Let’s say his name is Samir. A very common Bengali name, for Samir is neither a very rare person, nor a unique one. But why did I choose him to bring his story on the cyber space? The fifty-something "youth" started his public life in a theatre on the northern outskirts of Calcutta.
His stage was not in the semi-dark hall of the theatre, but he used to be omnipresent around the cinema, especially when some blockbusters movies were screened. Nobody could even watch the first-day-first-show Big B film without patronising him. He was the ruler of tickets: when the counter would open even after the scheduled time to sell tickets, how many of them were to be sold and of course, the price!
Well, we are talking about the late 1970s when there was a ceiling on the highest price of a ticket. The government used to control the cinemas unlike now when a multiplex owner here can even charge Rs 500 for a first-day ticket of an SRK film. But even in the era of government strictures with tickets being priced at paise, not even rupees, Samir was the hero outside the cinema. During that time, he could have surpassed any mid-level executive with his monthly earnings.
I met Samir just a few days back at one of the roadside tea stalls near my home. Its owner asked him to bring some fresh water from a municipality tap before introducing the man to me, a regular to his stall. I could not believe that Samir, the ruler of black tickets, has been rendered to such a frail, beggar-like self. But such is the reality that he has now lost everything, even his mental balance, as the cinema was shut down about five years ago. All these years, he didn’t go for any other job, too, thinking the once-crowded single-screen cinema would provide him another fair chance to feed his family. But it did not. Neither was it reopened even after a series of protests, nor was the fortune wheel of Samir — by then an addict to drinks — was turned. Like the thousands of workers in Dunlop, scores of jute mills and other factories in the industrial belt known once as the best only second to London.
Samir is Bengal’s past; his is the image also that of Bengal’s future.
©Supratim Pal, 2009
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