The need to move away from the Ray nostalgia

Today being the birthday of Satyajit Ray the internet is flooded with articles remembering the genius of Ray, his impact on Indian cinema, his impact on Western filmmakers and so on. It has been 25 years since Ray has passed away. A quarter of a century has passed but still Bengali cinema has not been able to get out of the Ray nostalgia. Now you may argue that nostalgia, be it about Tagore or Ray, is an integral part of Bengali culture and thus this is unavoidable. Maybe this is true to a great extent but I want to argue why the time is ripe to move away from the Ray nostalgia for the Bengali parallel cinema to go back to its glory days. And moreover, the death of Rituparno Ghosh has exaggerated this need to move away from this Ray nostalgia.

Both Aparna Sen and Rituparno Ghosh were two directors who kind of inherited Ray's style to a large extent and this was inevitable because of being so close to Ray's time. (Aparna Sen has frequently mentioned that Bengalis have received Tagore and Ray as some kind of inheritance).  The two films Aparna Sen made in the early 80s, 36 Chowringhee Lane and Parama had traces of Ray's influence but were original in its own way. Both movies were directed in a much more aggressive way than Ray would have ever done. I suppose since Ray was still working in the 80s Aparna Sen made a conscious effort to be different.  In case of Rituparno Ghosh, the influence was much stronger but by the end of his career he had developed his own style too. Jeevan Smriti, Rituparno's last work, which is a documentary on Tagore is surely better and quite different than Ray's documentary on Tagore, the earlier being much personal and emotional than the latter. Although Rituparno's portrayal of female characters was influenced by Ray it was more nuanced and much more emotional. I feel Rituparno's characterisation of women is much closer to Aparna Sen than to Ray. This can be very well understood if you watch Parama, Dahan and Utsav. Being influenced by a certain director is natural, but it is important to develop a personal style which is distinctively different. The best example of this is Wes Anderson. He is a western director whose work has been extensively influenced by Ray. He even made his Ray homage film, The Darjeeling Limited,  but nowadays a Wes Anderson movie can be identified just by its style.

Handling rural issues

Ray is a director of the bhodrolok, he is a director of the city. In my eyes, Calcutta trilogy and Jana Aranya are Ray's best works. Ray's understanding of Calcutta is surely much refined than his understanding of rural Bengal. In the Apu trilogy, only Pather Panchali is a truly rural story. Ashani Sanket is another not so great an attempt of Ray at understanding the rural life. Ritwik Ghatak, although was too melodramatic, had a better understanding of rural Bengal. Titas ekti nadir naam corroborates that fact. Ray, in some of his interviews also has expressed his disappointment at not being able to address rural issues better. 

Today also Bengali cinema is lacking in the same area. Parallel Bengali cinema needs to indulge in portraying the nuances of the struggles of rural Bengal. Rural Bengalis are going through a significant phase change in their lifestyles. This change has to be captured efficiently on silver screen. Also, tackling the issues of mofussil is also needed. These are areas where directors can develop their own styles. Kaushik Ganguly's Cinemawallah does a good job in depicting the mofussil life.

Rather than pandering to petty middle-class sentiments, Bengali parallel cinema needs to portray the issues the "daily passeneger" class faces. I am not saying that movies about the posh bhadrolok should not be made.  But probably at this juncture, a movie like Shobdo or Labour of Love is more necessary than an Apur Panchali or Antaheen. Movies need to speak a universal language.  Ray's films did that, but now we have to move away from his style.  We cannot delve in the same nostalgia for 30 more years. It's high time the filmmaker of the aantel learns to make movies which rather cater to the "aam janata" than to the scotch-drinking bhodrolok of South Calcutta.

 

Rewatching Woody Allen: Hannah and her sisters

Whenever I have gone back repeatedly to Woody Allen's films it has been mostly among Annie Hall, Manhattan, Vicky Christina Barcelona and Midnight in Paris. Although Hannah and her sisters is Allen's one of the most acclaimed works I never went back to it and after rewatching it after a long time I cannot seem to remember why, maybe it didn't affect me so strongly when I watched it for the first time. I have to confess I watched this in my early years of film watching and maybe I couldn't connect to the dilemmas of adult life as shown in the movie.

This film is really about all the problems and complexities adult life throws at you and how all of us in our imperfect yet humane ways deal with them. The movie is about how Hannah's sisters grow with time and how Hannah (Mia Farrow) plays an indirect role in both of their gradual growth. The movie starts and ends with a thanksgiving dinner. Between these two dinners, Hannah hasn't changed much but the change that Lee (Barbara Hershey) and Holly (Dianne Wiest) undergoes portrays Hannah in a slightly unsympathetic light. Woody Allen in most of his movies has caricatured the "intellectual". But in this movie using the nuances of sibling rivalries he shows how the unintentional follies of the intellectual or the successful one allows the other people surrounding her to break out of their shells.

The story of Elliot (Michael Caine), Hannah's husband and Lee is so fallible and yet so touching that you symapthise with both of them. Elliot is completely smitten by Lee at the first thanksgiving and Lee is also aware of it. They have a passionate affair for a year but completely ridden with guilt.  

This affair allows Lee to get out of a toxic relationship she has with Frederick (Max von Sydow),  an older artist who once was Lee's teacher. When Lee leaves Frederick he says, "What will I do? You are my only connection to the outer world.", Lee replies, "It's too much responsibility for me, it's not fair". This scene mocks the "intellectual" but the audience doesn't know whom to be sympathetic with. A perfect example of Allen's brilliant writing. Elliot and Lee also part ways when the guilt starts playing the bigger part. She moves on to a guilt-free relationship with another professor of hers' only to be a part of the similar and probably flawed relation. Micahel Caine's performance in this role for which he won an Oscar is absolutely flawless. His portrayal of the ineer struggles of Elliot is a delight to watch.

Woody Allen obviously reserves the most comic scenes for himself. He is Hannah's ex husband, a hypochondriac and terribly with disappointed with life. There's a line in Annie Hall where he says life can be divided into the horrible and the miserable. He follows a similar disenchanted view here too. After he survives a cancer scare he decides to leave everything as the meaninglessness of life dawns upon him more heavily.

                               

But as in most Allen movies, after all his futile efforts in the search of faith, the simplest of things makes him understand that how that we should enjoy the meaningless journey called life. Here he discovers it through a Groucho Marx movie, surely a delightful scene after his rants about the futility of being.

The movie's most drastic arc is Holly's transformation. She transforms from an inferiority-complex ridden cocaine addict to a succesful screenwriter who marries Woody Allen by the end of the movie. This ending shows how unpredictable life is as Hannah had try to hook up Allen and Holly and they ended up deriding each other after a terribly bitter evening. With Holly's character Allen shows how is the aboslute master when it comes to writing women characters. He shows how horrid and nauseating this woman can be at her most vulnerable times and how charming and loving she can be when someone acknowledges her efforts. Diane Wiest surely had her mark on this film with her powerful Oscar winning portrayal of Holly.

The story of Hannah, is about a woman who is too independent and around whom most people don't feel needed. She is an extremely kind person but her lack of need for emotional support from her relations makes it suffocating for the people around her and they end up resenting her. Allen shows how we want to be feel needed, we can never stay in a relation just because we admire the other person. This movie is a pinnacle in Allen's understanding and writing about brilliant women characters.  As with Annie in Annie Hall he shows how Holly and Lee are more charming because of their vulnerabilities, self-doubts and follies. To err is to human but to err and become charming is to women.

Elle: walking on the borderline of absolute perversion

In one of his interviews, David Fincher says people are perverts and that this is the foundation of his career.  In the documentary The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, Slavoj Zizek interprets movies in a highly Freudian sense to show how directors have shown us the perverts in us by making us enjoy their work. Although I don't agree with Zizek everywhere in that documentary I feel every complex movie has to flirt with perversion in some sense or the other. There are very few movies which flirt with absolute perversion and I think Elle is one of them.

Elle is the story of how Michele LeBlanc (Isabelle Huppert), a succesful CEO of a gaming company  reacts when she is raped by an intruder in her house. The movie opens with this horrifyingly violent and detached rape scene which is being observed by her cat. The sexual grunts which her heard from the rapist and from Michelle are so close but yet so far that you are already sensing a tale of perversion by the first couple of minutes. She, being a part of the civil society, doesn't even get time to grieve. This is shown beautifully when she wipes off her vaginal blood during taking a bath after the incident. She tries to go ahead with her life in a normal way. She visits her mother who is shown to be quite voyeorus which Michelle despises. In this scene her mother tells her "you always have wanted a sanitised version of life". The main question of the film is has she wanted one or she has been forced into one? The cold way she discloses the rape story to her ex-husband and her friend Anna and her husband Robert at a dinner is characteristic of the inner struggles she is experiencing.

As the movie progresses, we find that Michelle's father is a murderer who murdered half of their neighbourhood when she was 9 and then burnt their house down. People have believed that Michelle have been complicit to her father's horrendous acts that night. She has lived with this identity and yet made a succesful life for herself. Her mistrust in police is understandable. In the meantime, the rapist sends sexual messages to her. Also a morphed video of her being sodomised by a computer monster of her game is realeased in her office. All these incidents make her try to hunt down the rapist.

Meanwhile, she has been sleeping with her Anna's husband which she wants to stop as she is attracted to her next door banker neighbour Patrick. There is a beautifully crafted Hitchcockian scene where Michelle masturbates to Patrick while spying on him with a binocular as he sets up the nativity scene for his religious wife. Michelle eventually tries to seduce Patrick while she invites everybody for a Christmas eve dinner. Michelle's mother dies during the dinner and she finally visits her father in prison. But her father commits suicide after knowing that Michelle would be visiting. This event shockingly makes Michelle happy as she whispers to the the dead body that she killed him by visiting.

The movie explores many perverted and dystopian scenarios in the life of this woman and how she reacts to them. Some of her reactions are utterly perverted and disturbing but we have to remember that this is a women with extremely troubled past. If you haven't seen the movie I would urge you to stop here and comeback for the rest of this. It's an extremely well balanced movie which flirts with abolute perversion but still presents us with a tale of suppressed feelings, latent sexual desires and utterly humane characters. Isabelle Huppert has given a performance of a lifetime. She has explored all the nuances and struggles of this character in an utterly elegant fashion.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Michelle is attacked again and she in this violent encounter she founds out that  Patrick is her assaulter. When asked why he did it he says it was necessary. The most sickening twist of the movie is when we find out that Michelle starts an abusive affair with Patrick. The film leaves the audience to decide whether she cannot help being in this abusive affair or it is her bigger ploy to get revenge upon Patrick. She joins the after party of her game launch with Patrick. While they return Michelle acknowledges that she feels what Patrick and she has is sick. Patrick is killed by Michelle's son when he finds Patrick assualting her. The movie gives us a desired ending but a conversation between Patrick's wife and Michelle reveals that she knew what was going on and she wanted Patrick to find whatever sexual satisfaction he was looking for.

The movie shows how we all are perverts inside but still humans. It wants to tell that you cannot judge a person harshly even if he is into heinous and devious acts. It wants to show us that with all these centuries of civilisation we may have been able to train ourselves according to expectations  of the civilised society but still there is an other side hidden inside all of us and everyone of us will find those demons if we look carefully enough. Elle asks us to question what does it mean to be civilised. Are we forbidden to access our most perverted desires and if we do access how do we do it? The answer is much more complicated than this beautifully made film.

Brief Encounter: the perfect British affair

I recently read Orson Welles commentary on Casablanca. He notes that both Bogart and Bergman were ordinary in the film but together they create something beautiful. Casablanca came out in 1942. It was a dreamy movie.  The line "Here's to looking at you kid" ranks high in the fantasies of many young men, including Woody Allen who plays it in Play it again Sam.  Three years later a film called Brief Encounter was released in Britain which is often referred to as British Casablanca. I have some reservations against this nomenclature. Although both movies are masterpieces when it comes to dreamy affairs, but I feel  Brief Encounter is a richer film. It's no surprise that in a 2010 poll conducted in Britain, this film was voted the best romance of all time. The film alongside dealing with simple unattainable things also puts in a bit social commentary on class in its subplots.

Brief Encounter was adapted by Noel Coward from his own one-act play Still Life. Directed by David Lean, it is the story of an extramarital affair between Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard), a married doctor and Laura (Celia Johnson), a housewife in a "happy marriage" with two kids. The first encounter between the two lovers is surely just an ordinary coincidence. Laura gets a piece of grit in her eye on the platform of Milford junction and Alec being a doctor succesfully takes it out of her eye. Their encounters are random in the coming weeks, till one day Alec joins her for lunch as they meet each other in the same restaurant. They spend a lovely afternoon which marks the start of their brief encounter. In the following weeks, these two adults start dreaming again, they live childish moments of laughter together just to fall madly in love with each other. Somehow both of them know what they are enjoying seems like a dream in a parallel world, they try to avoid the societal norms, only to be cruelly brought down by them. When Alec borrows his friend's apartment and plans to spend a private evening with Laura there, his friend finds out only to potray this beautiful affair in a cheap manner. This incident grounds them, suddenly Laura has to think about decency, and self-respect. Alec knows that this is the beginning of the end. He understands how guilt and societal expectations will shroud Laura's feeling about this relationship although they are in love. The movie is from a time that people thought about family first before ther own happiness, they thought about how society will judge them rather than selfishly reaching for their own happiness.

In the refreshment room of Milford junction, where this relationship started and ended, there also goes on a continuous flirtatious banter between the ticket-checker and the lady and the counter. The difference between Alec and Laura and these two people is a subtle commentary on the boundaries our social status and class differences impose on people.

The movie starts with the last encounter between the lovers, one of the most mature goodbye scenes in cinematic history. Alec leaves for South Africa for a new job and Laura back to her family. Laura goes back home and while sitting infront of her husband narrates the whole story as if she is confessing to her husband in her mind to get rid of her guilt. Celia Johnson gives a performance of a life time in this film. The chemistry between the leas pair is extremely natural. Brief Encounter is a movie about two adults trying to escape into something which both of them know is unattainable from the point they start their dreamy journey. It shows how all adults have a child inside them which  wants to reach for the stars, only to be grounded by something called reality.

Yoy can enjoy this mastepiece here.

Rewatching Ray: Jana Aranya (The Middleman)

In the last few years, after watching a fair proportion of world movies, I have only managed to watch the complete filmography of only one director and that is Ray. For me, the one thing that makes a film great  is its rewatchability. Barring Ganashatru, Chiriyakhana, and Shakha Prosakha, I find all other movies of Ray highly rewatchable. I have decided to pen done my experience of rewatching Ray's films. These posts are not reviews, these are ramblings about my experiences with Manik jethu.

I have decided to start with the movie Jana Aranya (The Middleman). Now you may wonder, why this choice. This movie may not be Ray's best work but it is highly rewatchable. Although being a mirror to the harsh realities of Calcutta in the 70s, the movie is not grim and sulky. The humour used by Ray in this movie is so audacious (what we call khachrami in Bengali) that you almost cannot believe it. In one of his interviews, Ray says that Jana Aranya is the only bleak movie he has ever made. I can say with strong conviction that this bleak work of Ray is one of the finest examples of satire in world cinema. Jana Aranya is the story of Somenath (Pradip Mukherjee) who albeit being a bright student fails to get an honours in the university exams due to his small and apparently illegible handwriting. The teacher who corrects his sheets doesn't have the right glasses to read Somenath's handwriting and ends up giving Somnath a low grade. After this, he joins the bandwagon of the city's youth to find a job. Upon constant failure, he starts his own business as a middleman for supplying orders to various companies, only to be drawn into the inevitable dilemma of deciding whether to join the web of corruption or not.

The film opens up with the scene of an exam. A slogan is written on the wall "sottorer dosshok muktir doshoke porinoto (the decade of 70s is changed into the decade of change)". The camera moves to show the students who are cheating. The only student who doesn't cheat is Somnath. Ironically, he is the one to be warned by the invigilator when he passes a matchbox containing a cheat paper. When the invigilator asks "ki hocche bhai?(what's going on brother?)" a student answers "porikha hoche bhai (Exams, what else)". The whole hall bursts into laughter. This is followed by still photos of laughing students. This scene shows how concisely satire can be done. Somenath's journey continues as he tries to get a job when he fails to get an honours. His friend Sukumar takes him to a political leader of the ruling communist party, and as expected the endeavour goes in vain. Instead, they are subjected to an utterly patronising moral lecture from the politician.

After this, the film takes us one year ahead in Somnath's life. He is sitting in a job interview where he is asked the weight of the moon. Tired by the futility of this process, he wanders the streets of the city where he slips on a banana peel thrown by Bishu da (Utpal Dutta), . Bishu da, a close acquaintance of Somnath is a rich businessman who has a stereotypical rags to riches story. He asks Somnath to start a business. Somnath says he has to ask permission from his father. In this short role played by Utpal Dutta, he brilliantly satirises the misplaced idealism of the middle class. Simultaneously, he also highlights the humility in the struggle of a businessman. In Bengal, there is troubling tendency to look down upon businessmen. Using the character of Bishu da, Ray mocks such naive ideas of the middle-class Bengali bhadralok. During this conversation with Somnath, the camera focusses on the potholes in the road and Bishu da says "sorbotro pitfall bhaya, dekheshune cholo (There are pitfalls everywhere, beware)." Upon reaching his house, Somnath is greeted with a marriage proposal, the perk of it being the ownership of the cement shop of the in-laws. He says no to it as he thinks it would be a surrender. After being able to persuade his father for his business he shares his joy with his boudi. While trying to sit down he exclaims in pain, "boudi boltei bhule gechi, aajke ekta boddo boro aachar kheyechi (I had forgotten to tell you, had a nasty fall today)". These kind of world plays are rife in Ray's works. These ten minutes in the movie precisely show the irrelevance and the hopelessness of middle-class values in the "poribortoner doshok (decade of change)" .

Ray takes us through the journey of the transformation of meek Somnath to the businessman Somnath. The adjective humanist is commonly attributed to Ray by western critics. He himself was not a great fan of this rigid classification. Rather than conforming to the statement, what a piece of work is man, Ray tends to portray quite a strong sympathy with the struggle of the protagonist. In Jana Aranya, he only sympathises with Somnath when he tries to shed the cloak of his middle-class values. For me, this distinction in sympathy from the director a highly appealing feature of this film. The most interesting character in this film is Natabar Mittr, a man whose self appointed designation is public relations. Rabi Ghosh, although being a comic actor, plays one of the best roles of his life in this movie. In an interview, Rabi Ghosh reveals that Ray didn't allow any deviations from his directions for this film, something he didn't do in other films where he had cast Rabi Ghosh. Natabar Mittr is a man who helps middlemen to bag their orders by striking at the Achiles heel of highly placed officers in various companies. The methods used by him are quite unique, a small glimpse of which we get. I would not spoil the entire film. The last half hour portrays a constant struggle between the lingering idealism of Somnath and the harsh realism of Mr Mittr's methods. Rather than predicting the winner, it's better to experience the well-crafted climax.

Ray again shows in this film how big an essentialist he is in terms of using characters. Sukumar, Somnath's best friend is a character whose poverty is used by Ray to show certain features of the poor. Rather than delving upon societal implications, Sukumar becomes a taxi driver, a profession which will surely raise eyebrows in a middle-class household. Bhombol, Somnath's elder brother is shown to be happy and successful. Being an officer in a good firm, he can sustain a family of four. It is implied that Bhombol being a strict utilitarian does not indulge in ethical dilemmas. Their father has quite a lot of difficulties to accept the reality of foul is fair and fair is foul. The clear distinction between the two brothers and the father is depicted in a dinner table conversation over corruption. This scene is also another example of how concise Ray can be.

Calcutta in the 70s has been the theme of some of the best Bengali movies. In Jana Aranya Ray shows how subtly and elegantly hard-hitting realism can be portrayed. Ray didn't believe that cinema can bring social change, a belief I also strongly adhere to. 70s was the decade of anarchy in Bengal. Ray makes one thing clear, when the society embraces anarchy you cannot survive by clinging on to pacifist morality. The struggle of the common man is a repeating theme in Ray's films but its futility is portrayed only in Jana Aranya. When society is at the cusp of change, is it wise to adhere to the categorical imperative? I certainly don't know the answer, maybe you will know it once you watch this masterpiece here.

  

    

Netaji : an overrated failure?

Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers."

(Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles: la dorure en reste aux mains.)”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

The year was 1996, that was the first time I had visited Boi Mela (Book Fair). The only book I bought was a graphical novel about Netaji's life. I can't recollect what made me like him so much at the age of five, but I think it must be his rebellious attitude.  I even remember hoisting the National flag on 23rd January on the terrace of our new house next year and singing "kadam kadam badhae ja" with my dad.

Let's fast forward to 2004. I was in my eighth standard. Our history curriculum had at last scraped its way through boring medieval history to modern history. Although I was  branding my history classes to be boring when I was with my friends, I seemed to have found a new love for the subject. And I was back to worshiping the hero I had found eight years back. Being a lover of mystery stories, I decided to dig into the story of Netaji's death. I found a book in the library called Netaji: Dead or Alive by Samar Guha. I seemed to have found the story of an unsung hero, the story of a hero who deserved much more. As I read the book there was an irrational anger that was born in me.   The incompetence of ShahNawaz Committee and Khosla Committee, the reluctance of both Nehru and Indira just drove me crazy. I was unaware of the Mukherjee Commission at that point of time. When the Commission released the report in 2005 I was elated like a child. I think I even kept that day's newspaper with me for quite some time. Till now I hadn't even peeked into Netaji's ideologies.  I
was just blindly worshipping him for his courage, passion, and patriotism.

In my ninth standard, the movie Bose: The Forgotten Hero was released. I indulged myself into digging up some historical facts from our history books before going to the theaters with my father. Our curriculum had a chapter about the emergence of leftist ideas during the Indian freedom struggle. Netaji and Nehru were portrayed as the two pioneers of this trend during the thirties. From our childhood, we had heard praises about leftist ideologies, thanks to the democratically elected communist government. But we were witnessing the cracks of the leftist ideologies in our society. From an academic point of view, socialism seemed a practical and morally just ideology. At that age, I was unaware of the practical problems of this system. Netaji's efforts within INC was quite well received. His motives were very naive and passionate, a quality that let him down quite some times.  This was followed by the famous incident of 1939 Haripura Congress where Netaji was elected the president of INC. Gandhiji made sure that Netaji can't function by making the whole Congress Working Committee resign. When I first read about this my feelings about Gandhiji became more bitter (The cancellation of Non-Cooperation movement, failure of Civil disobedience had already made me anti-Gandhi). Until recent years, I always thought that Gandhiji had vested political motives behind this action but now I feel  that this was his dire attempt to stop Congress being headed by a staunch socialist. Consequently, I started to discuss the further events in Netaji's life (Fleeing India, Formation of INA, the war, his death and so on) with my dad. My father, being more of a Gandhian, in no time did the discussion turn into a heated debate on the functioning of Netaji, Gandhiji, and other political leaders. I won't go into the details of the debate, but three hours later I had settled on a statement from my dad, "Netaji was a victim of an international conspiracy, whereas Gandhiji was a victim of a national conspiracy."

The word "conspiracy" may have been inappropriate, but I still believe that both of them were victims of political games. But Gandhiji was a success whereas Netaji was a failure. International historians portray Gandhiji as a political great and Netaji as India's militant nationalist. In earlier years, I used to feel that is as an instance of grave injustice. Nowadays, I blame that on some of my misunderstandings I had about Gandhiji. I never acknowledged the philosophical greatness of Gandhiji. For Gandhiji, the means were more important whereas Netaji regarded the end as more crucial. Ideologically Netaji was a supporter of economic freedom, but in the final days of his life all his actions were directed towards achieving political freedom.

Now when I break down the policies of my childhood idol the gilding really sticks to my fingers.
Netaji's idea of fighting the Raj with the help of Axis powers seemed pragmatic from a purely academic point of view. Neither Japan nor Germany had any interests in India. Netaji started the war from 1943, the Allies had already started getting the upper hand by that time. And the help Japan provided him was not that of best quality. The association of any individual with the Axis powers is frowned upon (given their history of war crimes) and Netaji shouldn't be an exception. Some may argue that Netaji didn't care about these things, his main aim was winning the war. There are too many contradicting historical facts regarding this matter. So I can't decide which side to support. Netaji's love for an authoritarian rule is well documented. Our chaiwala PM can curse Nehru as much as he wants, but the fact that a chaiwala can become a PM is the result of a strong democratic foundation which was laid down by Nehru. If Subhash Bose was the first PM of India we could have developed more, we could have had a less corrupt political system but I doubt if we would have been a democracy.

After all these years of hero-worshipping Netaji, the cynic in me thinks that Netaji was a brave soldier, a passionate leader, but an overrated failure. I still salute him for giving India the first 150 miles of free land, but his policies and ideologies are something I cannot support. There is  no doubt that he should have been treated with more respect, but I think his ideologies had little place in free India.

Thala kommt

                                             
                                                

A fellow bangali can only understand the pain of missing Kolkata's Durga Puja. During my first year in college I missed Durga Puja as it had clashed with Harmony. I had tried to do  some compensation by offering Anjali at a Chittaranjan Park pandal, but the attempt was not a successful one. After coming to Germany I went to a Prabasi pujo in Cologne. I didn't have very high hopes, thanks to my previous experiences. And I couldn't have been more wrong. It was one the best pujas I have ever spent. During the Sandhi pujo one of the elderly women (she has been associated with this Pujo for the last twenty years) was looking for a thala (plate). And she announced on the microphone, “Thala kommt”, kommt being the German equivalent for coming in the third person. The whole hall burst into laughter.

Today when I think about this incident I understand how these two small words gave us a hint of her socio-cultural identity. She represents a generation of Bengalis who came in the 60s and 70s to settle here in Germany. Interestingly, most of the people involved in the Puja, be it a Dadu or a Khoka, were fluent in German and Bengali. When probasis living thousands of kilometers away from Kolkata can speak such fluent Bengali it is really painful to hear “What's up bro?” at Maddox square. I am not writing this article to rant against “aaj kalkar chelegulo” (today's generation). Every society passes through a period where the idea of social, ethnic and linguistic identity is reformed. Today our beloved City of Joy is undergoing such a change. Rather than complaining against it, I suppose it is better to view it from a critical perspective.

We live in a society, where multilingualism is the norm. The idea of identity in a multilingual society is not very well defined. But it can't be denied that pedagogical linguistic training is one of the most infIuential factors in defining the identity of a given individual in such a society. But we surely cannot write off other factors like financial well-being, family background, availability of cultural capital and many more. Maintaining a fine balance in the way different languages are taught is highly crucial in the process of building a truly multilingual identity. A working knowledge of English is highly needed in today's globalised world. But one cannot undermine the importance of gaining equal proficiency in both English and Bengali. It helps the student to appreciate the multi-faceted beauty of our society. A close look at the statistics shows that we are neglecting our own vernacular. In a recent rural ASER (Annual Status of Education Report) survey it has been shown that 68.3% Class V students can comprehend easy English sentences whereas only 51.3% Class V students can comprehend a Class II Bengali text. The story is different in urban areas. A growing cosmopolitan culture has resulted in a mixed Benglish dialect where only the B of Bengali is left, although most students are quite proficient in Bengali. From a strictly economical perspective this is not a problematic trend. Nowadays an average student is much more proficient in English which highly increases his/her employability. In a German company good knowledge of German is a must to get employed. In a country like India this is  impossible, but the state government can encourage the  use of Bengali as an official language in certain government sectors. This will motivate the students to learn Bengali in a better manner.

With growing economic mobility there has been a dilution of a strict ethnic or linguistic identities. It may seem that this breaks lot of  cultural barriers but it also results in the loss of subtle cultural features.Preserving our ethnic identity is very important in this globalised world. After coming to Germany, I have met numerous Bangladeshis. They call Euro as Taka. Their sense of identity revolves around the Bengali language. Obviously having such strong linguistic sense of identity has its own drawbacks but we can surely learn from them. After living in Germany I have learnt how a race can strike an exact balance between preserving their own culture and being highly immigrant friendly. The first step in doing so is respecting the part of your identity which is defined by the anthropological aspects of your culture. We need to do this first. Bengalis are privileged to have a strong cultural capital, we should learn to respect and preserve it properly.

Nowadays very few Bengalis of our generation have an in-depth knowledge of Bengali literature or Bengali movies or Bengali theatre. Most of us are busy indulging in pseudo-intellectual nostalgia which moves around Tagore, Ray and sunset pictures of Princep ghat taken in a sepia tone by a DSLR camera. It is unfortunate to see how most of us have built an identity by attaching fish hooks to certain stereotypical ideas about Bengalis. Probasis who are not fortunate enough to have all the resources of learning the minute details of our cultural identity will rely upon Bengalis brought up in Bengal to present them with the exact picture of the breathtaking landscape of bangaliyana. It is high time we Bongs understand that Chau naach is as important a part of Bengali culture as Rabi Thakur is.