in Salim Singh’s haveli, the owners still live in this magnificent haveli but their days of glory are long gone-once the house of the prime minister of the royal court now sells homemade artworks to make a living. I discerned one of the descendents of Nathmalji in a dimly-lit corner giving finishing touches to a peacock. It was so intricate that I could almost feel his heart-beat through my eyes! Naresh and I gelled like jelly. We spoke for hours over cups of homemade hot kesariya chae. He told me about his art, how they make colours from stones and brushes from peacock feathers, and also gave me ‘student’s concession’ on the painting I bought!
When I left the haveli, the sun had sobered down and as I made my way through serpentine alleys lined with harlequin kitsch, friendly locals, over-friendly shop-keepers, visibly lost tourists, Bengali-speaking tourist guides, flying peacocks and fleeting memories of Mukul and Feluda, I realised that Satyajit Ray in his book had only but given a teaser of the actual experience that is the fort of Jaisalmer. It is much more than the golden citadel from Mukul’s past life, much more than a desert castle of dreams, it is a city that oozes romance, opulence, myth and life. It is a city frozen in time and it is a city that transcends time.

Fairy's Wheel and all that jazz!

Paas woh aaney lagey zara zara, zara zara zara zara zara zara... was playing in a loop. The fairground was just waking up from its slumber— the ferris wheel (or what I knew as fairy’s wheel) and the merry-go-round were being oiled, the first batch of jilebis were already floating on the golden simmering sugar syrup and set and the shops were rolling up their covers and sleeves for the evening crowd. It was not a planned trip. The bus was stuck in the Moulali crossing and I suddenly remembered my visits to the Rother Mela which used to take place each year in this very place, leading to huge traffic jams. Today, the Mela was making its presence felt like never before with its absence. The signal was about to go red, I suddenly heard the conductor shout: ‘Astey, Bachcha achhey’ and I saw myself get down from the bus — my grandfather grabbed my hand as soon as I hopped onto the street.
Grandpa was a well-built, tall and serious man who mostly wore white and resembled Chhabi Biswas (the stern, no-nonsense father in Bengali cinema) from every aspect —so much so that I often wondered how the 6-foot-tall man manages to enter the small television box (it was much later, while reading Alice in Wonderland that I realised the trick! Of course the homoeopathy medicines he took were spiked and they had properties that can make you tall and short).
It was on rare occasions that he would manage some time off his busy schedule as a doctor, and be a full-time grandpa. It was on one such evening that I had landed in the same place (which turned into a fairground during this time in those days) with my hand tightly held by my grandpa — I was barely a 4-year-old then. At first I was scared of the crowd and the chaos and being a ‘short’ person made matters worse. If not for grandpa’s tight clasp I would have got lost at least a hundred times amid those tall, fast-moving legs.
It was supposed to be a Rother Mela but I couldn’t discern any roth (chariot). Instead, there were brightly coloured wooden toys, intricate clay vegetables/fruits/fishes, the ‘very expensive’ gas-balloons, and scary-looking paper-mache dancing dolls with large faces and big eyes, some even taller than me, which would roll their heads and waist every time I looked at them. And then there were the exotic winged prisoners — iron cages stashed with birds of myriad sizes and colours. Grandpa would ask the shop-keeper the names and their specialities and would then patiently explain them to me.
As I walked through the same pavement which now seems to have forgotten its past, I struggled to remember the names of those birds, the smells of the achar and papad bhaja, and the feel of grandpa’s huge palm that the little me found almost half of me clasped in.
My stream of thoughts was broken by a cacophony of birds and almost like déjà vu, I saw myself standing next to a row of shops selling birds! ‘Now, that can’t be legal...’ I heard myself mumbling. I could/should have dwelled on that thought but I was too excited to meet my childhood on the lost toyshops and fairy’s wheels. The fair is now held in a park and its past grandeur was trimmed down to fit into the small space. As the afternoon rolled towards evening, the makeshift bamboo shops got ready for business and they sold almost everything under the sun — hair clips, bangles, plastic guitars, bats, and dolls, achaars, hojmi and muri lozenge, stickers, clay figurines, kitchen utensils, customised key-rings, wooden temples, gods, dresses for gods, dresses for children, and dreams for all. However, the paper-mache dancing dolls and the wooden toys that were so unique to Rother Mela were missing from the show. It now looked like any other fair. But, so do the annual fair next to our house. Subhash Mela used to be quite an event. I remember going there with ma almost every single day and was allowed to shop as much as I wanted as long it was within 25 paise! It was the age of the epics and wooden bows and arrows, silver-paper wrapped swords and plastic gada were a favourite among us kids as were wooden drums, flutes and bhempus and the huge horses made of bamboo and hay. But the best thing about Subhash Mela was not these but the palki ride! They had an original palki which was carried by four men and kids like us (after being a ‘good girl’ for days) were allowed to take the royal ride for just about `1 (which was considered a rather expensive affair then and could be indulged into only once or twice a year). I would wait for the days when thamma would take me to the fair — there would be no 25-paise-limit then and I could take ‘as many’ rounds of palki ride as I wanted!
As I grew up, the fairy’s wheel got more giant and the simple merry-go-round lost its fans to the more suave (and complicated) Tora Tora, the toy train lost its sheen and the palki was discarded. But, the fair remained — now instead of toys and dolls we would bargain for colourful glass-bangles and kuler achaar and posters of the cute Aamir Khan!
And going to the fair on the evening of Saraswati Pujo became a ritual almost as important as the morning anjali. Love usually bloomed during this time of the year and usually came with an alert sign — and it was impossible to play blind to the fact that suddenly all the flower that were supposed to be going towards the goddess during the anjali was in fact landing on you! Then the chits would arrive, some friend would be bribed to play the messenger, a time would be fixed to meet near the comparatively less crowded turnstile of the fairground, some friends would again be bribed to tag along (by the girl) and some to ‘not’ tag along (by the boy) and eventually it would be a girls’ party sponsored by the boy and the trick here was for the boy to convince the girl that (A)he actually liked all her friends and is happy that all of them came along, (B) by ‘like’ he meant that he regarded them as sisters, (C) he ‘really likes’ her a lot and by this he ‘does not’ mean he likes her as a sister, and (D) the saree is looking great on her and she is not looking rounded at all. The fairground would then double up as Cupid’s playground. The two-seaters of the fairy’s wheel were the ideal place to romance then (provided the girl didn’t have vertigo like me!) and the best way to impress a girl was to shoot the maximum number of balloons stitched on newspapers on slow, rotating boards. Subhash Mela stills readies itself for the crowd each year on 23rd January but the shops are few and the guests fewer—the lovers now prefer multiplexes and the ‘warrior’ kids are too tech-savvy to venture out of their video games, and the middle class have just too much money to be tempted with the yellow board saying: “ja neben 7 taka”! (Anything for `7)
Charak Mela near Beadon Street was a fair I discovered at an age when none of us really bothered about going to fairs anymore (apart from of course the new breed of wannabe Raghu Rais).
This was a fair that came with an ‘A’ certificate— ma would always tell stories of how macabre the practice of Charak is where people would pierce their tongues with iron spikes and hang with ropes from a tall bamboo structure for hours—it was definitely not a site for children. So, I had to wait till I was ‘old’ enough to first venture into a fair that was at a stone’s throw distance from my school. I was a tad scared to go there alone, but it was impossible to convince ma to accompany me to see this ‘horrible practice’. It was much easier to persuade my boyfriend. As we reached the venue I saw a man was indeed hanging from a poll with a rope but I couldn’t discern any iron spike coming out of his mouth. I never imagined such a mad rush and was feeling almost dizzy staring up at the tall poll.
I was beginning to feel like the 4-year-old lost in the crowd when I felt a tight grip on my hand — Grandpa! I turned around ...only to find my boyfriend grinning at me...he had bought me a taal-patar shepai. I had almost forgotten how I adored these palm-leave soldiers when I was young. And it is perhaps a kind of collective amnesia that killed the fairs which once sold unadulterated joy for just 25 paise!

Coffee and Cigarettes!

An obscure entrance flanked by a mundane cigarette shop and then a winding staircase. Almost as if in a trance I got my ‘6 classics’ from the corner store only to remember that smoking is now banned in public places. However, I stashed the sticks in my pocket and started to climb the stairs. The smell of fresh paint was almost nauseating. The walls that used to be plastered with layers of pamphlets and memories now stand white-washed. We were never the ‘first floor crowd’ but still I chose to check out the haloed ‘hall of fame’ (better known as ‘house of commons’)once before climbing to the balcony aka 'house of the Lords'. The dilapidated door was replaced by a plush one and boasted a new signboard- I hesitated a few moments, I was still not sure if I was ready to face the ‘change’. Suddenly, a familiar voice: ‘Ki go didi atodin por? Bakishob kothaye? Opore esho .’ (Where were you all these days? Where are the rest? Come upstairs) –startled I looked around and there he was! Our very own ‘his highness’ in his white formals replete with white turban and green cummerbund (this non-descript man may come across as an ordinary waiter but the character of Don Vito Corleone was actually based on him). He didn’t wait for an answer and I realised that I am inside a sunshine-yellow hallway adorned with brightly painted canvasses and in front of me was a huge full-length poster of young Tagore . This is hardly the Coffee House I left 4 years back! Since 1942, it has acted as a greenhouse to the budding philosophers, writers, actors, directors, politicians and lovers and ever since Manna Dey sang the famous lines: ‘Coffee House er shei adda ta aaj ar nei’, Indian Coffee House at College Street has been a source of collective nostalgia for bongs- even to the first timers! The very fact that the place was once a favourite hangout of stalwarts like Satyajit Ray, Manna Dey, Amartya Sen, Soumitro Chatterjee, Aparna Sen, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen has given it a halo of a sacred place to the city ‘intellectuals’. To be able to sit on same spot where Allen Ginsberg, Sunil Ganguli and Shakti Chattopadhyaye spent hours dissecting romance and revolution over cups of infusion is enough to give a high to most. I don’t remember when I first went to Coffee House. Going to College Street to buy school books was an annual event and this usually ended with a ‘treat’ at Coffee House. At that age the ‘haloed place’ looked rather shabby to me and I hated the long wait for food. But, it was when I enrolled for my Masters in Calcutta University that I truly ‘discovered’ the place (and the fact that there are actually many people like me who really never liked ‘infusion’!). What really made Coffee House an instant favourite among us was not its ex-client list but the fact that it was pocket friendly and you could sit there for hours- and we sat there until they pulled the shutters down and almost threw us out! However, this ‘sitting’ part really needed technique for the wooden chairs and tables were home to millions of bed bugs. But then where there is a will there is always a way and if there aren’t any, you devise one! And as dedicated we were to our adda sessions we indeed came up with quite a few of those. From bug creams to bringing empty folders just to use them as hand rests to the boys trying to impress the girls by finding that rare steel chair-we did all that it takes to survive and fall in love with Coffee House (with its bugs! ). What made this coffee house a ‘home’(for us humans as well) was really its people, especially the waiters- the very soul of this place. Their memory used to store the names of the famous and the ordinary college goers alike; a memorable day that has gone down the pages of history to how many cups of 'infusion' and cutlet you have devoured they kept a track of it all. Apart from serving our orders ‘his highness’ wouldn’t hesitate to rebuke us for having too much coffee and cigarettes, and if we came in too drenched after romancing in the rain, his would be the concerned voice to caution us not to sit near the fan. Then there was the silent cashier with a head-master’s gaze and bell to match-when things got too loud the bell would ring to warn us check our decibel levels! Food was the last thing on the menu as far as the coffee house adda was concerned and we mostly survived on cold coffee (which was actually normal plain coffee served cold) and cigarettes. However, the first thing I noticed on the grime-laden menu card, apart from the grime, was a lot of ‘do’s- Chicken Do, Vegetable Do, Egg Do etc and it took me quite a few days to decipher this code. It was simply a ‘Ditto’ sign under the sandwich! Such oddities were common in this house of commons. But, today’s renovated coffee house hardly looks a place that we-the then-wannabe-rebels would have felt at home. Sitting in front of that huge a size of poster of Tagore can have a rather intimidating effect! However, as I climbed the stairs and reached the balcony I felt a bit less lost. Thankfully, ‘our’ table was not occupied and sat on the bright red plastic chair-- there are no bugs now but you can hardly sit on it with your legs folded as we would in our old wooden ones-- I sighed and closed my eyes. I could almost see the familiar faces crowding around me, the first rain splashing on the staircase through the tall windows, five of us almost crawling out of the classroom, rushing through the corridor, the old elevator, crossing Rakhalda’s canteen where J is still waiting for R, crossing the rain-soaked laal bedi looking as red as revolution, the water-logged College Street, clattering of trams and rickshaws and ‘mundaneness’, smell of wet books, the two of us making lame excuses to ‘the rest’ and taking roundabout ways, getting drenched, finally joining ‘the rest’ at the ‘balcony’ and sinking into the chair--‘his highness’ appears ‘Ki go ar karor dekha nei je? Ki khabe bolo?’ (Where are the rest? What will you have?) –startled, I open my eyes, he had the same stern smile. Suddenly, I realized there was really nothing wrong with the sunshine yellow or the huge poster or even the ‘bugless’ chair- all that mattered was how close you keep your friends and how many rounds of random discussions you can survive!

A Rainy Day!

I have walked out in rain
- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
--Robert Frost

It was raining since morning and the lane that joins our housing complex to the rest of the civilization now looked like a river. The vinyl record was playing Sawan gagane ghor ghanghata from Bhanushingher Podaboli and I had already made seven glossy paper boats made from the pages of Anandalok which I had managed to sneak out from Thamma’s room (my grandma was obsessed with the Bengali film magazine and instead of fairytales I grew up on Tollywood gossips). I was feeling increasingly restless.
Suddenly, it came! The signal! There was a nudge on the thread that was the cynosure of my attention for so long. I ran to the matchbox attached to it and put it close to my mouth: ‘Hello! I station zebra?’ Then I pressed the box to my ear: “I station zebra” came the answer. That was our code for the day. (Well I came to know much later that the name of the book was Ice Station Zebra and I was absolutely heartbroken to know that it had nothing to do with Zebras...adult world was rather difficult to fathom then ) The matchbox on my window was attached to a thread and on the other end of the thread was another box which was stuck to the window of my friend’s house who lived in the building just opposite to ours-this was our very own ‘telephone’ and it was strictly for confidential conversations and hence password protected (although mostly it consisted repeating the words the first person asks). And on days like these when we were not allowed to play outside or go to each other’s house, this ‘telephone’ became our sole source of communication. So, finally it was time! I rushed downstairs with my paper boats.
The last two steps of the staircase were under water. I sat on the third and started floating the boats. We watched dazed as each crossed the bend of the lane and disappeared -one, two, three...seven! I could see another row of boats emerging from the other side as well. It was such a pretty site! I prayed with all my heart ( God was an old man with white beard and an eerie similarity to Santa back then) that it would remain waterlogged till the boats reach the ’faraway land’ and none would encounter any man-hole in the course of their journey. I loved going to school on such days! That gave me an opportunity to get up close and personal with the mud, puddle and the absolutely gorgeous murky water.
I never liked raincoats until I was brainwashed to believe that even Sherlok Holmes wear raincoats and he wears it all the time (of course it was easy to bluff a 6-yr-old and trench coats did look a lot like my Daisy Duck print plastic raincoat.) So, there we were, me, my school bag, inside my Sherlock Holmes raincoat; and my shoes and socks in a plastic bag- all set for the expedition! As I hopped skipped jumped my journey to the bus stand, I would at times imagine myself to be a pirate braving the turbulent ocean and at times I would be a princess in distress but I loved myself as ‘FreeWhilly’ the most.
We never had an official Rainy Day in our school. But, I loved everything as long as it rained (I could survive even the scary maths classes on days like these!) and my mind could wander along the wet wooden staircase that smelled like hot chocolate fudge and run wild in the lush velvety green playgrounds or would just watch the wind caress the raindrop-laden trees after a fresh spell. The school wore a resplendent glow after the rain and the faint music from the grand piano in the chapel would turn it into one of those enchanting fairytale castles (I only hoped they could do away with the ‘studies’ part)
At a certain point I lost track of the winding stairs, the Gulmohars, the European buildings and the report cards with always came with ‘very talkative’ on the remarks column. I changed schools and when I was in class 6 I landed in one which was almost an integral part of our family tradition. Most of the teachers were the same who taught my ma and two aunts and hence kept a hawk’s-eye on me. It was a school where my classmates are still learning the basics of English at class 6 as I fumbled with learning the basic terms of all the subjects in Bengali (and stop using English words in my conversations), the library didn’t have one single book of Nancy Drew, and all girls were supposed to be good at singing and sewing (I abhorred both).
I was a total ‘misfit’ living in a petri dish under a powerful microscope. But, the monsoon would have its magic on such a dull, claustrophobic place as well! The gloomy-looking Corinthian pillars as well as the teachers would suddenly all look cheerful and it would seem as if I can hide myself under the blanket of rain and escape the gazes that had become an integral part of being the ‘fat girl who shows off her English’ experience.
But, what I liked most about a rainy day was the fact that on days when few students managed to turn up, the school would arrange for Kichhuri and Aloo Bhaja for us all! The school still followed the age-old custom of providing lunch to the students (and the fee for that was Rs 10/ month) and it varied from luchi torkari to muri alur chop to plain muri. But, on special days like these, some of us would brave the torrential rain and wade through knee-deep water just for this scrumptious platter--Kichhuri and Aloo bhaja never tasted that good before or after that!

But, it was in college that I fell truly, deeply, madly in love with the rain. The heady mix of the smell of old books and chipped plaster along with the petrichor, wet rings of smoke, and rain-flavoured tea from mati’r bhaar –even the die-hard love-atheist would have found it hard to resist the charm of College Street during the rains! After that there was no looking back! I fell in love with my city all over again. Each nook and corner, each street of this old city had its own story and rain adds poetry to each. And nothing gets you closer to the soul of a street than getting drenched walking through it under a sky cracking up with thunders!
Today, sitting at a coffee shop in Park Street watching the blue neon rain lash the night and tail lights of speeding cars leaving trails of liquid light on the rain-smudged streets, hearing the cacophony of mundane life melt into white noise, and munching on half-forgotten memories I suddenly felt empty inside--a sense of loss gripped me as I mourned lost paper boats that never made it to the faraway land, ghoti-goromwala who emerged only when it rained, dark afternoons spent with thamma listening to weird stories, sound of wet school shoes, singing in the rain with friends, listening to ma recite poetry (which she will forget halfway), convincing friends that there is actually nothing more fun than wading the waterlogged streets, scribbling songs to each other as the professor went on with his lecture and the sound of rain drowned his monotonous voice, bunking classes and getting back absolutely drenched, crazy long-drives amid torrential rain, standing in the middle of the street with arms stretched and feel each drop of rain fall on my skin and seep into my soul, and I mourned the friends and lovers who had disappeared on one such rainy day. Just then waiter arrived with a steaming cup of coffee and I discerned a Cumulonimbus in my cappuccino! I gulped it down. My heart needs some rain tonight.