Against All Odds

After several years I had chanced to meet an old friend  at a movie hall in South Calcutta. Monisha and I had gone to watch a Bengali thriller. This friend, Sukanya, was there with her bubbly little daughter who was playing around in the lobby. She had a hearing aid and I soon learnt that she is deaf since birth. My heart was filled with a sudden sadness about my friend and the little innocent child who perhaps did not even know what she did not have. She was very happy with herself and didn't seem to care. 

I had earlier worked with Sukanya at a small newspaper house and she was a very nice girl, full of life and a general enthusiasm about everything. 

On and off we stayed in touch over phone when one fine afternoon, Sukanya told me she was struggling to find a better school for her daughter. Her daughter would've been in her early teens then and studying in a normal school with normal children (I have quite forgotten the name of the school but it was one of the better known schools in South Calcutta). 

They had put her in a normal school because they had read that now inclusive education is being promoted and no child should be denied entry into any particular school on the basis of her disabilities blah blah blah. It went off pretty well in the junior classes but now that she is in a higher class the teachers are becoming impatient with her. She is by no means dull but due to her communication problem she takes time to be explained things. The teachers are not willing to give her that time.

Sukanya was worried that the child is very attached to a few of her friends and leaving the school and those friends might be traumatic for her. I felt so hopelessly incompetent that I could do nothing about the situation and it was all so wrong. I have been a teacher in life and I would've killed such teachers if I found them in my staff room. But here I could do nothing but give her the contact details of an NGO that works with hearing impaired children. 

I did not keep track of what was going on in that little girl's life. More out of a feeling of regret and a denial mechanism that perhaps worked in me. If we do not look at a problem in the eye the problem does not exist for us. It was somewhat like that. Meanwhile I learnt the child had left her school and joined another school, which is not the best in the city, but it has a very inclusive culture. She was happy.

And then several years passed. We have been in touch over facebook but never exchanged any notes about the child.

Yesterday Sukanya's facebook post caught my attention. A beautiful porcelain installation artwork on display at an Indo-Russian cultural exchange venue. It's by her daughter Srijoni. She is now an artist. She has done her graduation from NID it seemed. Such a wonderful success in life. I was so happy to learn this. I have not been part of her struggle. But I am happy to see the outcome. 

Fall of a Hero

We hold our role models in high esteem. And expect them to be the ultimate in all sorts of virtues in every sphere of life. For example, a good singer who becomes famous by singing, is also expected to be an exemplary husband, a philanthropist etc. That is, we create a picture of a perfect human being and expect him or her to live up to it. 

Reality is often far from it.

I heard the name of Reinhold Messner first during my rock climbing camp at Susunia Hills from a man who we all called Sadhu-da. He told us about a book called Everest An Impossible Victory which was written by Messner's co-climber Peter Habler. The book is on their climb of Everest without supplemental oxygen. That was the first of its kind ascent of Everest.

I came back and found the book in National Library. Read it a bit. They did not allow us to take the book home as it was not in print (that used to be the rule and by this rule almost all books were not available for home borrowing).

I also read somewhere, not sure if it was in the same book or somewhere else, that Peter Habler was quite disgusted with the book that Messner wrote after his return. It seemed as if Messner alone climbed the mountain, while the two of them did it as a team actually. This was perhaps the reason why he wrote the book. I think both of them are from Tirol and they have never climbed together after this. In fact Messner did not climb with anyone after this. 

As I grew up Messner started climbing all the 8000 meter peaks one after the other without oxygen support and solo. This is a heroic thing to do. Really heroic. I became a fan, obviously. The whole world became his fan. Some called him a heavily commercialised climber. But so what? He owns an island and a museum etc. He obviously became rich by just climbing mountains and writing books about them. He became a global celebrity. A Maradona or Pele of climbing. I even bought a rather expensive book by him (which mysteriously disappeared) when Amazon came to India. 

Last night this Messner, came down heavily in my esteem and I lost all respect for him. 

His instagram account had a post of a small video clip that showed someone camping (obviously him but he was not seen in it) in the middle of a vast open field in Ethiopia. Hundreds of Zebras are seen grazing, a local boy is seen chopping vegetables, a dining table with a table cloth on top is laid out with two chairs, there is a very luxurious tent (more expensive than many Indian SUVs) and an SUV (possibly a Land Cruiser) on the side. The caption says something like I am a nomad. I want to travel to every country and learn from the locals blah blah blah. 

I made a comment there. I couldn't help it actually, "nomad with an SUV and a dining table with chairs?" And put three surprised emojis. This one post left me quite disillusioned about him. He seemed so fake. How can you claim to be a nomad when you are travelling with an SUV? Has he read Dervla Murphy and how she travelled? He is a great mountaineer all right but it stops there. He is nothing else. Just a publicity hungry fake hero who will do anything to stay in public memory.

After this incident, I told my friend Suvomoy about it over whatsapp and he wanted to see the post and asked for a link. Just out of curiosity. For the life of me I could not find it. I scrolled down in my insta feed and it was not there. I searched up and down with the name Reinhold Messner. A few fake accounts came up. I could not even find the account. I realised I was perhaps blocked off. 

I used my other id to search for it. You can have some six insta accounts. And it was there in all its glory. My comment is deleted. Clap clap clap. 

You might say Messner does not manage his account and it must be the work of a junior executive in his agency that is entrusted with running the account. I am sure he plays an active role in its running and whoever manages it knows that the client wouldn't like such a comment under his post. The client wants to remain a hero in the eyes of his followers.

Did Messner want to get projected as a nomad? Or was it the brainwave of his account executive? I don't know. I don't care really. You are responsible for your account. 

Opium Inc

During the lockdown of 2020 two good things happened to me. A. I read a lot of books in the silence of Calcutta. B. I did a lot of exercise and brought my HbA1C under strict control. The frenzy of reading ebbed a little with the lifting of lockdown. 2021 was not as productive in terms of reading speed. I barely finished a few financial books related to the stock market. Towards the end of 2021 I bought a book to learn about a subject that I had heard about vaguely but knew nothing much about. So out of a curiosity to learn about the trade and the wars that went with it I bought the book Opium Inc. It is a strictly non-fiction book on the international trade on opium and I did not make much progress in the immediate aftermath of the purchase. 

I finally managed to finish it a couple of days ago. This was achieved in a few sittings, mainly in the flight to and from Bangalore where I went to attend a battery exhibition. Although it has a very Roman Catholic name for an author, Thomas Manuel, he is very much Indian. Perhaps a Keralite or Goan. It's not important (though some people have an aversion towards Indian authors writing in English). The book is thoroughly researched and well written in a William Dalrymple style of (hi)story telling. 

The author digresses a lot from the main subject with interesting tid bits of information here and there but that's fine. They often add colour to the main story. The last few chapters, the ones that were added after his story of the British trade in opium ends, seem like an afterthought. As if he had to include them to add heft to the book and achieve a certain target in terms of number of pages. There is a chapter on opium in English literature also, where the author seems aloof and distant. History of literature is clearly not his forte.

But the main subject of opium trade in the far east is very well treated. The story does not have linear progression everywhere. It often goes back and forth but that's fine. I enjoyed the book and I am going to keep it for future reference. 

The book also has copious citations which can be useful if one attempts to research on the subject.

There is no mention of British institutions that are still active and apparently played a role in the opium trade. For example, I would be curious to know the role of HSBC in this trade. While the opium wars ended in 1840s, HSBC was set up in 1865 in Hong Kong. Obviously they benefited from the triangular trade in tea, silver and opium but there is no mention of it. 

What the book has done is rekindle my interest in reading. After this I pulled out the autobiography of Verrier Elwin last night and started reading it. I loved the writing style so much that I read up more than 30 pages or so in the first evening itself while Djokovic played his first Wimbeldon match of 22 in silent mode. 

The gentleman was a self taught anthropologist who came and settled in India and became an Indian citizen. He was born in Kent and educated at Oxford. He has done seminal work with the tribals of central India and North East.

This book is part of a fat book that contains three autobiographical books together. One is Jim Corbett's My India (not an autobiography but a collection of short real stories from his life), the second is Salim Ali's Fall of a Sparrow and the third is this. It is curated by Ramchandra Guha. 

I have read My India quite a few times. I could not finish Fall of a Sparrow because of the copious details on hunting and shooting and killing of birds - though Salim Ali is remembered as a conservationist and ornithologist. There is even a chapter on his rifle collection and which one is suitable for what type of game etc. If I remember correctly that is when I stopped reading the book. 

I have also avoided reading Corbett's hunting stories though to him hunting meant killing man eaters and he was revered in the mountains for this.

Once I finish this Elwin book I shall write a piece on the experience. It's more than 300 pages though.

Mamma's Boy

 The other day I went to get a hair cut. I think last Saturday. I saw a sight there that really disturbed me. There was a boy sitting on one of the barber's chairs and getting his face shaven. They were using a clip to shave him. He looked like a youngish boy of may be 18 or so. He was very fat. 

Thus far was fine. Nothing unusual about it. The thing that disturbed me was that his mother was standing next to him and giving instructions to the barber. I have seen many people getting shaved. Both young and old. But I have never seen an adult getting shaved under his mother's strict supervision at a public saloon (we call them saloons here in India - basically a barber shop). 

Rabindra Nath Tagore had written long ago - তিন কোটি সন্তানেরে হে মুগ্ধ জননী, রেখেছো বাঙালি করে মানুষ করো নি . This was written probably a hundred years ago. It means, "Oh my great Mother, you have kept 30 million of your sons as just Bengalis, not as proper human beings". This is so very true in our society even today. We have learnt nothing from these writings. 

I wonder how these boys will ever handle life when they step into real adulthood and try to make a living in this big bad world on their own. How will they ever live a happy married life? Actually they don't. We have such a sample in our larger family. He was somewhat similarly protected by his parents and then he grew up, got married but could not have a happy married life. His wife lived for a few years like an outsider, if not a maid, in their house and then left. 

Now that his parents have both died, he lives alone and just cannot live a normal life because he is incapable of it. He looks like a street lunatic, eating from street side pice hotels when he can afford it. Due to some legal complications with his estranged wife, he gets picked up by the police every once in a while and spends time in jail. In fact I think he lives a better life in jail than outside when free. Is this the life his parents wanted him to have? But they did not foresee this coming. We could all see this except his parents. 

My parents never went with me to the hair cutting saloon. When I was a small child the barber used to come to our house and give me a hair cut while I would sit on a wooden chair on the verandah outside. As soon as I turned 10/12 I started going to the saloons on my own. I still remember my father telling me before my maiden voyage to the local saloon. Be very careful not to doze off. Barbers often take advantage of your slumber and clean your pockets. Little did he realize that active little boys don't doze off so easily on the barber's chair.

I started going to school on my own when I was less than 11 years old. I learnt cycling on my own. I did a lot of things on my own and without any parental hand holding. I am really proud of that. I made a lot of mistakes but I learnt a lot as well.

My parents taught me to take pride in doing things on my own. They taught me to be independent. They taught me that being dependent on someone or something is not a desirable quality. I am forever grateful to them for teaching this all important lesson to me. 

I have consciously tried to inculcate this into my daughter's life. She took pride in being able to do the short commutes and local travels on her own. Recently she went to Delhi all alone by train. She is going to come back alone too. 

I so wanted to tell this mother all this. She is as good as throwing her son into a pond with his hands and feet both tied to stones. She has no idea what she is doing. But alas I could not do it. I dared not do it.

The Cute Plantlets

Last year I had brought home a spider plant from Mukherjee's Nursery. I think it was in August. I kept it on the window grill and watered it regularly. A few weeks ago it suddenly gave out a runner. Small flowers bloomed out of it and soon I realised small plantlets had developed out of those flowers. Before long two more runners came out with similar plantlets at the end.

In nature, the runners would droop down and the plantlets would find ground and grow into adult plants. But in my artificial garden it becomes incumbent upon me to adopt those plantlets as my children and help them find their feet. 

So I bought six little tubs. I bought soil, vermi compost etc. I even stole some construction sand from a nearby construction site and planted them the other day by preparing the potting soil first. Saturday 11th June, 2022 to be precise. Let me see how they grow. I kept one of them dipped in water as an experiment. If the roots grow I will repot them in a regular tub.

If they successfully grow out I have to find new homes for them. Perhaps gift them away to friends. Because at this rate of reproduction our house will soon become full of spider plants only. My cash expense in each plant is around Rs 20.

Death of a Star

Last night a popular Bollywood singer died in Calcutta. His name is KK. Short for some long South Indian name. He was performing on stage at some college fest when he felt uncomfortable and subsequently died of heart attack. The social media world is full of it. Analysing the death, blaming the organisers and the government etc etc.

I was just thinking about it. How totally disconnected I am from the current entertainment scene. I had never even heard this name before, but now that he is dead I am getting to read a lot about him. He seems pretty popular. He was relatively much young and certainly not old enough to die. It is indeed a tragic death. 

Something similar had happened when actor Sushant Singh Rajput died. He had committed suicide. The entire universe sort of came to a halt. I didn't have any clue as to who he was. Never heard the name. But then I realised that I was perhaps the only man in India who did not know this name. 

Actually, I am not a consumer of entertainment. I wasn't like this for all times but in the recent couple of decades my definition of entertainment has undergone a sea change. I do not read the entertainment segment of the newspapers. Truth be told, I have stopped reading newspapers altogether. I have realised that important news will come to me in any case. And news that does not come to me is not worth reading. 

I have never in my life read the Page 3 sections of any newspaper. When Telegraph made a separate pull out called T2, it became easier for me to deal with that section of the paper. I would just chuck it  out. 

I have grown a similar distaste for cricket. The game has now become just an extension of Bollywood. The two always had an affinity for each other but now it is very overtly and shamelessly so. 

I watch international football for sure, English and other European football to be more precise. I watch cycling tours like the Giro or le Tour. I also watch grand slam tennis. While football is watched by some of my friends, no one I personally know watches cycling tours (many do not even know the tour names other than Tour de France). So in a sense I am friendless in that area.

Gitanjali Who? 

The other day we were posting meaningless images on our whatsapp group of school friends. This was being done for fun. Someone posted the food she cooked. A broker friend posted an image of his terminal. I posted the cover of the book Tomb of Sand by Gitanjali Shree. It had just arrived at work. The book, in case you do not know, has just won the Booker. The first Indian author to win the Booker and her original work is in Hindi. 

The broker was very happy and asked if this Gitanjali is Mampu, my daughter. 

I was so shocked that I could only come up with - no, she spells her name as Geetanjali plus she is Roy (as opposed to Shree). He said he thought Shree was possibly her co-author.

It did not occur to him if Geetanjali wrote a book published by Penguin and was shortlisted for Booker (it's written on the cover), I would probably announce this at a party in the Oberoi or Taj. He is otherwise quite well educated and in terms of cultural moorings fairly at a higher level than many of my other friends. 

I rest my case about my disconnect with my society, your honour.

 

Aparajita

Saw Anik Dutta's Aparajita last Monday. It was a night show at the Lake Market. It's a black and white film on the making of Pather Panchali - one of the most daring acts in the history of film making in India. We have all grown up reading stories and anecdotes about Pather Panchali (as indeed on Satyajit Ray himself) and how it was made against all odds and how it got global fame and established Satyajit Ray as one of the top film makers of the world etc. These are part of the educated Bengali's folklore now.

To me it stands out as one of the most heroic things to do for an individual. To be a complete outsider in the world of film making and put everything at risk to make his maiden film which was totally against what used to be dished out during his time by his contemporaries and then get global recognition for it is an extremely daring thing to do. No ordinary Bengali likes going out of his comfort zone of a cushy job and get into a world of uncertainties. 

But then Satyajit was not an ordinary Bengali. He was from a family of artists and intellectuals that was part of the cultural elite of the Bengali society of their time. Creative genius was in his gene.

His father (who he lost at the age of 3) and grandfather are household names in most educated Bengali families for their work on children's literature. And it has been so for more than a century now. Hailing from such a family he could not have been anything but a creative artist. He could've chosen any profession actually. He graduated in economics from Presidency College - the college that has produced two Nobel laureates in economics and then studied fine art in Shantiniketan under some of the greatest artists that India has produced. 

And then he chose to be a commercial artist with a top gun British ad agency, which gave him the opportunity to spend half a year in England and watch neo-classic European films there. After that he left it all to pursue a life in film making. 

Anik Dutta captured this defining moment in his life to make a film and then make a global success out of it. He did not use real names in the film. In his interviews he says this was on the insistence of Sandip Ray, Satyajit's son. They were apprehensive that someone somewhere could find a fault in some detail and then would either bad mouth it or even file a case against the film. They didn't want to take this risk. 

Therefore, the film cannot be called a biopic. I do not know what the film should be called in terms of its genre but it is a well made film. I would call it Anik Dutta's tribute to Ray. I quite liked it. 

I have just one minor grouse. The film never showed Ray taking a public bus with his crew to go shooting. He used to do this when he was shooting in the weekends while still working in the agency. To me this is the ultimate in commitment and courage. It might be a minor detail but to me it's a major detail. I can quite imagine Ray standing on the footboard of a double decker bus and going shooting with his crew.

The film also succeeds to a large extent because of the central character of the film. The guy who plays the role, Jeetu Kamal, has an uncanny resemblance to Ray. Dutta calls it a scary resemblence. And he does a fantastic job of imitating (this may not be the right word but it is not used in any negative sense) Ray's famous mannerisms and body language etc coupled with good acting skills. Obviously he did a very detailed homework and must have seen documentaries on him. 

I wonder how successful the film would have been without such an actor. What if he did not look like Ray at all? I doubt the film would be such a success. At 12.15 am on a weekday when we were coming out of the hall there were quite a few people with us. The hall was not at all empty. This is the sign of a successful movie. 

I hardly watch any movie at all. My review should not be used as a guide to watch or not watch a movie.