Tag: Nostalgia

Reflections of a typical neighbourhood in Calcutta’s south. Photo by author. Farewell, my city…show us the way Asian women, show us the way to bitter exile. Agave in Euripedes’ The Bacchae                                                The entire world was like a palace with countless rooms whose doors opened into one another. We were able to pass from one room to the next only by exercising our memories and imaginations, but most of us, in our laziness, rarely exercised these capacities, and forever remained…

Facsimile of published article A new exhibition on the visual history of Calcutta opens a large window to the heterotopia of itsglorious past and forces us to stand by it in awe, writes Sayandeb Chowdhury One only has to open one’s eyes to understand the daily life of the one who runs from his dwelling to the station, near or far away, to the packed underground train, the office or the factory, to return the same way in the evening…

Calcutta on a winter morning. Photo by author. After years of being on the wrong side of history, Calcutta must take advantage of the fact that similar political factions now govern the city, state and the centre, and press for a genuine make over, writes Sayandeb Chowdhury “Hüzün does not just paralyse the inhabitants of Instanbul, it also gives them a poetic license to be paralysed.” — Orhan Pamuk (Istanbul: Memories and the City) “Through the churning of work, the…

Recent logo of the Kolkata International Book Fair. Image for representative purpose only When the Book Fair burnt in January 1997, it did not smell of authentic Bengali cuisine. Or of any of the many subliminal ‘snake foods’ (purported snacks) that were being cooked inside the fairground, one of whose stalls had been that very Prometheus who handed over fire to an undiscerning congregation of millions. Inside a stall, around 5 in the evening, I was browsing through a book…

Tales of the arch tippler In a recent press release, spirit maker Diageo has announced the re-launch of the legendary VAT69. According to company sources, the iconic dark green, sherry-shaped bottle is a tribute to its creator William Sanderson. Is it? We all thought it was a tribute to Ajit and to Ranjeet, the arch filmy villain and his ‘rape-happy’ sidekick. Or may-be even to Pran, Prem Chopra and oh yes, even to the red-eyed, drooling, baritoned slosh of one…

The arm-stretched tree-man at the Republic of Nandan. Photo by author. It is difficult to believe that there was a time when CPI(M) did not resemble a felled behemoth that was howling away on its way to dusty death. In those days it did many other things. And it also did Kaalture, so to say. It had aspired to be a party that stood erect for the working classes while sitting down to sip tea and discuss cinema with the…

Reading Orhan Pamuk is no more a literary activity. Given the range of controversies that he’s surrounded by, Pamuk is almost a political figurehead, perhaps much to his dislike. He has found mention in the long list of the world’s foremost public intellectuals; his name allegedly caused the delay in the announcement of the Nobel Prize for literature; and most importantly, he has been booked under a controversial Turkish law for ‘revealing’ that his country was responsible for…

A typical Calcutta day. Photo by author. The city’s cobbled roads may not hear the twinkling sounds of the iconic human carriage anymore… If a loss is just not personal, if the loss is just not about war, if the loss is historical and cultural, the abandonment of the handheld rickshaw is a loss for Kolkata. Because, with the alabaster memorial erected for a dead queen, the living, sweating rhythm of a weary rickshawallah pulling his cart through the…