in the entwined tingles of our seemingly messed up lives, if someone somewhere misses you even for a moment, you need to live.
in the unnecessary complexities of our otherwise mundane lives, if someone somewhere craves to be with you just for a moment, you need to live.
amidst the damp polluted abattoir-stenched air around us, if someone somewhere remembers the smell on your neck, you need to exist.
amidst the plausible deniability of lustful bonds that grasps us everyday, if someone somewhere wishes just to be in your arms, you need to exist.
in the falsities of promises,
in the farcical attachments,
in the fantasies of promiscuity,
in the fallacies of compromises,
if someone somewhere just lives
to get a glance of you,
to hold you in a whisper
to get a touch of you,
to hug you in a whimper,
When your paychecks determine whom you can hang out with; When your bank-balance decides whom you can vacation with; When the size of your dwelling dictates who comes over; When the number of brands in your closet governs your reach --
You may get to greet
a lot of smiling lips
yet no truly happy eyes
You may get to meet
a lot of sociable beings
yet no true friends...
When your social circle tends to judge you by the size of your TV-set; When they choose to forget to call you thinking about your incapacity to afford an expensive dinner; When your companions heil achievements on monetary thresholds; When they secretly discuss your obligations --
You need to flip
the happy faces that surround
and lie incessantly that you belong
You need to slip
the shoulders that show they care
and sigh you're a burden to hold...
FRIENDS don't judge you on anything
FRIENDS don't ever think you lack
FRIENDS fight with you for not sharing something
FRIENDS always disapprove you slack.
With every new sun
conscience grows sour,
empathy turns back in its sleep
and, compassion dies in another sacrifice.
With every new hour
innocence turns deaf,
sense of rightousness winks a deceit
and, morality drowns in another felony.
With every new moment, fades the one born right before
And the mortals complain of a dying humanity!
With every desire fulfilled, bubbles a fresh new greed
And time mocks itself; that the end is a process...
It's not even my country. He's not even my President.
And yet, why do I seem to be exasperated with the thought that America is not going to be the same again. Something is amiss. Perhaps, many a thing.
From the understanding of a child about a massive continent nation, to the learnings of a youth about world powers, until the realization of a sensible adult about the cultural intricacies of the first world nation - 'America' has been there in the passive consciousness. But, somehow the feeling about the country has always been it's a better world with better people with a better conscience.
And then, Donald Trump happened to the US of A. The squirm-faced, orange-haired man's antiques as a businessman, reality TV personality, or even as a politician stretching up to his declaration of candidacy for president, wouldn't have bothered me, if he had not become the POTUS. And the man is the apparent successor of Barrack Obama, who is almost a legend in terms of leadership in the world of politics .
A man, who being questioned upon his forceful attempt to have sex with a married woman, said "when you're a star, they let you do it."
A man, who mimicked a disabled reporter at a campaign rally and commented about a child inside an escalator that he would be dating her in ten years.
A man, who thinks it's "smart" to not pay federal income taxes and thinks it's logical to propose a ban on Muslims from entering the United States.
A man, who generalized Mexicans as "rapists" and "drug dealers" and claimed that a Supreme Court judge’s Mexican heritage made him unable to be fair in a case.
A man, who used Twitter as a weapon, firing off insults and mockery towards "Crooked Hillary" and Republican rivals "Little Marco" Rubio, Jeb "Low Energy" Bush and "Lyin' Ted" Cruz.
A man, who is such empty a vessel that it not just sounds much, it sounds nasty, irritating and sickening. And, that man is the Donald, who Trumped the U.S. Presidential election.
Only time will tell whether the new President-elect can dump his baggage of scandals and reform himself, before he brings reforms to the country to nurture the big American Dream -- for Americans and for the rest of the world.
"Please never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it. We need you to keep up these fights now and for the rest of your lives,” said Hillary Clinton and time waited to see if Trump would live up to his campaign claim and actually seek to "lock up" his opponent for her controversial practice of using a private e-mail server for much of her official State Department correspondence or other crimes.
Until then, sitting in a faraway land and in a country, which is itself mired in governance changes and demographic shifts, I'll stay happy with the feeling that I had a chance to be in America -- know its people, up, close and personal, when it was not ruled by a Drumpf!
the resonating uncanny whispers that plague
the senses every time you try to sleep,
the life-eaters sing you lullaby in a falsity
as you pretend to show your blunt back
to the daily cacophony.
it's not about the bliss and the beauty
'ey told you
it's not about the quantum of exploits and grace
'ey told you
perhaps, it's about the solace
that you greet against the sacrifices;
perhaps, it's the mirage of fulfilling hopes
that you keep running after...
you teach yourself the craft
of replacing the melancholy of exhaustion
with a fake content...
as sentiments get replaced
by the whims of desire.
and then,
the best healer of all wounds
slips away slow and steady to your oblivion.
by the dead hour,
when you pause to realize,
it's just the carcass of skeletal remains.
the promised 'happily ever after', misses you by a whisker
as you finally finish after the after...
It was back in the summer of 2012, pretty much before than the formal inception of Wanderlust as a gang. But, the spirits were nonetheless free and friends. It was considerably our first venture into the woods. For the four of us - Gour, Dadu, Prads and Me. My birthday was just around the corner and Dadu was visiting us in B'lore from Calcutta. The brisk plan for the weekend getaway into the forests near the Karnataka-Tamil Nadu border was flashed green just over a couple of phone calls and a Swiss Cottage deep inside the Mudumalai forest was booked.
Just to add a pinch of clarity about the geography and slight brevity to the narrative, Bandipur National Park is located in the southern state of Karnataka - slightly barren in terms of flora - was once a private hunting reserve for the Maharaja of Mysore. The same forest, as it extends toward the state of Tamil Nadu on the northwestern side of the Nilgiri Hills is known by the name of Mudumalai National Park. Mudumalai is comparatively thicker a forest than Bandipur. We started earlier than the sunrise and had reached close to the forests by late morning. Our stay was booked in Mudumalai, hence, the plan was to deny a stopover at Bandipur for whatever might have been the lure, as we would come back there the next morning.
We were already basking in the spirit of adventure and the nature’s charm at its utmost degree of mystique serenity was taking over our senses. The engulfing lush foliage, the murmur of the leaves in the sweet tease of the flowing breeze, the burble of Moyer river that runs parallel and the rippling sound of the small makeshift waterfalls touching down the road at regular intervals, all, were aptly juxtaposed with the frequent glimpses of prancing deer herds and the fluttering wings of the world's most colorful butterflies. Needless to say, it was just perfect for the cozy lap of mother-nature. Indeed, a gifted break from the humdrums of our banal city-lives.
We were slowly moving deep into the forest, quietly reminded by the road markers that animals have the right of way. Slightly ahead, we spotted a tusker on a stroll, on its silent rampage eating up every tree-branch or twig on its way. It was huge. The massive size of the animal tickled both, awe and fear, in all the four of us. But, we couldn't have been doing away with such an opportunity to capture the moment of wild amidst the wilderness, given the kind of lens-freaks we are.
We ran close, froze quite a few moods of the tusker on our cameras and realized its mahout was nearby. The elephant was not a wild, wild one. We were told, in that forest, it was probably the biggest 'yanai', that's what they call elephants in Tamil. It was a trained one. It helps find home to other wild elephants, when they get lost from their herds at times.
For three of us, our first close encounter inside the forest was sheer blissful. Prads had almost started analyzing the elephantine gestures in his head with drawings inside his mind to presumably design his next animated character. For me and Gour, we were happy with the clicks. But, Dadu didn't say a single word and looked a bit alarmed. Almost evidently, he was a bit tensed and was trying to hide that behind his dark shades. With the friendly leg-pulling and the fun, we wheeled in deeper inside the forest.
By midday, we've had reached our deep jungle home and it was decided we'll gear up for a sunset jungle trek after resting for lunch for some time. Our cottage was a cozy hearth, much like a big tent, camped just by the bank of a jungle brook. The swampy surrounding of the cottage must have helped invite ‘slytherin’ visitors but Prads was smart to have brought along carbolic acid to keep the reptilian friends at bay. So, there was less to worry. Meanwhile, we were hungry and the lunch served at the cottage tasted scrumptious. As we were gearing up with our lenses, water bottles and backpacks, Dadu said, "I think I'm not coming with you guys. I'm damn sleepy..." And, we were like, REALLY! Well shielded with his excuses of past night's drinks and travel fatigue, he managed to convince us and didn't come for the trek up the jungle slope, into the frontiers, apparently where the predators dwelled. The rest of us, we were enthused a little too much for the experience that was in store -- to walk the lands of the tigers. We were excited and hopeful to spot one of the carnivores from close but we literally had no clue or idea what to do next if one actually gets up-close-and-personal.
Around 3:30 in the afternoon we started with our guide in a small group of eight-nine odd heads. And frankly, it will be kind of a futile effort to try narrating the exact intricacies of the journey’s experience. The songs of the wild winglets, the unfamiliar hoots and chirps of the unknown aves were for a constant company. The thin forest trails were deceiving enough to have led to nowhere inside the forest territory and we were repeatedly told to stick together. The captivating smell of the jungle flowers and the zest to capture the colors of nature through our lenses were persuading us to override the warning again and again.
The first amusing thing that greeted us inside the forest was a squeaking ball of fur hanging from a high branch. It was a giant Malabar squirrel. I could have never imagined a squirrel as big as that one, if we had not seen it.
As usual, engrossed with the cameras, Gour and I, were left behind and was lost, yet completely oblivious of that fact. Meanwhile, we had found something extraordinary. It was a huge tree that appeared like a giant African baobab with its trunk resembling a face, a human face. Had we not been lost, we would probably not have seen something like that. I thought it was something like that comes in fantasy stories of some demigods being cursed into a life on earth as a tree, serving its punishment. But again, thoughts are thoughts and an imaginative flight means no practical limits. When we realized we're lost, it was late. We were already an-hour-long-walk deep inside the forest and it would have been stupid to try figuring out the way back ourselves. We chose to wait thinking our fellows might spot the missing two and our guide might trace us back where we have been left stranded. We were lucky; they did come back for us.
My nitpicking nose for a journalist was not helping me entirely believe on all that our guide was saying. He was a middle-aged Tamil man, who has spent most of his life in and around the Nilgiri forests and working as a guide. He had is fair share of stories inside his bag about those close encounters with tigers and wild boars. He said, "Stay close. There's something nearby." The way he said it in a scampering low voice, we could understand, it was probably something serious. It looked like he had smelt something. We marked his words and followed suit. However, the slightly unwarranted skepticism in me was raising eyebrows on how much his words can actually be believed. Come on! He has been doing it for a living, so probably he can be given a leeway to beef up a suspense scene just to add kicks to the journey. But then, at that particular part of the forest it was actually a belt of dense long grass -- a righteous habitat for tigers. It was getting dark and the sun had sunk behind the hills.
We moved in further with nothing yet in sight. Then all of a sudden, there was a quick loud rustle of dry leaves at a distance and a chain of howls screaming thru' the silence of the forest. "It's a pack of wild dogs," the guide said. "Must have been feasting on the leftovers of a tiger's kill. That’s what they do." For a moment, I won’t deny, it had sent a shiver down my spine.
He drew our attention to something, couple of yards away. It was a fresh carcass. It sounds like an oxymoron, I know, but it was the flesh-ripped skeleton of an antelope, lying on a big patch of darkened blood stain.
It was quite obvious, that big an antelope can only be a tiger's hunt. Yes, we were standing at a place where perhaps, couple of hours ago, the big cat was having its supper. A few pug marks here and there confirmed our assumption. Thankfully, the heavens timed it right that we did not comprise the carnivore's meal.
It was already beyond sunset. We were asked to pace up as it would not be safe to ramble inside the forest after dark. In order to save us some time and tire, we chose a short-cut route that called for a river crossing. It was a typical hilly stream, not much deep but filled with strong under-currents. With broken branches and hands for support we crossed the running waters.
It was another 45 minutes of walk to get back to the mainland and we were told from there the route will be pretty much straight. However, the path didn't seem as straight as we thought it would be. Minutes later, our guide, who was walking in front at a visible distance shouted back to us to hold and stop. We couldn't decipher what has happened at first, then we realized the way ahead takes a downward slope and our guide came back to us running and said "this road is not safe as there's a mad elephant tearing and knocking down the forest belt ahead." He was worried we cannot take this route, but going back again all the way in the former path would definitely get us trapped within the forest in the darkness. It was a precarious situation. We didn't know what to do.
"Is there no way possible that we can stealthily walk past the mad elephant?" asked Gour. "It's on the run so can we not avoid its path and run past it too?" It made sense. Or, at least, that was the only option that we had. I thought to myself, this might gift us that one moment of fame, to frame a wild insane mammoth on its riot. I'm sure; the same was going in Gour's mind. We were forbidden to make the slightest of noise and we trod ahead.
Elephants have always fascinated me. But, I never had delved deeper into their lives. It was the first time, I learnt that sometimes elephants are so attached to their partners that they go mad or even might die if one passes away or gets lost. Same was the story for our mighty friend here. It was a bull elephant that had lost its partner couple of days back and was found to have turned frantic. Our guide had heard about it in the morning from the forest rangers and now, fortunately or unfortunately, it was there, blocking our path. As we tried making our way, we could see the animal at a distance, slightly lower in a slope, going crazily berserk and banging its head against almost every tree and taking them down. I'm not sure why, was it sorrow, was it pity, but it was for one single time I actually didn’t care to take a snapshot. The camera kept hanging round my neck and all I did was to see the big creature running amok in sorrow. Our guide said, "it has been two days. By now it should have calmed down but it hasn't. If this continues, this one too will die soon." It felt weird. On this deep jungle trot, in a land far away from my home, how could something be so sensitively emphatic that I feel bad for a creature, way bigger than me and way beyond my breed?
And then, someone in our group, a dumb college kid, used his flash to take a photo of the animal on rampage. It happened as was expected. The blinding light of the camera flash had attracted the elephant's attention and it charged on us. We had nothing to do but to run for our lives, literally. Some stumbled, some almost fell, but everybody ran their fastest. Luckily for us, the mammoth was too preoccupied on its own to continue the chase and we were left panting and alive. It was another first of its kind in our kitty. Famished and tired, we completed our eventful jungle trek. We reached back to our cottage discussing what all Dadu had missed and that he should have come along with us. Guess what, we could hear him snoring from outside the cottage door. Despite all the weary, we broke into a raucous laughter. And then, there was more to come…
Pics Courtesy - Koustav Samanta, Gourav Bakshi, Pradipto Sengupta [Disclaimer: This piece is written for mie biker-gang, Wanderlust on Nov. 27, 2013]
"Eminent filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh passes away" -- that's the ticker on a news channel that carelessly caught mie eye while stepping into the office on a regular weekday morning. And, the walk from the reception lobby to mie cubicle had me in a weird state of awe, disbelief and a sense of an irrepairable loss. there have been loads of instances of rumors about famous men's deaths and i kept praying why can't this be another on those lines.
one of the the most erudite man of our times was no more. it's indeed very tough to decipher in words what He meant to me. excusing all the adjectives, for me Rituparno Ghosh meant a deeper world of knowledge, sensibilities, charisma and yet an individual adorable to the utmost degree of perfection. for the typical bengalee boy in me, if Tagore was God as i have not seen him in flesh, Ghosh was God-sent. pardon mie prodical words of praise. yes, i'm a little too biased about him and i'm not denying...
the man marked an era of his own, but certainly it would be a falsity to state that his death marked the end of it. rather, it was him who gave a whole new meaning to the Bengali cinematic art and in the most sophisticated style carved a niche for the vernacular motion picture medium amidst the international
audience. it'll always be less, as much as is said about how Ghosh brought back the literate bengali middle-class to theatres in a post Ray-Ghatak-Sen period. His style of film-making waved the green flag for a fresh new breed of directors, who in the days later could muster the courage to venture outside formula-films or box-office-appeasing cinema.
a man, who understood the multifarious shades of human emotions and defined his own ways of sensibilities that was agreeable to some and eye-sore to others, was advertently a true-versed artist in the craft of movie making. Ghosh said many a number of times that it was Satyajit Ray who inspired him to make films and Abanindranath Tagore taught him unaware how to tell a story. "Among all the things i do with my limited knowledge, i think i've been able to do one thing consistently and that is making films. so, in the end, i would most likely be remembered for mie films," said Ghosh, who lived his life under his own dictations.
Ghosh mostly made films in bengali, a language he was immensely proud of and felt was his very own. He felt he knew his language and it helped him express aptly every time. Somewhere, the Bengali audience identified him as a successor of Ray or Ritwik Ghatak, while i personally feel Ghosh was more of a modern-day scion of Ajay Kar or Tarun Majumder. but, that's a subjective quotient and is hence, debatable.
"Ray set a masculine prototype for film directors. People were proud of his height and his English. People (like me) who wear danglers and kajol to parties (were regarded) as an insult to Ray," Ghosh had said. the succession of creativity probably brings along loads of responsibility. the fans, the followers never wished him to get distracted, at least that's how Ghosh looked at it. they thought, now that he's in to acting - portraying prosaic and the ever-discussed-about-him gender issues, he won’t make good movies anymore. then, they thought just because he's more into dressing differently unlike common men, his focus was getting distracted from directing good movies.
Coming to his films. The first venture Hirer Angti (1992) was not a remarkable box-office hit. i still feel, it was one of the tidiest of flicks ever made for kids after Joy Baba Felunath, Fatik Chand and the likes. He arrived in the scene permanently with his second film Unishe April (1995) that bagged him his first National Award. Since then, there was no looking back. From Dahan ('97) or Bariwali ('99) to Noukadubi (2010) or Chhitrangada (2012), in his film-making career spanning about 20 years, he dealt with the quintessential nitty gritties of human emotions, sentiments and characters. But, we never ever felt he was being preachy. Or, he was trying to impose his beliefs and his thoughts on us. it always felt so comfortably justifiable.
Ghosh always made it appear so affirmatively look-believe. He touched our lives. the most average, and yet in their own existential way, little but special stories of the middle class Bengalee. here, please allow me share an excerpt of what one of mie closest pals and a fellow scribe, Nivedita had to say -- "When he told a story, you listened. Watched, but you know what I mean. And because Ghosh was an extremely intelligent man, he knew exactly how to hook his target audience: the well schooled but very averse-to-change middle class.
So his characters would sing Rabindrasangeet and quote Tagore and Shakespeare, and the middle-class erudite would feel safe in his movies. Look, these are people just like us!”
the unpretentious portrayal of physical intimacy in Antarmahal created a subtle discomfort among his middle class Bengali audience. perhaps because, the posters have not had given them the cue. and this happened, despite the fact that his earlier film Chokher Bali depicted the young widow Binodini menstruating in a rather poignant scene and yet did not have to greet out-of-the-window criticisms just because the director was working with a Tagore novel and the sexual explicitness was tolerated for the novelist’s essential ‘sanctity’. even after all this, when he acted as a gay adman in Memories in March or the parallels of the Chapal Bhaduri in Arekti Premer Golpo, and in the same tune as Rudra in Chitrangada, a certain section of his audience seemed to have forgotten about all his past ventures in representing sexuality and showcasing the intricacies out of real-life lures, but only juxtapose the homosexual imagery and full stop. Rituparno lived with a strong gender connotation and vice versa, but i'll came back to that later.
just because, i've talked about his first film let me also quickly touch upon his released last. Chitrangada - The Crowning Wish. i firmly believe, if it was not him, it would have never been possible for anyone else to have woven the characters out of Mahabharata and the famous Tagore novel in sheer poetic narration in the context of a present day plot. the whole idea of Kaamdev being some kind of a plastic surgeon or a beautician to transform the conceptually Kuroopa princess to the Suroopa (beautiful) Chitrangada in order to make Arjuna fall in love couldn't have been more neat.
however, Ghosh, who won twelve National Awards out of his nineteen released movies, always credited his luck somewhere behind his exploits and said he was an overrated director. "how much i try i will never be able to feature among the first 200 filmmakers of the world, so might as well spend rest of the time watching their films," he had said to Moon Moon Sen on her chat-show for TV Southasia.
an ardent lover of hilsha and sleep, Ghosh loved his city Calcutta and said he probably cannot live without it. Unlike Ray, who composed many of the scores for his films himself, Ghosh said he loved all kinds of music but did not understand the intricacies much himself. He loved Rabindrasangeet more than anything and that probably reflected in his films too. Renowned music composer Debajyoti Mishra, who also scored music for many of Ghosh's films, said he knew music like nobody else. The lyrics of various songs penned by Ghosh, especially the ones in Maithili for his own film Raincoat bears testimony to the fact that he was no less of a remarkable poet or a lyricist.
now beyond the world of films, for which people better know him for, there are much more to the versatility of the maverick. Ghosh had been into costume designing for acclaimed theatre director Suman Mukhopadhyay's plays. He was an elaborate fashion connoisseur himself as designer Sarbari Dutta describes. He had also been into jewellery designing. After having started his career with advertising, Ghosh laster had edited copies for ABP, was appointed the creative head of the Bengali section of Broadcast World Wide, popularly known as Tara, hosted two most prominent chat shows on Bengali television, scripted one widely-followed tele soap revolving around Tagore in a modern Bengalee mindset, etc, etc, etc. however, Ghosh once said, due to the entire limitations of a regional channel and the dictates of a market, he couldn't enjoy TV just for the sake of creative joy. for him, making a film was like having a picnic with all the unbound creative fun involved.
despite all his achievements and the following he garnered to himself, somewhere somewhat his mannerisms drew undue attention. He was tagged as an LGBT activist, a gay icon or even a transgender elite. He never denied he was effeminate and admitted that his success as a celebrity entitled him or, rather gave him the freedom to choose his own terms that many common people cannot.
in his own words, "gender is fluid. there's nothing called a gender monolyth." how can one ensure that a man is bound to behave only as a man oozing only machismo all the time and in no way entitled to be vulnerable or even unwillingly bestowed with the rigidity that he cannot let go a woman-like expression ever? it's not about a sexual minority cause minority is a subjective quotient. he was definitely not the only man effeminate. Ghosh never demanded that he can rope-walk between the loose nooses of sexual boundaries.
"Yes. I enjoy being in the third gender. I am not a 'man-man'. Neither am i a woman. I've heard people asking if i'm now going to wear a saree. my answer is no. the whole concept of being unisex has been usurped by women. if a woman wears a pair of jeans, nobody questions her. but if a man wears a necklace, he is never called regal. i have not worn anything that Indian men have never worn traditionally. indian men have neither worn a saree nor a ghagra choli. hence, i don't see myself doing that either. there was so much speculation over whether i had a sex change operation. i haven't done that. to reduce my waistline, i have only done an abdominoplasty for "Just Another Love Story" [Dir. Kaushik Ganguly, 2011]. i don't want to be a woman. if i ever consider it, i would not be secretive about it. After all, there is no shame in it," Ghosh said in an interview.
putting aside the calculations and miscalculations of the differences between sensitivity and weakness, appropriate sensibility and unwarranted tenderness, or even that of learning and pride, for me, Ghosh can never be dead. His works will forever keep nurturing all the fondness towards him. just that, his untimely demise snatched the opportunity from us to amaze ourselves with -- movies on Jorasanko Thakurbari, where Ghosh thought about putting Tagore only as a side actor, a biopic on Bankim Chandra Chatterji's Debi Chaudhurani - the bandit queen of Bengal, a movie on the life of Buddhha or, a new-age narration of his
favourite epic the Mahabharata -- Ghosh had been planning to work on these projects, which are now going to miss out being interpreted by His genius.
for me, there'll be no more wait for his movies, no more arguments with friends on his plots or his consciously-forced-upon-himself cissy acting, no more showing off pride just because he belonged to my alma mater... for me, Rituparno will continue to stay as an inspiration to knowledge, class and sheer sophistication, just as Tagore stays with me as a part of mie living...
"For he being dead, with him is beauty slain,
And, beauty dead, black chaos comes again."
Credits:
Various Interviews given by Rituparno Ghosh
Percy Bysshe Shelley - To a Skylark
William Shakespeare - Venus and Adonis
academia.edu - Koustav Bakshi's interview with Ghosh
Saregama Bengali Channel http://nivisbollywoodblog.blogspot.in/ - Nivedita Bhattacharjee
Picture Courtesy - Google Images
And, lots of love and respect for the Man
