Wednesday, January 16, 2013

In which I stalk elderly Bengali actors at the Apeejay Kolkata lit-fest

I enjoyed my time at the Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival very much – Maina Bhagat, Anjum Katyal and their team did a super job; the event was professional and extremely well-organised while also leaving a lot of room for warmth and personal attention. (This is a rare combination, for reasons that are sometimes beyond the control of fest organisers: the bigger a festival gets, the more impersonal it becomes; and if it remains too small or fund-strapped, a number of things at the organisational level can go wrong at the last minute.) Fine venues too, including the National Library and the Oxford Bookstore in Park Street, and the inauguration – which included a thoughtful speech on Indian film history by Shyam Benegal – was at the grandest setting one could have hoped for, the Victoria Memorial.

The session I moderated went off reasonably well, though given the many talking points and the number of panellists we could probably have done with an extra hour. (Then again, we could have done with an extra four hours, so no point in being too greedy.) The audience size and level of participation was just right too. Outside of the actual sessions, there were pleasing encounters with friends and new acquaintances. And I had a nice little chat with someone who played a notable part in two significant non-mainstream Hindi films of the mid-1980s before dropping so completely out of the movie world that you can barely find any mention of him on the internet today – but more on that, hopefully, in a subsequent post.

For now, I want to report that I shamelessly indulged my fanboy impulse by getting photos clicked with actors who played lead roles in two of my favourite Satyajit Ray films, Pratidwandi and Seemabaddha, more than 40 years ago.

First, the delightful Barun Chanda – in his 70s now but even more striking a presence than he was in his younger days – with whom I had two very warm conversations.




(At some point during the second meeting, we were both a little high and sentimental, and Mr Chanda may have sung a few lines of the song “Jeevan ke safar mein rahi / Milte hain bicchad jaane ko”. But don’t quote me.)

The second pic above came shortly after Barun’s dramatised reading with Tom Alter at the event “When Ghalib met Manto – Ek Guftagu”, centred on Rabishankar Bal’s book Dozakhnama (just translated into English by the tireless Arunava Sinha). Here’s a picture from that performance (Tom Alter as Ghalib on the left, Barun as Manto on the right):



And here is a photo from the Nemai Ghosh collection, taken on the set of Seemabaddha: the younger version of Barun, with Ray and Sharmila Tagore.


Second fanboy photo. I’ll probably regret revealing this in a public space, but Dhritiman Chatterjee’s Siddhartha in Pratidwandi is one of my big movie-fan crushes. Here are two pictures of him, one at the fest, the other from the film, in 1970.
 



(More notes from the fest in later posts)

13 comments:

  1. I remember liking Pratidwandi a lot... Great piece. Evocative. I would have been tongue tied. Once I saw M S Sathyu at a film festival. I was a student then. And it took me some time to muster courage and tell him that I liked his films.

    I guess you have met several film personalities in the course of your work that awkwardness with them would be rare.

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  2. You're looking very nice in both your pix with Barun Chanda; great smile you got there :)

    And the warmth you speak of is really coming across in the pix.

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  3. Confession: Dhritiman is my fan-girl crush too (his occasionally embarrassing forays into Hindi cinema notwithstanding). And Pratidwandi is an absolute favourite. So am totally envious. :)

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  4. Deepa, Anjali: pleased to find other Pratidwandi fans here, given that I keep being chastised by my Bengali friends (most recently the venerable Ruchir Joshi) for my poor taste in liking Ray's city films.

    Radhika: yes, he's lovely - had a really good time chatting with him.

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  5. What did you think of the performance by the NAPA Repertory? My husband played Ghalib in the piece, When Ghalib Met Manto. (Apologies for asking you so bluntly but would really like to know your opinion).

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  6. Farheen: I missed the final 10 minutes but I liked what I saw a great deal (while struggling just a bit with the denser aspects of the language). My wife saw it all the way through and loved it - and she spent some time chatting with the members of the repertory at the dinner party later that night; she probably spoke with your husband too.

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  7. Farheen: hi, I'm Abhilasha and it was such a pleasure meeting the NAPA Repertory members in Kolkata. I thoroughly enjoyed the performanceS - loved the music too - and had a good time interacting with the members, including your husband who was fantastic as Ghalib. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I can make it to Kamani Auditorium tomorrow in Delhi for their performance at 7:00 pm

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  8. Do you like flowers? Not unconditionally.

    Watched it as a kid, and still aspire to say it one day, in that tone.

    Kanchan

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  9. Kanchan: I know what you mean! And he's such a delicate flower himself in that scene, one feels like...okay, I'll stop now...

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  10. This is the best title for a post ever and a spirit I wholeheartedly support and appreciate. I'm going to be chasing down Soumitra Chatterjee if at all humanly possible.

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  11. Beth: I've never met Soumitro, alas, and will be very tongue-tied if I do!

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  12. Jai, Beth, if there is ever a serious effort planned to track down Soumitra Chatterjee, please include me. I heart him so, so bad!

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  13. I don't know a whole lot about either actors but judging by what I've seen (Drhiman in 15 Park Avenue, and Bipin in Lootera), I really find them very erudite and urbane men. I'd probably have a huge crush on them were they my contemporaries. And as an aside, kudos to you for wearing your grey strands wit pride. I'm a firm supporter of going grey which is exceptionally challenging as a woman living in the West because here, it seems a bizarre thing to attempt. It automatically gets you labelled a frump (not that I'm an impeccably dressed fashionista for most days in a year :-))

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