Tasting Times!

 One of my friends once asked me how can I get lost so often in a city I live in and yet manage to find my way around completely strange cities! Well the answer is simple: You can’t get lost if you don’t know where you are supposed to be!
And it was on one such ‘Oh-God-I-Am-Lost-Again’ afternoons, while walking through the meandering lanes and bylanes of North Kolkata, part of the city I call home, that my gourmand’s nose led me to a humble food stall. What caught my attention was the name —  Baruah & Dey— a rather unusual name for an eatery! There were seven-eight people eating outside sharing a long wooden bench and inside was a man making fresh batches of fries. “O kaku panteras hobey? (Uncle do you have panteras?) A boy with eyes hungrier and bigger than mine was peering from behind. “Panteras? Now what the hell is that?" I had never heard anything like it before! I went in to check the menu — maybe he meant something else I thought. The menu read: breast cutlet, fish fry, chicken fry, fish roll...and yes ‘Pantaras’!


I asked the lady at the counter what this weird word meant and of course she had no idea! But she told me that Panteras is to the Dey and Baruah what Kati rolls are to the Nizam’s — a house specialty. I knew that I had to taste it! And as I took the first bite I realised I was not lost! I felt like Columbus! And it was my destiny to discover the Panteras—a heavenly piece of cutlet made with chicken and eggs and more (however, I still have no clue what the word means. The closest I found on Google was: St Pantherus, martyred in Alexandria, in a slowly burning fire with Paul)
A friend once said: “Families of north Kolkata are very particular about their food. We are brought up on a strict beguni-kobiraji-fish fry diet. Our Sunday mornings are never complete without parar morer gutey kochuri ar jilipi. We need ‘cha’ er shathe ‘ta’ and more oily the ‘ta’ the better!” As a true Bangal should know his ilish and a ghoti his chingri, a quintessential north Calcuttan should be tested on his knowledge about cutlets — how coverage cutlet (chicken cutlet covered with egg) became kobiraji cutlet, and why not to look shell-shocked when someone says: ‘O dada duto breast deben’ and in reply comes another equally shocking question: ‘Kaar?’
And it is for this very reason that in north Kolkata at some non-descript corner of some dark unknown alley you might stumble upon a shop selling even a mouthful of sky (coated with breadcrumbs and deep-fried!). Some such must-try foods of north Kolkata are radhaballavi and chholar daal at Puntiram, mutton Afghani at coffee house and egg devils at Bholanath Cabin. And if you like ‘moton’ and you are a bong, it would be a sin to stop you from sampling Gol Bari’s kosha mangsho (I have always found their mutton a bit dry and stodgy though). Lakhinarayan Shaw’s (on Bidhan Sarani) peyaji— a favourite of Subhas Bose — still remains one of the best the city offers. Another shop famous for its telebhaja is Kalika Mukhorochok Telebhaja on Surya Sen Street — their mochar chop chingrir chop, fish chop, mutton chop and egg chop are simply ‘gorge-ous’!
However, if you are neither the explorer kinds nor belong to the bharey cha-Potla’r telebhaja-roakey adda clan and the ghoogni gali at Hatibagan doesn’t make you salivate, then the cafes and cabin restaurants are just the right place for you.
Cabin restaurants, as the names suggest, had small wooden cabins with curtains (usually red!). Today most of these hotels have tore down these cabins to make space for more customers and gone are the romance of the red curtains but what remains is the cha with some lip-smacking, oil-dripping ta and the bikeler adda. Mitali, Dilruba, New Malancha, Ratna and Silver Valley are some such restaurants which still serve great food. However, a few cabin hotels in and around Hatibagan still boast these romance and nostalgia-laden wooden cabins as does Niren Cabin at Shovabazar. Initially made to provide some privacy to the ‘family crowd’, these are now hot favourites among the lovebirds!
I still remember whenever ma took me to Hatibagan for shopping; we would go to Shupti or such cabin restaurants and gorge into heavenly moglai parotas (famous at Anadi Cabin) and mammoth-size dhakai parotas (I don’t know of any place that still serves this variety). But more than the food, I used to love those cosy little cabins and always insisted on closing the curtain and shutting the world out—now this can be my train, my chariot, my horse-drawn carriage and even my thatch-roofed hut!
However, it was when I was in college that I got introduced to the ‘real thrills’ of a ‘cabin hotel’ with Dikhusha becoming a part of our everyday life. And these 'thrills' had absolutely nothing to do with their amazing kobiraji (which even my brother, who describes eating a oil-soaked kobiraji as similar to having a cold dalda-laden biryani and cough syrup after five days on anti-biotic, found delicious the last time I went)!
These cabins were places where ‘first meetings’ between prospective ‘lovers’ were ‘organised’, where the shy guy would take five cutlets and nine cups of tea to propose to that ‘trying-to-look-shy-but-am-bored-to death-and-I-hate-red-rose’ girl, where friends would console the ‘heartbroken’ by offering him their own precious cigarettes and tea and paying the bill of a mammoth meal, and where the waiter will always peek with the bill when you have finally manage to muster the courage for that first kiss! So much were these cabins a part of some love stories that according to ‘urban legend’ a famous cabin hotel at Shyambazar had specially decorated one of their cabins to celebrate the marriage of one such couple!
Among the existing cafe’s one of the most popular one is the Mitra Cafe at Baghbazar and their brain chop can be easily regarded as Kolkata’s answer to the Mumbai’s bheja fry (even Sarvi’s!). However, near Mitra cafe, is a small cafe called Allen Kitchen, with a brief menu but scrumptious food including the best (even if a tad expensive at Rs 74) prawn cutlets (also try their chicken stack!) in the city. The members of the family still supervise the kitchen and the recipes are never given to outside cooks.
Unlike other restaurants, these eateries serve tea along with food and are ideal for long uninterrupted adda sessions. Although, food in these cabins and cafes are usually drowned in oil, it is nonetheless fresh and unbelievably cheap (and you also get onion- cucumber salad and mustard sauce free! Free! FREE!). Some of these restaurants serve amazingly appetizing stews and a few (like Purbani near Hatibagan) even make mouth-watering mangsho’r shingara (not to be confused with North India samosas) on Sundays!
And then there are cabins meant just for intellectual and political discussions—where all the items on the menu are within Rs10 and includes kata cake, paan cake, lebu cha, biscuit and the likes!

All is not lost! (Sariska)

The three-day Ranthambore trip was over and I was on my way to Sariska via Bharatpur. Every single soul had advised me to drop these two places from the itinerary as ‘there are no tigers left in Sariska’ and the Keoladeo bird sanctuary at Bharatpur is now a desert where one can only find a few crows’. However, I am not a tourist but a traveller and I had no checklist to tick. And tigers or no tigers, forests never fail to cast a spell on me— even the teeth-chattering ride through the dirt roads and the smell of the first rays on the dew-kissed foliage has a charm of its own.
The manager of the hotel, Babulalji, suggested that I take a train from Sawai Madhopur to Bharatpur as the bus journey was not safe and he made sure that his ‘suggestion’ was followed! He got the auto and almost made the poor autowallah swear to god that he will get me the ticket and make sure ‘madam’ makes it to the right platform and the right train! And Babulalji was quick to add that I board the ‘Ladies compartment’. The shopwallah of RTDC, whose chacha works in Burrabazaar and who knows the exact distance and travel time from Kolkata to Gangasagar as much as the number of tigers in each zone of Ranthambhore and which is the best time to spot each, had repeatedly cautioned me against doing anything remotely ‘adventurous’ during the journey as this part of Rajasthan lies close to the border. And like all border towns is not very safe. But nothing could have prepared me for the ‘adventure’ I eventually landed myself in — a journey in an ‘unreserved’ ladies compartment!
It was three hours of absolute madness! The seats meant for four were occupied by seven and at times eight people, there were people sitting (read hanging) from the bunks meant to keep luggage, and the floor was occupied with random bags, trunks, jholas, mismatched shoes, people, feet, and what not. After almost an hour I got a speck of a seat and as I parked myself, I realised that over my head, hanging from the luggage bunk was one of the dirtiest pair of feet ever walked this planet. I was sharing my seat with five other women including a housewife from a well-off Brahmin family from Kota who wanted to be a teacher but was not allowed to, a Muslim girl who lives alone and breaks bricks at a construction site in Faridabad, another housewife from Mathura who has some home remedy for almost every ailment, and a Sikh lady with a kirpan and an infectious smile — each had their own story and their own journeys and yet were a part of the same story!
When I finally reached Keoladeo National Park it was around 4pm. As I got my entry ticket I was told that the best way to explore the park was by hiring a bicycle or a cycle-rickshaw! “What? A bicycle ride through a national park? Did I hear that right?” Of course I did! As I turned around I saw a fleet of bicycles and small box-shaped rickshaws standing at the gate. As it was hardly two hours before the park was to close down for the day, I opted for a rickshaw.
I did not have high expectations as far as bird-spotting was concerned as there were much written on how the heydays of this Ramsar Site are now over due to acute scarcity of water. But since my experience so far was limited to discerning crows and pigeons posing on lamp posts and statues, I hired a guide before embarking on the expedition.
However, after a while my guide told me the best way to explore this Unesco World Heritage site was by foot. So I got down from the rickshaw and decided to go off the beaten track. I was pleasantly surprised to find my guide to be quite a knowledgeable person and the sanctuary throbbing with avian population! From common parakeets, peacocks, owls and kingfishers to pin tailed ducks, purple herons, grey hornbills, and painted storks — it was a feast for the eyes.
My guide told me that under a new government project, some water from the Chambal river has been diverted to this region and this is slowly bringing back the birds to Keoladeo and Keoladeo back to life. The sun was about to set and I was a tad disappointed to have missed the boat ride. But it was time to leave and Sariska was waiting for me the next day.
Sariska is an hour-long bus ride from Alwar. Somewhere in the beginning of 2005 it was discovered that there were no tigers left in Sariska Tiger Reserve and poachers were blamed. It was decided that tigers would be reintroduced to the forest and in 2008 Sariska got its first tiger from Ranthambhore under this project. A total of six tigers have been relocated so far (this before the arrival of ST-7) and at present the number of tigers in this reserve forest is five. Although the topography is similar, spread across an area of around 866 km, it is much larger than Ranthambhore. This makes tiger sightings at Sariska extremely rare and most ‘tiger lovers’ prefer to give it a miss. After spending three days in the tourist-infested Ranthambhore, I desperately needed a trip to a forest which didn’t feel like a picnic spot.
The first thing I noticed was that instead of Canters all tourists can avail jeeps which meant fewer crowds and less chance of ending up with whining babies. Nothing spoils a jungle safari more than a noisy crowd and I had my share of that at Ranthambhore. Also, it is easier to explore the interiors of the forest in jeeps as they can easily ply on the narrow dirt roads.
Apart from the driver, there was a forest guard who spoke little but smiled a lot. Ours was the only vehicle on the route apart from a few occasional patrol cars. 15-minutes into the tiger reserve, I was already in love with the rugged beauty of Sariska and the forest was bustling with activities — as the vegetation was sparse we spotted a fox running after a peacock for no apparent reason, two deer locking horns in a friendly fight, a swamp deer trying a mud pack to cool off, a congregation of spotted deer waiting for some divine miracle, an antelope trying to pass itself off as an unicorn, and what not.
The forest guard decided to check the control room if there is any movement of a tiger nearby. After the reintroduction of tigers the forest department has become extra-cautious and now all five tigers have been radio-collared and cameras have been installed in various areas of the forest to monitor their movements.
There was a signal, though a frail one, coming from top of one of the hills. Our guard had a gut feeling that it might come down in another half an hour and cross the road — nothing works better than a forest guard’s gut feeling in times such as these and we decided to give it a shot. We drove to the road which the tiger might cross and waited. There was an eerie calm and we could almost feel one another’s heartbeats. It was certainly not one of the best places to park a car—the tiger might come from any side and the guy might just not be in the mood for visitors. On times like these reading the hanuman chalisa, or a mere Ram-naam might have helped boost the morale but being an atheist all I found myself muttering was the Mountain Dew tagline: Dar ke agey jeet hay!
After waiting for quite some time, we lost patience and our guard decided to go back and recheck the signals. We were half-way to the control room when the driver suggested it was better that we try for the same tiger and wait at the same spot as there were hardly 45 minutes left until all vehicles are supposed to be out of the park. So we made a U-turn and as we reached the road there it was! Walking majestically down the road! Even the forest guard could not believe his luck! “This is the first time I am seeing this one! It is the ST-6—one of the two male tigers!” whispered the guard.
The driver slowly started following the tiger and I started shooting (of course with my camera!). After some time it turned back and faced the camera with an amused look. For the next 15/20 minutes we kept following it until it got bored with all the attention and went down into the jungle. I pinched myself! Ouch! It really did happen then! After Bandhavgarh, Corbett, Ranthambhore, I managed to spot a tiger even in Sariska!

Itz a mad MAD world! (Ranthambhor)

I had already begun to regret my decision to opt for a RSTC bus instead of the early morning train. It was around 1 pm and I was standing at a bus terminus of some off-the-map obscure village named Uniyara waiting for a bus known simply as hari rang ki gari — it seemed nobody has ever bothered to know the number of this green-coloured bus and I thanked my stars for not being colour blind!
Finally after what seemed an eternity, the bus arrived and the sight almost gave me a heart attack — there were heads and arms and jholas jutting out from every window, the roof was layered with rainbow-coloured luggage and people, and I am sure even a needle would die of asphyxia if it wanted to get past that door. But then it is the only bus that can take me to my destination. I was already way behind my schedule and was not too keen to wait for 6 hours at this middle-of-nowhere bus stand for the next hari rang ki gari.
So, I gathered all my courage and took my backpack, hand luggage and a deep breath — ‘you got to do what you got to do’ I reminded myself.
But just as I started walking towards the ticket window a familiar voice stopped me: “Arey madam yeh ulti bus hay!” ‘Ulti bus?’ now what is that supposed to mean? I looked around and spotted the ever-smiling Prateik Babbar...erm... the conductor of my Jaipur-Uniyara bus grinning at me. ‘Madam yeh bus Sawai Madhopur se Tonk ja rahi hay. Apki wali Tonk se aayegi,’ he explained.
Ah right! But no sooner had I heaved a sigh of relief, another equally over-populated green bus arrived. “Madam chalo aap ki bus” and before I could react I saw ‘Prateik’ clutch my hand luggage and deftly manoeuvre through the crowd. As if in a trance I followed him and my bag and when I came to my senses, I and my backpack along with the hand luggage were inside the bus, sitting pretty on a window seat and were ALIVE.
This was my fifth trip to Rajasthan and what makes me fall in love with the place a bit more each time are its people — rugged and rustic yet simple and helpful.
And if you are a girl travelling alone in this part of the country, expect men to stand up and insist you sit on their seat, old uncles to draw out weird maps with trembling hands and insist you follow the route mentioned, women to get chatty and enquire about your age and marital status and insist you get married soon and bus conductors to take the responsibility to get you a window seat in a packed bus!
However, after a teeth-chattering two-hour ride when I finally reached my hotel in Sawai Madhopur, the last bus for the evening safari was leaving and the manager told me that since I had not called up the hotel to book my seat for the safari all I could do that day was to hire a jeep and go to the fort. And within 15 minutes the jeep along with a very cheery Rajendra Singh was at my disposal. Ranthambhore Fort lies in the middle of the forest and as my driver for the day was also a forest guide, we stopped and spotted some yawning crocodiles, curious deer, flying peacocks and self-obsessed monkeys and when we finally reached the majestic ruins of the fort, the sun had mellowed  imparting a sombre look to the century-old stone walls and the birds had already begun singing a requiem for the dying day, and the vast forest overlooking the fort smelled of mist and gloom.
As we explored the multitudinous temples, mosques, palaces, cenotaphs and other ruins, Rajendra Singhji started narrating the tragic tale of Hammir Dev Chauhan — how the brave king of Ranthambhore fought and defeated Alauddin Khilji only to fall prey to the treachery of his own men. I felt as if I was caught in a time warp — maybe it was a cold evening like this when after a long war, Veer Hammir rode through the dense forest and reached his fort only to find all the women of his kingdom given up their lives in jauhar due to rumour spread by some of his own men regarding his death in the war and a heart-broken Hammir severed his head in front of Lord Shiva. Standing next to a pond of blood algae I could almost see blood oozing out from the severed head of Hammir and filling the ground. I shuddered.  And at this point Rajendra Singhji’s voice trailed and I could see his eyes moisten. 
As the last rays of sun bid adieu to Hammir’s beloved fort and winter chill wrapped its blanket over the forest I followed Singhji and trudged back to our jeep. The world suddenly seemed to have gone quiet as if to mourn the sad end of a king who survived great wars but succumbed to betrayals of his own men.
Next morning it was time to finally embark on the tiger trail! Ranthambhore has five zones for the tourists in the core area and tiger sightings are not rare. But unlike in summer, when tigers can be easily spotted near the watering holes, tracking one in the winter can be tricky.  Moreover it was an extended holiday and picnickers had flocked from all corners. I was not so much worried about spotting a tiger as I simply love the whole experience of spending time in a forest (although I was quietly confident of spotting one as I have been pretty lucky with tigers so far) but I was dreading the noisy picnic crowd.
There are two modes of transport for safaris in Ranthambhore — the 6-seater Gypsies and the 20-seater Canters and the seats are randomly allotted by a lucky draw and I was certainly not lucky enough to get a Gypsy that morning. When I boarded the Canter the only thing I wished was to ride sans the loud picnicker and screaming kids — and I got both. Not only there were people cracking jokes and shouting at the top of their voices, but there was a few months old crying baby! And to my horror his parents actually changed his diaper and nonchalantly flung the soiled diaper into the forest even after being repeatedly told by the forest guard not to throw even a piece of paper outside.
I was fuming but before I could react the Canter stopped. And I looked out “There! T-6 with its kill!” shouted the forest guard. And behind the shrubs I discerned the striped beast sitting majestically and in front was the bloody remains of its morning feast! What a sight! Of course if we wait for some time it would get up! But then most of the people in the Canter had lost interest in the tiger by then. Some even remarked, “Arey isse achcha to zoo mein dekh lengey”. I was scared that they might start playing antakshari if we waited there any longer when the baby started crying and that woke up another baby whom I had so far mistaken as a bundle of shawls and sweaters. This time it was too much for both the driver and the forest guard and they abandoned the plan of waiting for the tiger to get up. Because if things went as they were going, the tiger might not only get up but pounce on us!
So we made a move and a few dozens of deer, antelope, peacocks, wild boars, and monkeys later we spotted a sloth bear — one animal that is even more difficult to find in this forest than a tiger. So the Canter stopped and the bear started walking towards us munching leaves. I was keeping my fingers crossed that it would come close enough but more than that I was hoping that the babies doesn’t start screaming or the crowd does not try to pull any trick on the bear. Sloth bears can turn extremely violent if provoked. The forest guide was trying his best to keep the noise level low. Suddenly an affectionate voice: “nosey dikhao beta” ah of course I forgot the moms! Surely how can a doting mother give a damn about a sloth bear when her child has finally managed to identify his nose! And that was followed by ‘papa bolo papa’ and also the surreal ‘doggy kahan hay doggy’ (doggie? in the middle of the forest? WHY? I was almost suicidal by then). Of course after so much love the child started crying at the top of his voice shocking the sloth bear who made a face and walked away. For the first time in my life I absolutely hated kids and noses and doggies and was glad that the safari was over.
International travel channels have given this national park a ‘hip’ tag and thanks to the Canters, safaris have become affordable and as a result Ranthambhore has become to Delhites what Digha is to Kolkatans — a picnic spot. Tourism department is reaping good profit but what suffers is what a national park aims to protect — its wildlife.

Once upon on Sundays!

Finally the ordeal was over. But once I checked the wall clock and my heart sank. I was late. As I walked out, the road was almost empty and all I could hear was a dog barking at some distance. I clutched my bag and started running as fast as I could. I was still a few minutes away from my house when suddenly the eerie silence was shattered by a shrill sound....
MAHABHARAT...atha shree Mahabharat katha...aaa
All the television sets of our locality had started singing. And I am yet to reach home. “Why does this always have to happen with me? WHY? How can anyone even think of drawing oranges and apples (I was never too much into Cezanne really) while Arjun has already arrived for the swayamvar? ”
As I scurried towards my house I kept praying that I would make it before the Kaalchkra was over with its ‘Main samay hun’ flashback—they surely won’t show Arjun or Krishna before I reach the television set, I assured myself. These two breathtakingly handsome men were the best things that had happened to me in the seven long years of my life on this planet...well...apart from the gorgeous box of coloured chalks that ma got me last week.
Sunday was more than just a holiday then. The day dawned with Rangoli which was followed by some amazing serials like Ramayan, He-Man, Space City Sigma and Indradhanush, Bharat Ek Khoj, Chanakya, Mowgli, Ducktales, Talespin, Captain Vyom (which had the absolutely droolicious Milind Soman) and not to forget the never-ending Chandrakanta and its bushy eye-browed ‘Yakku’ Krur Singh. However, I missed most of these thanks to my drawing class (in those days Sunday morning drawing classes were mandatory for almost every child).
However, Sundays were not only about Doordarshan. After an early (but elaborate as would suit a Sunday) lunch it was playtime! Most of us did not have telephones but we knew how to make optimum use of something that we all had — lung power. Whoever was the first to arrive at the playground was supposed to go to each building and shout the names on top of his voice until the concerned person came down (and strangely enough, in most cases this ‘concerned’ person would only hear his name after you got scolded by almost all the grown-ups of that building for shouting so loudly). After the full cast assembled, it was time to take the big decision—would it be ‘ais pais’ (I Spy) or lock and key or hide and seek.
Usually it was hide and seek which would most often end with people leaving for their homes as the person who was supposed to find the rest, kept counting with his eyes shut. There were also times when we would keep hiding at one place, sitting still as a log, only to find out that the person who was supposed to find us had left as he was too sleepy from the counting part (well numbers do tend to have that effect on many!).
However, on the dull summer days, when it was too hot to play outdoors, it was time to turn creative. I would bury myself in crepe papers, marble papers, beads, wires, crayons and what not. And then, there were times when ma would sit with the Rabindra Rachanabali and read out poems or letters or short stories. During summer vacations, Doordarshan would have special programmes for children in the afternoons as well.
In the evening, we would again gather at the playground or the club house but with strict instructions to reach home by 7pm. As we grew up, the deadline extended and instead of ‘ais pais’, lock and key and hide-and-seek, the guys found their calling in football and cricket and we girls in antakshari, dumb charade and so on. But Sundays were never complete without a long adda session.
Winters were for badminton. And the sessions went on till the older group arrived and threw us off the court. At times, the kakimas and jethimas would also indulge in a game or two before starting with their late night adda sessions mostly revolving around para scandals!
Sundays were also for various cultural programmes (and there was some occasion or the other almost every month!) and rehearsals! We would finish our studies early and assemble at the club house. Usually it would be some dance-drama and the most crucial and difficult thing would be to land a role where you get to play a girl. As the guys were too ‘unruly’ and ‘unmusical’, they were not allowed to take part in these hallowed plays and so it was up to us girls to play the role of the male characters as well. All the taller girls were given male roles and I regretted my height.
Later, when we graduated to dramas, the boys also joined us in playing boys (as there were a mere one or two female characters in these dramas, only the most ‘beautiful and slim’ girls got to play ‘girls’ and I was neither!). And even while playing the male characters I would never get the lead roles as I was shorter than the real boys and again I regretted my height.
Another thing I eagerly waited for on Sundays was the hawker who sold puffed rice, door-to-door. Although he came across as the most uninteresting fellow selling one of the most uninteresting items under the sun, his jhola contained many hidden treasures and like a magician he would bring out small packets of badam chaak, tiler naru, chirer moa, aam shotto and other such delicacies!
However, everything was not that rosy. It can never be if you have parents who are obsessed with theatre. So at times my parents would make it their mission to spoil my Sunday by dragging me to the ‘Academy’ to watch people dressed in rags either shouting or crying hysterically over some kind of land dispute or labour strike.
I wanted to grow up, especially on such Sundays. So that there would be no drawing classes and home-work and theatre and I could watch all the cartoons, and play as long as I wanted, have long adda sessions and return home real late. So, I eventually I grew up. But by then it was too late. Doordarshan is now merely a shadow of what it used to be and among the 100+ other channels, none air anything special on Sundays. Instead of Sunday’s Disney Hour, now we have multiple cartoon channels, but Pokemons and Powerpuff Girls can never be a match for the good old classic Disney characters like the crazy Mr Scrooge McDuck and his three nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie or the clumsy pilot Launchpad McQuack or the adorable duo of Tom and Jerry.
As for the playground, it has been converted to a parking lot as the younger generation has no interest in any kind of games apart from video games. And as for the adda, it is mostly on Gchat or Facebook these days as we seldom get to see each other. But as for returning home late on Sundays, I guess I got lucky with that! I get to return home as late as 2 am these days. Well, I work on a night shift and I do not have a Sunday off!

The Doll House

It was a Sunday and the Hooghly River was blushing from the subtle flirting of the morning sun. I was taking a lazy stroll along the Strand Bank Road watching the city slowly wake up. Lined with old dilapidated buildings, time seems to have come to a standstill on this narrow stretch between Sovabazar and Kumortuli. I have walked this walk many times but never noticed what I did on this winter morning. Half hidden behind trees and other ruins, like a mirage, was a lone man standing with one arm raised amid a bunch of fragile women on an ornate terrace — all frozen in time.

The statues had something sad and eerie about them and it seemed they were beckoning me to their world. But there was no door!

I asked a man brushing his teeth on the street: “Dada oi baritaye jabo. Rasta ta...?”

“O putul bari jaben! Eito edikey,” he grinned flashing his lather-laden teeth.

Putul Bari! Doll House! Interesting I thought!

When I reached the half-ruined building I wasn’t much impressed. It looked like the other multitudinous dilapidated structures. I was not too sure if I should go in. I knocked on the door:

“Is there anybody there?’ he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes...,”

But, I was luckier than De La Mare’s traveller and the door was not locked! As I pushed the door it screeched and a strip of light made its way to the dark cobweb-laden wooden staircase. As if in a trance, I started climbing the stairs and it was then I realised how dilapidated it was. At certain points the wood was crumbling and with each step it screeched, piercing the dead silence of the house. But the sight

that greeted me when I reached the first floor almost took my breath away — a courtyard hemmed with elegant Corinthian arches oozing baroque grandeur. And the mellow chiaroscuro was lending it an ethereal charm.

As I stood mesmerised at the middle of the courtyard, I started feeling increasingly uncomfortable —as if there were people staring at me from all corners. I looked around. There was no one but a strange bearded man peering from each of the arch. There was something eerie about the face. It seemed he was keeping an eye on trespassers like me. I tried to shrug away the feeling and concentrated on the intricately designed figurines perched on the columns. Although the elaborate detailing in stucco and plaster has fallen prey to the ravages of time, I could discern almost all the popular members of the Hindu pantheon from amid thick layers of moss.

As I explored the ‘shadowiness of the still house’ I realised that the house, tagged as a heritage structure by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, is not inhabited by ‘Phantom listeners’ but with real people! Makhan Lal Natta, an old man who owns a more than the 140-year-old Natta Company, acquired the property in 1978 and now the third floor of this grand mansion doubles as his office. The rest of the rooms are occupied by ‘tenants’.

It is hard to believe that this magnificent building which served as a shooting location for Roland Joffé’s City of Joy and which Desmond Doig tagged as ‘a perfect example of Calcutta rococo’ was built as a warehouse. The Hooghly River was navigable then and barges laden with spice, jute and such like would dock in the ports nearby. Hence several warehouses were built in this area to store imported goods. But why such an elaborately decorated structure for a warehouse? Well, the answer is surely lost in the mists of time.

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!