Tagore Forever

Tagore rules our hearts.
Tagore remains ever significant,
ever relevant.

Like any other typical Bangali, I have lived, breathed,
romanticized, and experienced Tagore,
however, we all do it in our own way,
we discover him in various stages of our life,
uniquely, and yet universally.
Rabindranath Tagore, (or, as we better refer to
the bard as our very own Robi Thakur),
was born on May 7, 1861 (however, we celebrate hi birthday in the traditional way, based on the Bangla calendar or almanac - whereby it is the 25th day of Baisakh - Pnochise Boisakh),
and died on August 7, 1941 (like his birthday tradition we observe it on 22nd day of Shravan - Baishey Srabon).
His famous works include Gitanjali, The Crescent Moon, Fruit Gathering, Lover's Gift, and The Gardener. The prolific creative genius that he was, he wrote umpteen poems, and songs, and stories, novels, plays and essays, and a lot more. Further, his paintings keep enthralling us.
Recently, I have been listening a lot of Rabindrasangeet, and unlike my earlier penchant for the age-old gems sung by thespians like Suchitra Mitra, Kanika Bandyopadhyay, Shantideb Ghosh, Subinoy Roy, Hemanta Mukhopadhyay, Chinmay Chattopadhyay, Debabrata Biswas, and Sumitra Sen (to name just a few of my all-time favorites), I am very much liking the host of contemporary singers, young and energetic, and inspired very much by the traditionalists, yet not in the least hesitant to experiment in a healthy way.
And these young singers' (well, they are not in the same age group, but they have been getting the youth brigade to warm up to Rabindrasangeet, that they surely have in common) efforts I choose to laud and celebrate, and I would very much like to recommend their renditions to my fellow enthusiasts.
Here they are, selected solely on the basis of personal preference of mine (my readers are requested to add their favorites to the list):
Jayashree Dasgupta
Srabani Sen
Srikanto Acharya
Swagatalakshmi Dasgupta
Kamalini Mukherjee
Shreya GuhaThakurta
Bikram Singh
Manoj Murali Nair
Manisha Murali Nair
Samantak Sinha
Somlata Acharyya Chowdhury
Parama Banerjee
Aniruddha 'Sasha' Ghoshal
Sounak Chattopadhyay
Lopamudra Mitra
and 
Jayati Chakraborty

Happy Birthday, Iman!

Keep rocking, Iman!
Make music, make some noise......

Log on to Iman's cool website for more info
on this upcoming rockstar,
this volcano of a talent 
who makes you sit up and listen...... 
http://www.imansen.com

I wish him all the best
for his future endeavors....... 
may he strike the right chords, always;
may he connect profoundly with his listeners.

A summer of discontent and dissent

I find the weather not only dreadful because it has warmed up badly 
but also because of the extreme discomfort it has been resulting in.

Kolkata has been missing out on the green cover to a greater extent this year as several construction projects are underway. 

And, on the personal front, I too am having a hard time, 
battling the challenges, physically and mentally. 

Although I am desperately trying to project an 'everything's cool' image.

A dear friend of mine asked me today: Why can't I be half as nice as interesting?

Well, that shows that my facade hasn't worn off...... hahaha.

I confess, I have been suffering a host of summer allergies of late. 

Plus, having to brave the heat in afternoons, have found me tweeting my woes.

As if the perspiration and dehydration weren't enough to irk us, there is an additional woe on account of the rising prices. Prices of consumer-durables and essential items are sky-rocketing each day!

Worse still, Kolkata - rather, the entire state of West Bengal - has been witnessing a summer of dissent what with the obnoxious political climate, many of the new government's (about to be a year-old soon) promises having been proved false, and some of the apprehensions about the leadership and the functioning having come true.

Remembering Ray

There was cinema before Ray, and cinema after.
Satyajit Ray is that big a milestone for filmmakers, and filmlovers in this part of the world.
As long as cinema will be there, retaining the very essence of what it has been revered by connoisseurs for, all over the world, Ray and his films, and his thoughts therein shall be relevant.

Today, and till late last night, I eagerly lapped up the Bangla version of his treasure-trove of a book, on the making of his very first film, 'My Years With Apu'. The Bangla version is called 'Apur Panchali'. It is a must read for all enthusiasts of cinema.

Shabdabaaji

Shubho Nabobarsho!~ Choddosho Unish!!!~
Launching today......
a brand new Bangla website!!!!!
It's called Shabdabaaji

[Bangla sobder khela - nishiddho noy , emon ek dhoroner SHABDABAAJI - jante hole , khelte hobe!!]

-it's the brainchild of my dear friend Tonmoy, better known as MJ Roy, the popular anchor/presenter from the world of radio and television.
Shabdabaaji, literally, means word bomb or word cracker, and the pun in Bangla is with the art or skill of toying with words, having fun with the usage and guessing the right word, or parts of a word.
The site promises to be a whole lot of fun for all those who are thorough with the Bangla language and love solving word games. It promises to carry forward the joy of participation which became one of the major highlights for the FM radio station 94.3 Radio One, where Roy's programme spread its wings.
I must confess that I am myself not so skilled at solving Bangla word puzzles. But I was astonished to find so many who are adept at it. People would tune in just to compete and win prizes when the programme would be on air. Roy carried forward the concept to live events at the Book Fair (Kolkata BoiMela) garnering a super-positive response from the masses.
No wonder, last year, the United Nations declared Bangla to be the sweetest language on earth...... and it is this very sweetness that is about to be celebrated once again.

From this day onward, the auspicious Paila Baisakh, all those who are skilled in the language, and love toying with the common Bangla words, would have a new reason to rejoice.
SHABDABAAJI, the website, hopes to be big. The possibilities are immense. Now, global netizens can participate and get hooked to a new literary indulgence.
One should just love to accept the challenge that a regularly used Bangla word might pose in a somewhat changed look. A passable knowledge of common Bangla words will be enough to log in to the site for days and months.
Here, take a look, to know what it is likely to offer:

It's a novel concept indeed..... may it grow as a phenomenon.
Launch venue: Big Bazaar Family Centre, Sealdah,
Poila Baisakh, April 14, at 5pm.
Be there at the event, and,
more importantly, log on to the site for word-related fun:
http://shabdabaaji.com
Here's wishing it the very best.
And here's telling Roy, 'Kudos! Best of luck, buddy!'

Happy Birthday, Ewan!

Ewan McGregor is the birthday boy today! Hahaha.......
And here I am wishing him the very best, as I choose to gush about his greatness, the die-hard fan that I am, of this hugely talented Scottish actor.

Ewan McGregor, who turns 41 today, has acted in some of the most pathbreaking movies and has established his reputation as an actor of renown. He has bagged as much critical acclaim as popularity. His star appeal is largely because of the characters he has played on-screen, and not for his off-screen exploits which are known to provide some lesser actors an overnight popularity that is difficult to retain.

Here's a glimpse at the films of Ewan McGregor that I have seen till date:
Trainspotting
Emma
Brassed Off
Nightwatch
The Serpent's Kiss
A Life Less Ordinary
Little Voice
Rogue Trader
Moulin Rouge!
Black Hawk Down
Down with Love
Young Adam
Big Fish
Robots 
The Island
Stay
Stormbreaker
Miss Potter
Cassandra's Dream
Incendiary
Deception
I Love You Phillip Morris
Angels and Demons
The Men Who Stare at Goats
Amelia
The Ghost Writer
Perfect Sense
Beginners

Happy World Theatre Day!

Just the other day I wrote about cinema (well, most of my posts are on cinema, but my last post was more of a salute to the birth or evolution of cinema, thanks to the Lumière Brothers), and today happens to be World Theatre Day and here I am writing about my love affair with the stage. This has happened not by choice, trust me readers.
For most people, all over the world, theatre has been a prime form of self-expression, a source of entertainment as well as awareness and learning. For me, the exposure to theatre came late. As a child, I was only privileged to watching our school plays, and mostly I would not have an active participation in the same. Once my class-teacher had complained to my mother that while almost the entire class had been eager to audition for the play to be staged on the annual day programme, I had been reticent. Well, I was the shy guy, I hated the limelight, and could not imagine myself mouthing rehearsed dialogues on stage (although I used to regularly take part in the music concerts at the school auditorium.
The only connect with theatre used to be the airing of the plays each week on television or on radio, and some of the performances at the local soirées. But hardly that was the real deal, I was yet to wake up to the full blown magic of stagecraft.
It was in my late teens, that I fell in love with theatre, and that happened rather oddly while I started enjoying plays in the written format, as opposed to them being performed, which I hadn't been privy to. I pored over many of the contemporary plays of the American and British playwrights and even bought and studied plays written by the Indian masters like Badal Sircar, Vijay Tendulkar and Girish Karnad. Then, came the touring Shakespearean company who gave me a taste of the magic of Shakespeare's plays (till then I had not been able to enjoy any of the Shakespearean classics in their original form, unaided, and had only seen the recordings and film adaptations of some of Shakespeare's plays at the British Council and on television), and I fell for the same - hook, line, and sinker. I discovered to my amazement how madly in love with theatre was my very own city - Kolkata!
By the way, I must also mention yet another influential factor in shaping my regard for theatre. It was the privilege of witnessing the mammoth production of Peter Brook's 'The Mahabharata' - the filmed version of the stage play.
The Academy of Fine Arts, Max Mueller Bhavan, Rabindra Sadan, Sisir Mancha, Madhusudan Mancha and many such venues became my weekend haunts. I would take time out of my schedule of classes and tuitions and hop along with a few other theatre-enthusiast friends of mine to watch the latest stage productions of the theatre groups. Commercial or mainstream theatre's heydays were over by then, and the repertory companies had a tough time performing on a rotational basis at the thriving auditoriums. I shall never get over the fact that I did not get to see thespians like Shambhu Mitra, Tripti Mitra, Ajitesh Banerjee and Utpal Dutt perform live. However, the ones who regaled me were also to learn from and their performances have enriched me immensely as a viewer. I have been fortunate to watch the live performances of thespians and stalwarts like Badal Sircar, Kumar Roy, Rudraprasad Sengupta, Bibhas Chakraborty, Ashok Mukhopadhyay, Soumitra Chatterjee, Swatilekha Sengupta, Aparna Sen, Sohag Sen, Manoj Mitra, Usha Ganguly, and Saoli Mitra. Among the new-age actors and directors, Gautam Halder, Anjan Dutt, Kaushik Sen, Sohini Sengupta, and Suman Mukhopadhyay are just a handful of names who have had much influence on me. I feel privileged to have seen some of them from close quarters, honing their craft. Reminiscing about theatre, I can never forget Steven Berkoff who had come from London and had absolutely mesmerized me as he performed Shakespeare's Villains at an intimate gathering one evening.
I feel a tad guilty as lately I haven't been able to catch up with the stagings as much as I would have wanted to.
Theatre has prospered and evolved even with the apparent encroachments of consumerist culture that favours cinema and television more. Theatre's pro-active role is unique, its influence far-reaching, and its impact tremendous. The joy of performing in front of a live audience is unparalleled for an actor, and hence we see that actors who migrate to other forms return to theatre time and again. Nowadays, there is greater appreciation; there's greater exposure to world theatre as well. The number of training institutes have grown.
Across the world there are multiple specialisations to choose from at the diverse drama schools and training institutes that teach the basics of acting and stagecraft. Theatre still struggles for funding, and hopes for a better future. Ultimately, for an individual, theatre is not about a career or a profession. Theatre is a genuine passion that one can't let go whatsoever. On this day, I salute all such passionate individuals and theatre groups. Happy World Theatre Day!

First show!!! First time:)

On this day, in 1895, at 44 Rue de Rennes in Paris, the Lumière Brothers screened 'Workers leaving the Lumière factory' - the first piece of cinema!

I think it is apt for us to look back at the inception of cinema, as we know it now, as the entire world has been focusing a lot of recent cinematic attention on 'The Artist' and 'Hugo' - both excellent movies on their own.

I had earlier mentioned 'The Artist', in listing my Oscar favorites for the year, it celebrates silent cinema and opens the eyes of the new-age film enthusiasts to this very genre from the past. I have written about my being charmed by 'Hugo' in an exclusive piece too. Recently, I read somewhere that 'Hugo' is Martin Scorsese’s cinematic love letter to Georges Méliès, the famous French illusionist and filmmaker. I loved the befitting tag.

We often neglect history. It's a shame. We must never fail to honour our illustrious past. The Lumière Brothers, Auguste and Louis, could not possibly fathom the ramifications of the cinematic explosion that was destined to happen, and their first screening - or rather the series of screenings which began - was not even meant for the general public (the first public screening was to take place in December that year, at the Grand Cafe on Boulevard de Capuchines, Paris), but history was made with the exposure to the filming and film viewing experience.

Movies have come a long way. Yet, they are still marvelled at. They still fill us with awe, admiration and amazement. The best of the films inspire us, educate us, enlighten us. And moving images or moving images are best interpreted, universally, as movies; they move us, emotionally. They affect us. They affect social changes even.

However, movies are now not just watched, they are consumed!

Movie-making has undergone a sea-change, or rather witnessed waves of changes, waves of revolution, one after the other. Cinema is one of the most dynamic art forms. Cinematic brilliance is honoured and revered like never before.

The sceptics have foreseen death of cinema; well, it is yet to happen and is hardly foreseeable in the near future, although evolution has been the order of the day, it is the key to sustenance and survival after all.