Making of Demo-gods

The importance of any historical event can’t be judged immediately; rather it takes months, or years, to witness the role it plays in the society. Many of us forget the course of events that follows a particular incident, as people’s memory is relatively short. But protests against politicians across India in the last one month remind me of the first such demonstration, though it did not take place in reality, but on screen. In a country where millions swear by the demigods of Bollywood matinee idols, this film took a different course to ask youths not to compromise with politically motivated situations, but put up a brave front against the corrupt leaders.

This piece is not at all a review of the film, but to give an outline of how Rang De Basanti shaped our thought processes. The film is a work of art and fiction. But in reality, people cutting across social lines have learnt to stand united against exploitation and injustice. From the Jessica Lal murder case to carnage in Nandigram — people, especially the middle class, took out protest rallies. This could not be imagined even five years back — of course there were demonstrations against Narendra Modi for Gujarat riots in 2002, but that was not like the one Calcutta witnessed last September/October after the death of a multimedia professional over pre- and post-marital problems with his in-laws.

Politicians came under fire every time there was a terrorist attack; bureaucrats, especially the IPS officers, too had to bear the brunt if there was a whiff of their unlawful involvement in a case; even high-profile businessmen were not spared by the populace. It’s may not be true that Rang De Basanti taught people how to put an agitation programme forward, but the film certainly instilled the courage in them to protest — with candles, and if required, with revolvers too. However, we, the middle class thinking Indians, did show a lot of restraints on our part, as we never shot a politician to death, but numerous candlelight vigils made their cushioned existence shaky.

Now, one Sachin plays for India more than ever; an Aamir sits at Jantar Mantar to show solidarity with Narmada dam oustees; the icons, the stars come down to earth to be with us in hours of crisis where politicians fear to tread. From Gateway of India to India Gate, from Facebook to GTalk status message — people say it with unforeseen courage: f*** the politicians. Virtual communities for proper justice on social networking websites grow everyday; anger spills on to roads making the otherwise smooth rides for political leaders bumpy; religious borders also get blurred even when provocation comes from a section of saffron-clad leaders — some of them are also arrested for deviating from the path of meditation to mayhem in Malegaon. In a word, India stands in unity in crisis today.

The true meaning and implementation of democracy is being unfolded gradually. Voting is not only an exercise done every five years, but also a real tool that may unseat a chief minister, or a septuagenarian home minister with impeccable taste for changing designer apparels even when terrorists rip cities apart and limbs lie scattered on streets! Probably that’s the message Rang De Basanti wanted to convey and that’s why a website is launched with corporate support for voting rights and that’s the reason a cellular company thinks an idea of democracy in its latest ad campaign involving a member of the Bollywood’s first family.

©Supratim Pal

World of Tintin and Feluda

(The following piece is due to be published in an online US magazine early next year)

Every child has its heroes, who may be one of its parents, or a relative or anyone that only s/he can think of. The child wants to grow up idolising the man/woman s/he thinks can play a role in his/her life. This happens quite unknowingly in the toddler’s mind. The real idolising starts once this toddler gets out of his/her 24x7 parental care, say after about four/five years of age.

It happened to me too. My first brush with one of my childhood heroes is still fresh in my mind. The image of a ship on fire on the pages of Anandamela, a well-known Bengali fortnightly for children, is so living a memory that i often forgot that i have passed at least 24 years since that lazy winter afternoon at a steel city home. Red Sea Sharks was the first Tintin adventure i tasted with childhood delight. Who will first read the Tintin — being serialised in Anandamela with a superb translation (though i realised it much later) — was a contentious issue with my elder sister every 14 days. For me, Tintin is a journalist next door who travels from one country to another, and wherever he goes, even for a holiday, his stay there is never without any trouble.

Much the same is with Feluda. Feludar Goendagiri, the private detective’s maiden adventure, was also the first Feluda story i read in my childhood. Didi got Ek Dojon Goppo as a gift (or might be the first prize in her school, i have forgot the exact source) and we read all the stories in turn. Years later when i visited Darjeeling, i went to the mall but not for shopping but to find the bench where Topse used to sit and return with his sun-burnt left cheek! It’s amazing to read then how Feluda could know where Topse sat! I asked Didi a lot about this guy — especially how i could meet him. With years i realised it’s simply next to impossible to meet the detective in person even if i knock the 21 Rajani Sen Road, like Jatayu still does with a packet of hot samosas.

Feluda’s stories are more than adventures, unlike Tintin’s. With Tintin anyone can visualise the place where the reporter is touring. Herge had the rare sort of imagination when he could draw the near-perfect moon launcher — in Destination Moon and Tintin on the Moon — years before Neil Armstrong took the "giant leap of mankind". Some of Tintin’s tales are quite sci-fi stories too, like that of Professor Shanku — a unique character yet to be found in Bengali literature — created by Satyajit Ray. Ray made a conscious difference between Feluda and Shanku, yet at lest two generations grew with both the characters. Those of us born in early eighties were the last fortunate generation to get the fresh taste of a Feluda story or a Shanku one. Our Puja celebrations used to start at least 15/20 days before the elders could actually revel in the autumn fest. The reason was simple: Shanku on Pujabarshiki Anandamela and Feluda on Sharadiya Desh.

Ray, obviously unknowingly, helped spread my range of thought and the horizon of knowledge to a great extent. From a laboratory in Giridih, i used to travel with Shanku, the one-of-his-kind professor, to different cities in the world. With Feluda, i probably learnt to use a revolver also! From Kathmandu to Bombay to Ajanta-Ellora to Madras to Jaisalmer to Hong Kong to London (one of the last Feluda stories) to Benares — there was hardly any place that i did not chase villains like Maganlal Meghraj! I am sure that millions of other kids did the same, and they still do it. Maybe Feluda could no longer be produced on in black-and-white on paper, but the charm would remain so forever. The charm is not because they are mere hero-villain conflict like the famous series created by Ian Fleming, but it’s more than what any common writer would dare to leave an indelible mark in the delicate young minds. Ray did it marvellously, Herge too. During my first reading of Sonar Kella, i came across the term "Kati Patang", as a song, "Yeh jo mohabbat hain", could be heard from the drawing room of 21 Rajani Sen Road. The inquisitive mind in me asked my mother the simple question: What is Kati Patang? She told me it was a film released the year Sonar Kella was written. Later, i found that the film was a Rajesh Khanna blockbuster with the music of the song mentioned by Ray was composed by another legend RD Burman. Moreover, that was the year when my mother got married too! These small personal associations with the book made my reading very special. Every child has some sorts of personal attachment to every book, every character. Children of this generation were seen eagerly waiting in midnight for Harry Potter books, like we used to do that for a piece of Ray for us.

As for Tintin, i still feel no comic strips could have neatly sketched and coloured like that of the reporter’s weird adventures from Chicago to Egypt, Russia to the land of Incas. Last year, while trekking on the Himalayas amid feet of hard snow, we were discussing whether we could spot a yeti and that too waving a yellow scarf like in Tintin in Tibet! While in Class VI, i was asked my didi to fill up a slam book — a popular mode of knowing one’s likes and dislikes in the pre-Orkut/Facebook era — where I wrote that i wanted to be a journalist, a wish driven by no other than the globetrotting little man with Snowy.

Maybe i have ended up being a journalist today, but it’s far from what my childhood hero had achieved! In my profession, questioning from various angles is must — a trick i probably picked up from Feluda! But more than that, my world with them was a learning process — the way of the world, the history of mankind, the time we are living in and more importantly how we approach our future.

©Supratim Pal

Maradona Mania

Maradona could not get a warmer welcome than what he received at Salt Lake stadium in Calcutta on Saturday. Obviously, the sorcerer of soccer was not here to spend an exotic Indian weekend; neither was he here to score a goal against a team. The basic question is: why had he come to Calcutta, a city, for him, known only for Mother Teresa and communists?

Choosing Calcutta over other Indian cities might have roots in its centuries-old tradition of football. Calcutta Cricket and Football Club is one of the oldest clubs established in the then British empire. The event managers for Maradona’s visit probably got this USP right, not the aftermath once the superstar lands here in dead of the night.

That intervening night of Friday-Saturday night when we were returning from office along the VIP Road, local clubs were seen ready to welcome the football great with giant Indian and Argentine flags and newly printed larger-than-life posters of his World Cup-lifting moment. We could not imagine that the next day would be traumatic for Maradona at Salt Lake stadium with brickbats raining on the greens even as commandos safely took Maradona to his hotel.

Mismanagement ruled his visit since the beginning with the windshield of a new fibre-glass bus — specially built for him — developing cracks even before the legend put his famous left foot on it. As a Bengali newspaper questions justification on the Rs 13-crore expenditure just to bring Maradona to Calcutta as an item adorned in a glassed cage, press passes were denied to it. When reporters wanted to cover his visit to Indira Bhavan, where Indian communist patriarch Jyoti Basu stays, they were bashed up by police and alleged supporters of the ruling party. Even TV crew and photojournalists were not spared.

Why this Sunday morning drama? Nobody has an answer. What did an under-developed state of a developing country gain from Maradona’s visit? Where industrialists fear to even open shops (and some are playing open-close-open game like at Sahagunj), where tribals cry for development in their areas, where millions of educated youths can’t even earn Rs 1,000 a month, was such a luxury necessary in such a state? Budding footballers could have learnt a lot if a frontline European club was requested to play a match in Calcutta, below-poverty-line billions could have been provided with proper home and food or even businessmen could have been urged to set up units to offer jobs for unemployed youths. But at the end, this was a story of sheer waste with show of strength by a few politicians and their close aides with no moral in it.

©Supratim Pal

Terror trauma?

Only a handful of youth, all in early twenties, did what even Raj Thackeray could not. Of course, the neo-Thackeray regime did not attack foreigner guests in five-star hotels, but took Mumbai to ransom, much like the 10-odd terrorists, by introducing a hate campaign against people from other parts of India for months. But the secessionist force of MNS fell far short of the terrorists in dividing the country.

Raj, the Thackeray, might have been held responsible for the death of Raj, the youth from Patna killed by police on a BEST double-decker bus. Lalu-Nitish-Ram Vilas, the ministers, might have joined hands to rescue thousands of Lalus-Nitishes-Ram Vilases, the skilled workers in unorganised sector, from the maximum city with minimum security for people from Hindi heartland. Jaya, the Bachchan, might have been criticised for not speaking Marathi although many Marathi homes still have Jayas, the housemaids, from Bihar and UP. But all these could not really divide the country rather all guns were trained against Raj Thackeray, the omnipotent Mumbaikar! It’s more a case of unity than what Raj would wave wanted to do.

The terrorists did what they are best at: introducing terror in the minds of millions of Mumbaikars, who are otherwise known for withstanding adverse situations, be it serial blasts on suburban trains or July 26 rains in 2005. Last week, the terrorists achieved what Mumbai has not seen in recent years. On a Thursday morning all markets, including the famous one in Dalal Street, remained closed; schools and colleges announced holiday; thinly crowded suburban trains as office-goers chose to stay at home and give dabbawallahs a day-off; only innumerable pairs of eyes glued to television sets like trillions worldwide. Scenes like a burning façade of a 105-year-old heritage hotel, commandos rappelling on a building’s roof amid gunshots and rescue operations of hundreds would have etched in our mindscape for years but the dent in great Indian "unity in diversity" would probably be longer than that.

The blame game began the moment after NSG announced all-clear after a 60-odd-hour battle with the terrorists. Politicians came under attack and pressures mounted on them to resign from their plum posts. Within a day or two, several of them quit. The legislative head of one of the most socially progressive state ridiculed a martyr’s family. The Indian media, especially TV channels, were criticised by some people who hardly have any idea of journalism, forget live telecast of one of the historical news moments in recent time. Fissures in the society were drawn by the terrorists as meticulously as the attack was plotted.

In a word, it was pandemonium.

Nobody knew how to react: whether the navy or coast guard would have to be blamed, or the RAW and IB for failure to apprehend such an audacious attack; whether the fashionable home minister should go or more such incidents are necessary to change his suit and seat; whether more funds should be doled out for buying modern gadgets for police, or not; moreover, whether an average courageous Mumbaikar would venture out for another day of business. For a moment, the terrorists left the city, and the country, numb.

©Supratim Pal