Category Archives: World Opinion

What the heart hears, the hand will tell

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Records, All, World Opinion

A 34-year-old Beleghata resident’s journey as a percussionist, a field still intrinsically attributed to males

Rimpa Siva at her Beleghata home / Shubhendu Chaki

Women are still a rare sight in a few places. One such spot is the one behind the tabla.

Women vocalists have earned their place on the classical music stage. But not so much as percussionists. Something about beating a surface with force strong enough to produce a sound, perhaps, is still considered an intrinsically male activity. (In older times, the beating of drums announced war, certainly a predominantly male activity.)

Rimpa Siva, however, began to play the tabla when she was about four. “I just took to it,” she says.

Now 34, the Beleghata resident is a star. She has performed in many places in India and abroad, solo, or with the biggest names in Indian classical music, and has received many awards. Numerous videos of her performances and interviews pop up on the Net, as do write-ups and at least two short films on her, one made by a French crew.

If she is still described as a leading “woman tabla player”, and if this description sounds discriminatory, even anachronistic, Rimpa brushes it aside.

To her the reference to her as a woman performer means quite the opposite. “I think it is an acknowledgment of the fact women are becoming visible as tabla players,” says Rimpa. She believes in this. But one suspects that how she is described does not really matter to her.

Very early, she surrendered her life to the tabla.

She grew up to the sound of music at her home, the top floor of the three-storey Beleghata house that belongs to her family, where she has been confined for the six months of the lockdown. Her father, Swapan Siva, a tabla player also well-known in the city as a tabla teacher. Their surname, unusual for a Bengali family, comes from the fact that a Shivalinga had been dug up on their property in Kumilla, in former East Bengal, where the family originally comes from.

Swapan was a student of Keramatullah Khan, the doyen of the Farrukhabad gharana, who lived in Ripon Street. At the beginning Swapan had thought he would encourage his daughter towards singing.

But Rimpa’s obvious talent on the tabla decided things easily. She was stunning from the start. Swapan took over her training and she became his most distinguished pupil. “My father has been my guru,” says Rimpa. She has a broad smile that lights up her face.

Her journey began early. “I performed at the Salt Lake Music Festival held at Rabindra Sadan when I was around eight. When I was about 12, I went on the ITC tour of Mumbai, Delhi and Jaipur,” says Rimpa.

Spotted by the best musicians in the country, including tabla maestro Zakir Hussain, she would soon embark on a life that would be a mad flurry of performances, travel and awards, not something every child experiences.

The French film, made in 1999, and called ‘Rimpa Siva: Princess of Tabla’, was made when she was 13. The film shows her as a student of Beleghata Deshabandhu Giris’ High School. She goes through school as if in a haze; her fingers drum on the desktop as the class is in progress. School education took a backseat. “But my school was very supportive. It postponed the selections before the class X board examination for me.” In 1997, she had toured US and Europe.

In 2004, she accompanied Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia as the main tabla player on his US tour. In 2006, she accompanied Pandit Jasraj on another US tour. She won the President’s Award in 2007 and the Sangeet Natak Akademi award in 2017. The years in between are crowded with performances and cities, which can run into pages.

“In 1997, in San Francisco, Ali Akbar Khan himself attended my performance at the Ali Akbar College of Music. He blessed me and said that I should keep a lemon and chilli in my pocket to ward off evil,” says Rimpa. She seems quite unfazed by her achievements, but also exudes a quiet confidence. She also holds an M.A. degree from Rabindra Bharati University in Instrumental Music. 

The specialities of her gharana include kaida, rela, tukra and gat, words that have entered the Bengali language from music to indicate style or attitude. She practises for three to four hours every day. Her solo performances can last up to two hours.

The lockdown makes her feel claustrophobic. It has practically stopped performance art. “I haven’t performed in six months,” she says. “Of late, I would be even travelling every month within the country, and sometimes two times abroad in a year.”

But nothing really comes between Rimpa and her music. “I live for the tabla. Everything in my life happens around the tabla. It does not matter where I am performing, with whom. When I am playing, I transcend everything,” she says.

“At that moment, I only feel peace and joy. Those who feel music know that peace and joy.”

On stage, she appears to go into a trance, lost in the music. She also looks dressed like a typical male tabla player, in a high-collar kurta, and together with her hair, she almost suggests Zakir Hussain. That is a coincidence, she says. “I can’t play the tabla in a woman’s clothes. They are not comfortable.”

She adds that she always had short hair and never cared for anything “girlie”. She did not time for friendship either.

Rimpa is also not sure about the role marriage can play in a woman’s life if she is a musician.

She feels that a lot of young Indians are showing interest in classical music now. She mentions Aban Mistry and Anuradha Pal as her illustrious predecessors in tabla, as women, and also does not shy away from suggesting that she is a role model for girls who want to take up the tabla, whether they will still be called “woman musicians” or not.

She seems to say gender is not an impediment, but you have to strike out on your own.

“Remember, girls can play the tabla,” she says.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph, Online / Home> West Bengal> Calcutta / by Chandrima Bhattacharya / September 28th, 2020

Sharbari Datta brought fashion to the Indian man

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Business & Economy, World Opinion

Hospitable, humble and immensely talented


Sharbari Datta with Dino Morea, dressed in one of her creations / Telegraph picture

Every time I would drop by her Broad Street residence for an interview, which would more often be a straight-from-the-heart adda lasting hours, she would be seated on one particular intricately carved wooden chair in her home studio, nestling her cup of tea, and urging me to munch on the carefully laid-out platter of snacks in front of me.

The chat would essentially be followed up with a lunch, often cooked by her with keen care for my preferences. Hospitable, humble and immensely talented — that was Sharbaridi for me, whom the world knew as the legendary menswear designer Sharbari Datta.

Rightfully credited to have introduced the Indian man to the world of fashion, Datta started her journey in designing rather informally in 1991 with a small exhibition that received unexpected commercial success. One exhibition led to another and the Sharbari brand was born. The first Indian fashion brand that solely focussed on men’s clothing.

“I always felt that Indian men were very inhibited when it came to dressing up. Due to the colonial hangover, the British influence, we always considered grey, pale blue or navy blue as the masculine colours that make for smart outfits. But nowhere else is it so. Be it Japan or Africa or Afghanisthan or Pakistan… the men always dress in bright colours… so are they feminine? I wanted to prove that there’s no clash between masculinity and bright colours. Our Indian tradition in menswear is of bright colours and nakshas. So why have we ignored it completely? A three-piece suit is not the only fashion statement for an Indian man. He can also make a statement in traditional Indian clothes,” she had told The Telegraph in an earlier interview, when asked about her bold decision to tread uncharted territory.

With hand-embroidery over hand-sketched motifs that drew inspiration from rustic and folk cultures as the mainstay, the Sharbari Datta school of design became the go-to for the Calcutta man for his wedding outfit, who even dared to don the brightly coloured dhoti that she introduced, breaking the norm of the beige or white piece of traditional drape.

Not just Calcutta, her unique aesthetics drew men from all parts of the country — from Ismail Merchant (among her first celebrity clients) to Sunil Gavaskar, Imran Khan, Sachin Tendulkar, Shoaib Akhtar, Sourav Ganguly, Leander Paes to Abhishek Bachchan and many other Bollywood and Tollywood stars, they have all proudly worn a Sharbari creation.

But the artist in her was always that wee bit more excited when somebody from the art world would choose to wear her creations.

“I feel extra special when artists buy my work. Since I consider my work as artwear, I have felt that my work has been certified when people like M.F. Husain, Ganesh Pyne, Manjit Bawa, Paresh Maity and Bikash Bhattacharya have bought my clothes,” Datta had told us. Datta was the daughter of famous poet Ajit Datta.

Showcasing her work in exhibitions across the world and winning innumerable awards — including The Telegraph She Awards in the Creative Art category in 2016 — Sharbari became a name to reckon with in the Indian fashion fraternity. 

Conquering the world from her home studio, she resolutely refused to expand into other areas of design, keeping her focus firmly on menswear for the most part of her career. “I have always refused to diversify into other areas. I have always been very focussed.

Menswear is a very difficult area because men are difficult to deal with when it comes to fashion. Most of them are rigid and not adventurous. Women are much more open and receptive, so that’s a much easier area,” she would tell us.

In 2017, Datta distanced herself from her brand Sharbari Studio, which she co-owned along with her son Amalin Datta and daughter-in-law Kanaklata Datta. She launched another brand called Shunyaa, along with partners, making the signature Sharbari aesthetics its design DNA. With an opulent store in Hindusthan Park, Sharbari had built a new world for herself.

But for me, the picture of Sharbaridi that would remain forever etched in my heart would be of her sitting on that intricately carved wooden chair in her home studio, nestling her cup of tea while chatting her heart out.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph, online / Home> West Bengal> Calcutta / by Smita Roy Chowdhury / Calcutta – September 19th, 2020

Broadway Hotel: Old-world hotel that still stands tall

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Business & Economy, Historical Links / Pre-Independence, Records, All, Travel, World Opinion

If you don’t mind the old, if you find it elegant, not to say comforting, Broadway bar is the best party in town

Sandeep Sehgal at the bar at Broadway Hotel. Picture by Subhendu Chaki .

As the metal clinks against the glass, and the buzz mixed with laughter rises from the low tables covered in maroon or yellow tablecloths, and the shaded lamps throw light on black- and-white old Calcutta pictures, and the draught beer taps are placed on your table, and moonlight blended with electricity cracks in through the large glass windows on the front, you only miss live music. But then a tall gentleman enters the bar at Broadway Hotel through the side entrance.

He is very tall indeed. He appears silently at the door and then glides from table to table, ensuring that everyone gets a seat quickly, especially the ladies.

Sandeep Sehgal is the current owner of Broadway Hotel on Ganesh Chandra Avenue. Apart from lending his graceful, welcoming and slightly mysterious — he hardly speaks to a guest — presence to the place, he has also rendered a great service to the city.

He has kept Broadway Hotel and the bar, one of Calcutta’s most-loved places that started in 1937, the way he found them. Almost. Since he took over the hotel three years ago — the bar is on the ground floor; the four floors on top have rooms to stay in — Sehgal has just added one or two necessary, unobtrusive facilities to the bar and to the hotel. Such as the draught beer, AC, new crockery and a new menu that only adds to the old items, which include boiled eggs and the famous “Stock Market Toast” (named after bakery bread that was found near the Calcutta Stock Exchange building).

In the process he has assured old Broadway faithfuls, who form a substantial number of Calcuttans, that their refuge remains undisturbed. He has also performed an act of conservation — of a dear piece of the city, where “development” is a euphemism for demolishing the old.

Broadway, now, is exceptional in another way, as most bars in this part of the business district have either renovated themselves into a new-age tackiness to become unrecognisable or have turned into crooner bars. Or both.

I finally get to talk to Sehgal, 53, in his large and plain office on the first floor of the hotel. He was born to a Punjabi family in the city and educated here and abroad. “I am not going to change any of this. Because there is going to be no other place like this,” he reassures me personally.

Broadway always defied change, even in the hands of the earlier owners. Since the early 2000s, when most of the bars in the neighbourhood turned into crooner bars, Broadway stood its ground. Then, too, the bar had a loyal following, but mostly of office-goers.

It remained stodgy and refused an image makeover. Because it was confident of its charms, which begin with the old wooden doorway at the Ganesh Chandra Avenue entrance. It is a small cubicle by itself, possibly unique in Calcutta.

After Sehgal took over, the bar looks a little spruced-up, but still old and plain. So what is it that is so inviting?

Once you get in, if you are lucky, you may get a table by the large front windows. Or by the wall-to-wall mirror on one side. It does not matter really. The waiters will not trouble you with excessive attention, as in a snazzy restaurant, but will not neglect you either. The menu is exciting — you get everything from a robust Chicken-a-la-Kiev to succulent pieces of deep-fried Katla fish, and at prices that are quite old world too.

The old bar stands in a corner. On some evenings, you may spot another tall gentleman, much older, taking the same rounds as Sehgal. He is Mr Sehgal Sr.

But it is not one single detail. Here you are never rushed. They will let you be. Everyone is welcome. You feel good. You feel looked after.

Most of all, you feel free of the shiny oppressiveness of synthetic wood, glass and metal that defines the new restaurant chic. The new breeds such anxiety. It makes you feel that you are not up to it.

Broadway tolerates the old. You relax.

If you don’t mind the old, if you find it elegant, not to say comforting, Broadway bar is the best party in town.

That does not mean it is not cool. Far from it. The young, the trendy and the different are being increasingly spotted at Broadway. Some celebs too. A few scenes from the recent Bollywood film Dhadak were shot here.

Sometimes saving the old is good business as well.

Sehgal takes me on a guided tour of the hotel. The rooms are spacious ones, with old, unfussy furniture, very clean.

The previous owners, who were deeply attached to the property, had asked Sehgal, who also owns the restaurant Flavours of India on AJC Bose Road, Calcutta, and Hotel Utsav in Santiniketan, if he would make any changes.

“But I would not change anything,” Sehgal repeats. “We can’t make another property like this.”

“I will have to replace the furniture when they become too old. But this red oxide floor? These beams? Where will I get them now?” he asks.

Sehgal was also particularly careful in retaining all the staff. “In the hotel we have third-generation guests coming,” Sehgal says. The waiters and the visitors know each other. Besides, Sehgal did not visualise the hotel without the people who were a part of it.

If he has to renovate the hotel, the old Great Eastern Hotel will be his model. “Not the new one,” he stresses. “The old one.”

Sehgal reveals his height is 6ft 6”. He walks tall.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph, Online / Home> West Bengal / by Chandrima S Bhattacharya, Calcutta / September 15th, 2020

A solo traveller around the world, on a bicycle

Amazing Feats, Records, All, Sports, Travel, World Opinion

The cycle is as good for our personal health as it is for our environment, not to mention women’s empowerment: Lipika Biswas

Lipika Biswa cycles on a road in Kasba / Picture by Subhendu Chaki

Lipika Biswas’s landing in Europe for the first time in July 2018 was with a thud. She was in Frankfurt where first the immigration officer would not believe that a woman from India was on a two-month cycling tour in Europe, alone. Then Biswas realised that no mechanic was free to help her re-assemble her bicycle, which she was lugging behind her packed in a box.

But Biswas is not someone who gives up easily. Getting to Frankfurt had not been easy either.

She calls herself a solo traveller. An Eastern Railways employee where she works as a senior clerk, Biswas, who turns 52 on Wednesday, had planned the Europe tour meticulously. She would bike from Germany to Iceland. With loans from friends and a very supportive family, she had managed to put together Rs 4.5 lakh for the trip, and had trained herself relentlessly, but had missed the bit about the re-assembling.

In Frankfurt, she lost a day trying to get a mechanic to help her and several Euros, which would always and instantly be converted into rupees in her mind. “I paid Rs 3,500 as taxi fare in Frankfurt just to move to a new accommodation,” says Biswas, a resident of Kasba. The next day she got to work herself, going by instinct, and put together her bike, and set off for Mainz, when she also realised that she did not know how to use GPS.

But the roads held her up, as she was borne by the kindness of strangers.

Biswas had been a mountaineer from 1994, the year she joined the railways. She wanted to be an adventurer. She had grown up in Palta, on the outskirts of Calcutta, attending school there and college in Naihati. “I was a tomboy. I played daant-guli. No dolls for me,” says Biswas.

She joined a local mountaineering club, Nababganj Mountain Lovers, and with them, as with others, “summited” several Himalayan mountain peaks. In 1995 she trekked up to Kalindi Pass, which connects Gangotri and Gastoli. Within a few years, she was a veteran. For two years, 2014 and 2015, she was part of an Everest expedition team, but on both occasions she had to return from the base camp as the expeditions were cancelled.

She had always loved cycling. The last few years she has turned to these “magic wheels”.

“I still wanted to go far,” she said. To be able to go up mountains that seem to be rising straight up is to conquer fear. “While going up I would think not again. Coming down I would want to return right then.”

But she also wanted to go alone. It would help her to confront the final frontiers of fear. A doctor friend, her adviser, told her to try Europe. It would be “safe”.

So there she was, on way to Mainz from Frankfurt, on a bicycle assembled by herself for the first time.

In Mainz, she was told at a late hour that she would have to cross the Rheine to camp. Biswas would either be hosted by members of Warm Showers, an international free touring cyclists community, or stay at Airbnb places, or camp in her own tent wherever possible, even in someone’s garden, spending as little money as possible on food. But in Mainz, the couple told her she could stay the night at their place. This would be the first of the many homes that would be offered to her by strangers.

“One of the best things about cycling is meeting people,” says Biswas. She made many friends in Europe. She did not face a single incident of racism, she feels. She felt appreciated, though she surprised many as an “Indian woman” out on such a tour.

She rattles off the names of places she visited: Mainz, Cologne, Duisberg, to Arnhem, Amsterdam, Zalk (a village in the Netherlands), back to Germany, and Fehmarn, from where she entered Denmark. Then she visited Sweden and Norway. From Norway she reached Iceland from Faroe Islands by ferry. Reaching Iceland was an emotional moment. She biked through the country from Seyðisfjörður to Reykjavik, from where she took a flight to Calcutta via Copenhagen and Delhi.

“On some days I cycled for 100 to 120km,”says Biswas. “My friend from Calcutta insisted that I go wild camping. So I stayed alone in the forest at Kronsjo the night before I entered Norway from Sweden.”

She discovered the pleasure of railway waiting rooms. At Lunden, near Flam in Norway, she decided to spend the night at the tiny railway station just because it was so heart-stoppingly beautiful. She was the only one at the waiting room, surrounded by mountains and an immense solitude.

She also made friends out of a few Indian ambassadors at the capitals. “Despite some problems, the tour went off quite well,” says Biswas, who was back in Calcutta after two months.

Only to be back in another part of Europe the next year, same time, for two months. She took off from Vienna, biked through Budapest, Belgrade and Sofia to Istanbul, where she had a brainwave.

She felt she must visit Greece. She went to the island of Lesbos, the home of Sappho, the greatly admired poet of ancient Greece who also gives her name to the Sapphic tradition.

Biswas visited the island, but when she wanted to enter Turkey again, from where she would take the flight home, she realised that she had a one-entry visa. She spent a deeply anxious night with her passport taken away, after which she was finally granted another visa for Turkey.

Last year in April, she had also gone on a bike tour of Sri Lanka, but with a friend.

“And I will go again,” she says. And looks proudly at her three bikes – a folding bike, a mountain bike and a touring bike — which are all parked happily inside her bedroom at her small Kasba apartment.

She wants Calcutta to be more cycle-friendly. The cycle is as good for our personal health as it is for our environment, not to mention women’s empowerment, she points out. During the pandemic many cycles are out in the streets.

“But in Calcutta cyclists should also learn to follow traffic signals,” she insists.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph, Online / Home> West Bengal> Calcutta / by Chandrima S Bhattacharya / September 14th, 2020

The personal and the public coalesce in Isher Judge Ahluwalia’s memoir

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Business & Economy, Education, Inspiration / Positive News and Features, Leaders, NRI's / PIO's, Records, All, World Opinion

In Breaking Through Ahluwalia writes an account of her extraordinary life, career and fight against an implacable disease

n this together: A file photo of Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Isher Judge Ahluwalia at the Brihadisvara Temple in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu. (Photo: PTI)

At almost the end of her long innings, wracked by grade IV glioblastoma, among the toughest of all cancers, Isher Judge Ahluwalia — grace, charm and subtlety personified, and, with widespread connections — took it upon herself to write this book. Courageous as she is, Isher did so in the most trying circumstances, while she was losing the ability to read and write on her own, relying extensively on help from the family to put down her thoughts.

Yet, thank God that she has written this book, for it is a story of grit, love, care and commitment. Grit, because who would have bet that a daughter of simple, traditional Sikh parents — one of 11 siblings — living in a small, rented flat near Purna Cinema, not far from Calcutta’s Kalighat, would reach where she did, entirely on the strength of her efforts and her intense determination to succeed?

Or, that she would in 1962, finish her West Bengal Higher Secondary Board examination from the highly-regarded Shri Shikshayatan Vidyalaya, coming eighth in the state? She writes, “My father had never shown any interest in our education but when I did well in the exams, he would often tell his friends with some pride that I had got the third rank among girls. While I approved of his new interest in education, I objected to the gender differentiation; I would correct him, saying I was eighth, not third.”

Breaking Through: A Memoir by Isher Judge Ahluwalia

Isher then went to Presidency College, Calcutta, to study economics with a scholarship of Rs 35 per month, which paid for her college fees and the tram ride from home and back. After the Presidency, she joined the Delhi School of Economics for her Master’s degree. “My family would never have let me go to Delhi to live in a hostel. At this point, I had a lucky break. In 1964, my brother decided to move to the capital with his family to start a business and my parents agreed to my going to live with them, attending DSE as a day student.”

As was the case with many of us, DSE was Isher’s road to Damascus — a point of revelation when she was determined to study further and apply for a PhD. Armed with a high first division in a year when seven of the eight ‘first-divers’ were women, Isher applied to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she was accepted with a fellowship. Thus began her journey in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a passage that took a bit longer than necessary because of an interlude in Washington, DC.

In the summer of 1970, Isher applied to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a summer internship. Instead of the usual three months, she got a special six-month break from MIT. With that came to love. Soon after moving to DC, she had a date with a super-bright young man, the clever, erudite English-speaking debater from St Stephen’s and winner of a congratulatory first in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford, one Montek Singh Ahluwalia, who had joined the World Bank as a part of its Young Professionals Program.


Montek impressed Isher sufficiently enough — lunch in the Bank’s Executive Dining Room, films, dinners, walks and drives. “It was during one of those drives, while we were picnicking off some bread and cheese and a glass of wine, that I decided that Montek was the man for me.” Soon, Isher secured a full-time job at the IMF; and, in 1971, she and Montek married in Washington.

Four years passed in setting up home in Georgetown, going with IMF delegations for Article IV consultations in the Caribbean, and working long hours at the Fund. Suddenly, it dawned upon her that she had left her PhD programme behind. So Isher applied for a fellowship at Brookings and completed her MIT thesis from there in 1976 — which was published in 1979 by Macmillan, titled Behaviour of Prices and Outputs in India: A Macro-Econometric Approach.

Then came care. Of parenting two boys — first Pavan, who was born in November 1977; and, then, Aman in October 1979, after the three of them had returned to India for good. Of taking charge of what was an immaculate home and hearth; of looking after a growing family that eventually extended to daughters-in-law and grandchildren; of being a partner to Montek, who would return late at night with stacks of government files.

Then, there was a commitment to her profession. “Being a mother is a full-time job. Being a working mother is two full-time jobs.” Even so, Isher completed two major books: Industrial Growth in India: Stagnation Since the Mid-Sixties (1989, Oxford University Press) and Productivity and Growth in Indian Manufacturing (1991, OUP).

She worked at the Centre for Policy Research, then took over as the head of Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), an institution which she strengthened by attracting excellent full-time fellows and garnering some very serious grants from abroad and the Indian corporate world, that made ICRIER financially comfortable. If these were not enough, Isher got into urbanisation and published two books on the subject.

Breaking Through is a beautiful read because it is so honestly written, so touching in content — a wonderful mélange of the personal and the public. It is, in effect, a signing off. Of a great life. Of struggles. Of success. Of love and caring. Of building families, values and institutions. And, of Montek.

Thank you, Isher.

The author is the founder and chairperson of CERG Advisory Private Limited

source: http://www.indianexpress.com / The Indian Express / Home> Books and Literature / by Omkar Goswami / August 30th, 2020

The golden oldies: Calcutta’s heritage list

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Historical Links / Pre-Independence, Records, All, Travel, World Opinion

The burgeoning vision of heritage preservation must expand to districts and villages

Monochrome view of a heritage hand pulled rickshaw on Kolkata city street with the Metropolitan building at the background. / Shutterstock.

There is a lot more worth saving than meets the eye — or, more accurately, than the eye has been willing to see. That is why it is heartening to hear that Calcutta’s heritage list, which has been lying dormant and unchanged since 2000, is finally set to be updated by the Calcutta Municipal Corporation. The inordinate delay notwithstanding, the revision is a welcome move, as it will add greatly to the representational nature of the list with the inclusion of more structures of cultural, economic and historical value. It is no secret that in spite of its diverse culture and history, Calcutta, much like other Indian cities, is known for doing precious little to preserve and protect the remnants of its past. This disregard has been amply reflected in the apathetic response to conservation; as recently as 2018, the old Kenilworth Hotel was razed to the ground after its heritage status was quietly downgraded. Well before that, the exquisite Darbhanga palace on Chowringhee was demolished; in its place today stands Calcutta’s ‘tallest building’, promoted by the same consortium that acquired and demolished the old Kenilworth Hotel.

In the light of this, it is reassuring that the practice of downgrading heritage buildings without public knowledge is set to end and, more important, public participation is to be made a significant part of the municipal framework of conservation activity. In this case, archivists, heritage enthusiasts and activists will be able to identify not just mansions but also entire precincts within the city that deserve to be preserved for their unique cultural and historical dimensions. This kind of cohesion and dialogue between administrative bodies and experts is rare in Indian policy-making; and yet, it is crucial for firing up the bureaucratic imagination to transcend established codes of conservation. After all, heritage is a fine mesh of the tangible with the intangible. It is an endangered space where old buildings and edifices jostle for survival along with cultures and livelihoods. This ecosystem is in dire need of regeneration. Calcutta’s Chinatown, a vibrant but marginalized hub, is a case in point. There is an added advantage to this nimbler comprehension of heritage. The preservation of livelihood, integral to heritage precincts, could, in turn, strengthen local — neighbourhood — economies, bolstering public mobilization to demand conservation. Heritage then can turn truly participatory and democratic.

This momentum must be widened in its scope. The burgeoning vision of heritage preservation must expand to districts and villages. Apart from Serampore or Chandannagore, places such as Tamralipta and Chandraketugarh — from where there is archaeological evidence to suggest a sea-faring history of the region’s people — as well as Bengal’s crumbling terracotta temples must be brought within the ambit of a collective culture of conservation. The future of heritage and its protection in India rely on enterprises that are modern, well-funded and truly participatory in character.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph, online edition / by The Editorial Board / August 22nd, 2020

The long wait ends for India’s first Asiad gold medallist Sachin Nag

Amazing Feats, Records, All, Sports, World Opinion

Swimmer Sachin Nag, who won the country its first gold medal at the inaugural 1951 Asian Games in New Delhi, gets Dhyan Chand Award

Sachin Nag’s son Ashoke will attend the online awards ceremony at the Sports Authority of India centre in Kolkata, where the president will virtually bestow the Dhyan Chand Award to his late father. (Photo courtesy: Ashoke Nag)

Ashoke Nag talks about having sleepless nights before the national sports awards were announced earlier this month. The son of late swimmer Sachin Nag, winner of the first gold medal for the country at the 1951 Asian Games in New Delhi, had experienced rejection in the past when he tried to secure his father’s legacy.

This was the fifth time Ashoke had applied to the sports ministry to bestow an award posthumously to one of Independent India’s first sporting superstars.

His father passed away in 1987 ‘with a broken soul’, Ashoke says.

Armed with 47 supporting documents, including black-and-white paper cuttings, certificates and a recommendation from paralympic swimmer Prasanth Karmarkar, Ashoke, a former sergeant in the Indian Air Force, applied again this year. The willpower to fight for the recognition his father deserved grew stronger every year that Sachin Nag’s name was not included in the list of awardees. 2009, 2012, 2018 and 2019 had brought only heartbreak.

“This year, I had reason to be hopeful because it is his birth centenary. And remember, he won three medals at the 1951 Asian Games. The gold in the 100m freestyle and bronze medals in the 400m freestyle relay and 300m medley relay. This was just four years after independence. India was a young country, those medals mattered a lot to the nation. I felt frustrated in the past when my father’s name was not included. My father passed away with a broken soul,” Ashoke, who has also penned his father’s biography in Bengali, says.

On Saturday, Ashoke will attend the online awards ceremony at the Sports Authority of India centre in Kolkata, where the president will virtually bestow the Dhyan Chand Award to his late father. “I attended the rehearsal on Thursday. I met archer Atanu Das and sprinter Dutee Chand. Felt good to be in the company of young achievers. I am looking forward to Saturday. After applying for the award, I would wake up at night and wonder if this would be the year,” Ashoke says.

As time went by, Ashoke knew he was in for a long battle.

The family had generously handed over Nag’s medals and blazers to the museum at the National Institute of Sports in Patiala in 1992, five years after the swimmer passed away. Nag was also a two-time Olympian and also part of the Indian water polo team. He coached for three decades as well. Ashoke felt his father got nothing in return after the initial fanfare died down.

Former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Lady Edwina Mountbatten watched the event at the pool in 1951, Ashoke says. “Nehru ji was the first one to congratulate my father poolside when he won the gold in the 100m freestyle. I have pictures of Nehru ji and my father together. My father would say PM Nehru gave me respect but at times he felt that over the years people had forgotten him,” Ashoke, the third of six children, says.

Sachin Nag had won the first gold medal for the country at the 1951 Asian Games in New Delhi. (Photo courtesy: Ashoke Nag)

Nag, according to his son, was a proud man. He never asked for favours. Ashoke remembers how his father shot down the idea of approaching a top Swimming Federation of India official to recommend his name for the awards after they were instituted in 1961. “My father said, ‘I used to beat him in the 100m freestyle in the pool. I can’t go and ask him for a favour just because he has become a powerful official.’ He was a proud man,” Ashoke recalls.

Hurtful barbs

Some of the barbs Ashoke faced over the years still sting. Once after the awards were announced, he asked a footballer on the committee what went against his father. “The footballer asked me, ‘how many times did your father represent India? The footballer himself had won the Dhyan Chand award earlier. Yet he insulted my father by asking that question. It hurt me back then,” Ashoke says.

Nag had to deal with official apathy in the run-up to the 1951 Asian Games. The games were scheduled for early March, but Nag had arrived in Delhi in December, hoping to train in the capital. “An official of the organising committee asked my father why he had come so early and told him to go back to Calcutta. He was told there were no swimming pools in Delhi that he could use. But my father decided to find a way to train in Delhi. He located Sisil Hotel in old Delhi, which had a 20m by 10m pool, and requested an Italian lady who was the manager to allow him to use it for training. She agreed for a fee of about Rs 5. That too was waived off later.”

When he won the gold at the Asian Games a few months later, one of his first stops was the hotel. “He went to Sisil hotel to thank everyone for the support. He always remembered those who supported him.”

Caught in riots

If not for Nag’s steely determination, his swimming career would not have reached the heights it did in the late 1940s and early 50s. Nag suffered during the tumultuous days of Partition when he inadvertently got caught in the Calcutta riots. “He was returning from training at the Ganges when a bullet hit him on the right leg. He was badly injured and was admitted in a hospital for five months. When he was being discharged, the doctor told him that it would take him two years to get back to swimming,” Ashoke says.

But in a year’s time, Nag was at the 1948 London Olympics. He participated in the 100m freestyle and was a member of the Indian water polo team that beat Chile 7-4. All four goals were scored by Nag, Ashoke says.

To speed up his recovery, Nag returned to Banaras, where the family was based. He returned to the pilgrim town to rejoin the Saraswati Swimming Club, which he had founded. The masseurs in Banaras were excellent.

Another incident connected to the freedom struggle, where a young Nag was chased by police who were trying to break up a protest, resulted in his swimming talent being discovered early.

Ashoke narrates the sequence of events. “My father jumped into the Ganges to give the police the slip. He first hid underwater between two boats. But how long can someone stay underwater? There was a 10km swimming competition starting in the river and my father joined them. He finished third,” Ashoke says.

Back then, reputed swimmers from Calcutta clubs would enter long-distance competitions in Banaras. One of them, Jamini Das, who would captain the national waterpolo team at the 1948 Olympics, believed Nag had great potential and asked him to shift to Calcutta where he joined the Hatkhola Club.

One of Ashoke’s cherished memories from his childhood was his father pushing him and his brothers into the Ganges to swim. “We never became top-class swimmers like our father. But being successful in getting my father the prestigious award gives me immense satisfaction.”

source: http://www.indianexpress.com / The Indian Express / Home> Sports / by Nihal Koshie / August 29th, 2020

Casting director Tess Joseph on her journey from Calcutta to California…

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, World Opinion

…being on the Academy voting panel and lockdown lessons

Tess Joseph / sourced by the Telegraph

Calcutta girl Tess Joseph, who had found Sunny Pawar to play little Saroo Brierley in Lion that went on to the 2017 Oscars with six nominations, will now be in the powerful Academy voting panel. The casting director has recently received the invitation to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. An alumnus of Loreto House and St Xavier’s College, Tess started her career as a casting director in Calcutta with Mira Nair’s Namesake in 2006. She tells The Telegraph about her profession, recent works, accolades, lockdown days and more…

Getting an invitation from the Academy to be a member…

I remember tweeting on July 1: “I feel like I made the valedictorian list of 2020”. I feel humbled and grateful to be recognised by my peers globally. It’s truly a great honour. The Casting Directors Branch is the one of the newer, youngest branches at the Academy, so it’s great to be a part of it.

Life after Lion…

It’s been busy days for me and my team! After Lion, we worked for Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin. Then we cast Netflix’s biggest success of the year, Extraction. Yeh Ballet by Sooni Taraporevala was also very special with a young new cast at the helm. We have Ramin Bahrani’s The White Tiger coming up, which is based on Aravind Adiga’s book. We cast Apple TV+’s Shantaram and we have also been part of the casting team for Foundation, a science fiction series for Apple TV +, and the Amazon series The Wheel of Time.

The journey from a Loreto House girl to an Academy member…

I would say it’s been a serendipitous and ever-changing journey. Loreto House is in many ways the foundation of who I am as a person. Among scores of uniformed girls, I do believe, I found my voice at Loreto House. I discovered who I am, what I love doing, how to communicate that well. I had picked up most of the awards for extracurricular activities. My schooling exposed me to literature, musicals and movies as my family cemented my love for the art. Loreto also helped me discover the “rebel” in me, from debates to breaking the rules. I feel that’s an integral part of schooling. Everything that I loved as a “hobby” plays a role in what I do today, probably that’s why I love what I do as “work”. Nothing goes to waste. Whatever you discover and explore will connect to your future in ways you can only understand when you look back!

When I was growing up, TV, films, media, these were careers no one spoke of. Like many others, I too wanted to be a doctor. My Ma pushed me to give the entrance examination for mass communication which had just started as a graduation course at St. Xavier’s College. The course was supposed to be my stop gap while I prepped for medicals. Once I joined, there was no turning back. Serendipity has always played a role in my choices.

Memories from school days…

I wasn’t a very good student till Class V. Then I realised that if you are good at your studies, you can get away with a lot of things. I was talkative and often got into trouble in class. The Famous Five and The Secret Seven were my favourite books and I used to go to places in the school where we were not allowed to go. So it was like we were living the books we were reading. However, my most favourite school memory till date is when I was in Class IX, there were three certificates for the top three students of the class — one is for excellence, one is for doing well and the other is for best improvement. So one day I stood up in the class and asked my class teacher, who was also our math teacher, as to why the girl who came third got the most improvement certificate and why the girl who worked the hardest won’t get it. For example, if a girl who was failing got 60 per cent, she should get the best improvement certificate. On the basis of that beautiful discussion, our school decided to change the certificate that year and one of my close friends got that. My school taught me to stand up and express myself. It allowed me to do what I believe in. I was in love with music, dance and basketball. I played district-level basketball, performed in several inter-school fests in Calcutta and also won the best performer in the Eastern region award once.

Missing Calcutta…

I always miss Calcutta. Though I’m settled in Mumbai now, Calcutta is my home, comfort, familiarity, and “reset” button. My parents are in Calcutta and they, along with the city, have shaped me in so many ways. I feel blessed that I grew up in Calcutta where art was treated with respect, always encouraged and celebrated. I do feel if I had grown up anywhere else, I would be a different person today. My baba was a Cine Central member and always saw film as an art form. My brother and I were reading subtitles once we knew how to read! From Bicycle Thieves to Chaplin, musicals to horror and documentaries, baba encouraged us to watch everything and we would end our film festival days with dinner at New Cathay or rolls from Badshah! I was more of an auditory learner than reader and my father gave lyrics the same standing as poetry. I was always encouraged to listen and remember Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Hasrat Jaipuri.

Choosing to become a casting director…

Even today if you ask my parents or friends how I relate or remember cinema, books or stories, they will tell you that I’m constantly in love and raving about characters and performances and now, I get to make those memorable performances happen. As a casting director, my team and I bring to life the one living and breathing aspect of all cinemas — the actors! It’s often daunting because I get to be the first person to show the director what his/her film could potentially feel and sound like. I love watching and fine-tuning performances, discovering and elevating talent and now I get to do that all day!

My job is to collaborate with producers, directors, networks and studio executives to cast the best talent for each part. We need to be the biggest supporters of actors. We want actors to succeed, and often the perception can be the opposite, but the truth is, if life were perfect, the right actor would be the first actor walking into our rooms for the audition!

Beating lockdown blues…

Generally I don’t approach things I cannot control with panic. My fears were mostly heightened for my parents, senior family members, friends’ parents and those I knew who were stuck in other countries. Of course I first treated it as a break, which I desperately needed because we had been working non-stop for six months. After a couple of days off, I found a routine very quickly that has been integral to my lockdown days and beating the blues! I have been learning during the lockdown and I’ve been writing and listing them as I discovered each one. They are:

Stay close, while in distance: The pandemic doesn’t dictate your relationships, so remember to stay close always and remember the distance just shows you care, be it 6ft apart or choosing not to travel home, you’re doing it to safeguard the people you love and yourself.

The extra hours mash-up: I had a little cube or dice which I wrote things on to decide what to do with my extra hours. The cube had things like meditate, binge watch, read that book, course/workshop, write, go walk etc. If I ever felt the “I’m bored” or the “I’m not feeling inspired” coming on, I’d roll it!

Remote working is an option, not a reactive solution: We never treated Zoom like a sad solution to casting, instead we adapted fast and moved our casting online, constantly pushing and learning to make the process better and more intimate for actors.

Listen and notice: This time has shown me a thousand things, from epic sunsets, silence, greed, claustrophobia, kindness to the crack of an egg as I relearnt to cook, fold, clean and even talk to myself. I’ve seen a myriad of things — empty roads, a nation coming together to show gratitude to essential workers, watched migrants left to walk home, I’ve also been the person feeding stray dogs in the afternoon sun and answered appeals from friends reminding me to donate, to help and to share. More than anything, I’ve learnt that progress is an elastic word, sometimes it meant just getting through a day, finishing chores and cooking to the efficiency of 10-hour work days — both are progress.

Be relevant: Be relevant by contributing your time, your learnings. I’ve been mindful of what I’ve shared on social media to how we help others cope at a time which might be very different and difficult for them. From learning sessions to workshops to helping people discover their stories and voices, I’m glad I could use this time to be relevant to make someone’s day better.

Looking forward to the post-pandemic world…

I miss my friends and family, I miss hugs, I miss that feeling of shared energy in a room, of shared laughter in a room and the shared experience of watching a movie with strangers. I just want to rediscover a sense of trust that allows me to experience all these simple things without questioning my health and safety while doing so.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph, online edition / Home> Entertainment /pix Tess Joseph, picture sourced by the Telegraph / by Ayan Paul / August 28th, 2020

Remembering Pandit Jasraj, Who Brought a Touch of Divinity Among Mortals

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Inspiration / Positive News and Features, Leaders, Records, All, World Opinion

White hair billowing around him, with no attention to give to a gaping audience, Jasraj on stage often took the form of a singular devotee.

Pandit Jasraj. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

In 1946, Pandit Jasraj (1930-2020) moved to Calcutta, to work at All India Radio. I was born in 1965 and his voice on the radio wafts through all my early memories.

My father, in the first flush of relative financial comfort since travelling to Calcutta from Barisal in Bangladesh during 1947, had brought home a radio. Until I was 26, it was the only technology that offered entertainment in our household.

Pandit Jasraj at Bhopal. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

My father played the sitar and sang north Indian classical. He had a deep disdain for exhibitions of any sort, and seemed to thrive only on minimalism. But he filled our mornings with the Bhairavis and Lalits that the likes of Bhimsen Joshi and Jasraj would sing. By the time I started learning classical music, I was six years old and knew that the dark voice was Bhim’s and the softer one, Jasraj’s.

In 1974, my father pulled a surprise and took the family to our first concert. Stages in those days had few lights. But in the middle sat Jasraj, affable and jocular, conversing freely with the audience as if they were his friends. I remember him as iridescent. I was just learning Raag Yaman, and in a coincidence that children are prone to consider magical, Jasraj sang it too on the day. Listening to him live, my ears opened to a quality of his music that I have believed in to this day.

Even for a vocalist of such renown, a word that must be repeated to describe Jasraj’s unique voice, is ‘sweet’. His renditions were pleasing to the ear, that was the simple truth.

I went on to study Hindustani classical with a singular passion, picking up the flute along the way.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

By the time I watched Jasraj live again, it was 1983. A lot had changed. My father had lost his wife, my mother. But the morning radio kept up with its song offerings. I was 18 and the concert was at the Netaji Indoor Stadium in Kolkata. Back then, the Bengal government would organise four-day music festivals that would continue till midnight. Jasraj was the main draw of the day and performed last.

This would be my first brush with an artist’s temperament. Usually, musicians make a brief announcement of what they would sing. He didn’t and instead stared fixedly at a point on stage while the musicians checked the sound. 

It was quite late and I had been meaning to leave. Then, suddenly, he broke into song. First, was Raag Bhim Palashree. But he ended it soon and without a single word, began chanting the ancient syllable, ‘Om’. I stood near the door, thinking, “Let me hear this for five more minutes, and then I will leave.”

For the next hour, with just that one syllable, Jasraj travelled at maddening pace through a maze of influences, fusing styles, merging elements and making no bones of the fact that little mattered to him that night other than his own artistic satisfaction. Yet for all the vocal fireworks, the chant retained its sublime essence throughout, renewing itself for the audience each time yet smoothly travelling through the whole range of all that the Mewat gharana held sacred. I stood near the door the whole hour, transfixed and unable to make any real attempt to exit.

On my way home that day, I did not know that I would not go on to hold fast to my passion for classical music. I did not know that I would listen on the tape recorder to the bhajan Govinda Damodar Madhaveti and marvel — as an atheist — at the divinity that possesses its singer. I did not know that amidst life’s many turns I would sing the same Om Namoh Bhagwatey Vasudevaya under my breath while waiting at the grocery, cooking a meal or making the bed.

But I did know that I had witnessed the work of a singular devotee. White hair billowing around him, with no attention to give to a gaping audience, Jasraj on stage that day took the form of the saint that he is. His voice was enormous, so enormous that it filled spaces as small as my childhood home with hope. And now the saint has returned to his ashram.

The writer is a gold medallist of the 1985 batch of the Bengal Music College.

Translated from the Bengali original.

source: http://www.thewire.in / The Wire / Home> Culture > The Arts / by Debasree Sarkar / August 17th, 2020

74th Independence Day | Mahatma Gandhi celebrated India’s first Independence Day in Calcutta. Here’s why

Amazing Feats, Historical Links / Pre-Independence, Inspiration / Positive News and Features, Leaders, Records, All, World Opinion
74th Independence Day | Mahatma Gandhi celebrated India's first ...

On August 15, 1947, when most of India was feeling triumphant and rejoicing the new-found independence, Bapu was in Calcutta, trying to figure out how to stop the communal violence triggered by the partition of Bengal.

On the night of August 14, 1947, when Jawaharlal Nehru was preparing to deliver his famous “Tryst with destiny” speech, Mahatma Gandhi was earnestly trying to end the communal violence triggered by the Partition.

Bengal was partitioned by the British, and a chunk of the state went on to form East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). The Partition, done along religious lines, resulted in bloody communal strife that ended in tears and pyres. So, on August 15, 1947, when most of the nation was feeling triumphant and rejoicing the new-found independence, Bapu was in Calcutta, worried sick.

Mahatma Gandhi was supposed to be in Bihar in the days leading to August 15, before heading to Bengal – both areas ravaged by communal strife. Bapu was only concerned about forging peace and harmony between the two communities. “To me, peace between Hindus and Muslims is more important than the declaration of independence,” he had famously said, and refused to take part in any celebrations.

He said: “I cannot rejoice on August 15. I do not want to deceive you. But at the same time, I shall not ask you not to rejoice. Unfortunately, the kind of freedom we have got today contains also the seeds of future conflict between India and Pakistan. How can we, therefore, light the lamps?”

Gandhi was eventually successful in his efforts, and his miraculous strategy in pacifying both communities was recognised by Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India.

Mountbatten said: “In Punjab, we have 55 thousand soldiers and large-scale rioting on our hands. In Bengal, our forces consist of one man (Gandhi), and there is no rioting.”

source: http://www.moneycontrol.com / MoneyControl / Home> News> India / by Jagyaseni Biswas / August 15th, 2020