For the singer...

His was rare voice, blended of classical and typical Santiniketan gharana of Rabindrasangeet. Many an evening we aptly listened to his songs — sometimes live, sometimes on CD. Mostly i met him at Ratan Palli’s Nabadwip and a few occasions at Subernarekha too where he would fill the ambience with an aura inexplicable in a few words.

One evening, during the usual adda at Nabadwip, he told me how a piece of Ganesh Pyne thrilled him at the wash room of a person known to most of the Bengalis. He was invited by them to present a song at a memorial ceremony of Ashok Kumar Sarkar, an editor who took the family business of morning dose of newspaper to a new height. Tomorrow, March 24, would ironically be the memorial service of Vikram Singh Khangura, Vikram da for us, where probably everyone would sing “tomaro aseem e prano mon loye”, except the voice that gave us a new meaning of Rabindrasangeet for years.

His “gayaki”, the way of singing a song, could only be compared to that of his father’s, Mohan da. But Vikram da made a different and bold presence that was identified only with his voice.
It was a montage last Saturday, March 14, when I got the news of his untimely death at the age of only 36. Images of Vikram da at the addas, Vikram da at the wheels of an Indica, Vikram da with a Havana cigar, Vikram da humming some tune and many others just drift by.

Suddenly i remember Vikram da wanted a picture of Pt Malikarjun Mansur. A few weeks before he died of a massive cardiac arrest, he even told me that if i could take a printout of any picture of the classical vocalist from our digital library. Unfortunately, we did not have a good picture of Malikarjun. I called him up to inform that only to get a satiric comment with a VSK-signature laugh: “Journalists can’t unravel anything! Not even a photograph of a classical singer.” He hung up but not before asking me when i was coming next to Santiniketan.

Last week i went. Around 8.30pm, I was sitting alone waiting for others to come at Nabadwip Sweets. I made a call to Partha da, one of the regulars at the adda. Just browsing the names of who the other people i could meet that Thursday night, i stopped at one “Vikram Singh”. What should i do? Should i call him and expect to be here within half-an-hour on a Kinetic Honda?
I just deleted the entry number 236.

©Supratim Pal, 2009

Night walk

Walking in darkness is nothing new to me, rather I always enjoy venturing out in the open whenever it is possible. At Santiniketan, one of my first night outings was to the Kopai river in December 1999. It was a full moon night and one of our friends was to board a night train en route to his NET examination in Calcutta. We, as usual, went to Bolpur station, about 3.5km from where we used to stay at Gurupalli at Santiniketan, around 12.30am. After seeing him off, three of us thought that how the Kopai would look like in the dead of the night. We took a 6km cycle ride to find the lean river meandering through plantation of Sonajhuri with marvellous silhouettes i never saw on a full moon night before that. Manasda lit a beedi on the small bridge that connects Goalpara and Khanjanpur villages, and i, a non-smoker, jumped from one boulder to another to take rest on a larger one in the middle of the river that turns mighty during the rains. We came back our home, not on cycle, but on foot just to enjoy the moon-lit ambience that would be hard to find in a smoggy city like Calcutta.

Another “long walk” i would never forget was the one in Khoai in October 2007. After a brief adda at Kalor Dokan at Ratan Palli, we — Tanchu and me — thought it was high time we should go to Sonajhuri to experience the thrill and the ambience when it was about 9.30 in the night. It was not a full moon night, but flickering rays could brighten a little space around us. We parked our cycles in the Sonajhuri forest and started our so-called “atel” discussions over a “long walk” suggested by Tanchu, who would leave for Delhi some days after that. After 15 minutes of walk, we came back to the place where we had rested our cycles by a huge eucalyptus tree only to find one of the cycles was missing! Again we had to walk 4km to come back to our rooms, but this time with a heavy heart at the loss of the cycle but brimming with dark night thrill!

But the one that we did last week was the best night walk, i ever did. It’s not the kind of walk when the rest of Darjeeling was sleeping in 2001 and we three went to the Mall on the Kojagari night. I still don’t know whether it was the Kanchenjungha, or any other peak, but the white line on the horizon must be the Himalayan range. Last week, when we were coming back to Manoharpur from Kiriburu, in sheer coincidence both the rear tyres of our vehicle turned flat simultaneously around 7.30 in the evening. We knew how to overcome the crisis at a place surrounded by lush green forests and hills with no cellphone tower on the hand-held LCD screens. The only way out was walk! Manoharpur was good 12km from the spot where we eventually saw moonrise in a valley just a day after Holi. Leaving the vehicle there, we had to trudge with two local persons — driver Suresh and Nirmal — guiding us the way negotiating loose red laterite soil on the dusty road. Only after 7km of brisk walk, we could have asked for a rescue vehicle! When we returned to the small town, it was past 10 in the night, but we did not feel tired, but charged enough to keep our adda alive till 3 in the morning!
©Supratim Pal 2009

Is it written?

For the past fortnight, especially since the February 23 morning, the whole of India has woken up to its new-found reality on a screen adaptation of successful chase of dream by a slum youth. Suddenly, sociologists, economists, journalists, govt and semi-govt officials, prospective filmmakers (mostly docu-makers!) make a beeline to the tiny untidy rooms in zhopadpattis still unexplored by a section of the society that otherwise depends on services from occupants of the houses set in a congested unhygienic environment. Everyone wants a piece of story from the slums, particularly after a serving diplomat discovered one in his second novel and a British made it realistic on the silver screen.

The same happened exactly 20 years ago in Calcutta when the city was on the threshold to celebrate its 300th birthday. During that time, all lights were focused on Pilkhana, one of the largest and polluted slums on the other side of the sacred river called Ganga. Dharavi in Mumbai has its own claim to fame, so is Pilkhana in this region. Like Dharavi, Pilkhana in Howrah has been home and livelihood to thousands who deal in recycled items, most of those are toxic and harmful to skin and eyes. Like Dharavi, Pilkhana too hogged the limelight then, incidentally for a film being made in collaboration with its foreign producer. And like Pilkhana, nothing will be changed in Dharavi, because the basic condition and infrastructure at these slums have not changed in all these years.

Someone would say that the slum-dwellers enjoy more facilities now, like colour TV and cellphones, but this is nothing great compared to the lack of basic amenities like safe drinking water or proper sanitary system. Remember the image when the soil-clad child Jamal gets an autograph from BigB in Slumdog Millionaire. I’m not saying that the film has marketed poverty marvellously or the images are drawn from outer space. My only contention is that whether we really try anything to change the fortune of Jamals, Latikas and others. Portraying one slum-bred chaiwallah at a BPO office winning millions is not just the end of the success saga, but the beginning of a dream that millions like others pursue everyday. Some of us are indeed working for slum-dwellers, but they can hardly enlighten them with this piece of rags-to-riches story everyday.

To my view, people living in a brighter society, which depends so much on slum-dwellers, should come forward — not necessarily with funds always but with a proper mindset — to help make slum kids smile. I am fortunate to belong to a family, which lives just 30ft from a slum and helps them whenever there is a necessity. My parents have never turned down their pleas whenever they asked for prasad after a puja at our home. Even an autorickshaw driver uses space in front of our house to park his vehicle after a gruelling day’s work. Donating books, clothes and toys to them came natural to us. Even my father rebuked some drug and dendrite addicts of Jamals' and Salims' age to give up the habit.

Together we can really change the world around us, i believe. If the privileged class of people can take care of only one or two underprivileged family, the world would have been a new one where the line of inequality could be blurred. Nothing is written, we can change destiny of many others, too.

©Supratim Pal, 2009