"Shaadi ke Side effects"

"Shaadi ke Side effects" is a timepass fare.   On wife's insistence and because of Vidya Balan,  we watched the movie this evening. It spreads good humour and light hearted banter. But that's it. It can be a goood option to de-stress . Almost like a TV show without a break . Or rather like one of those old Rajashree pictures movies repackaged in the modern urban settings with better technology.  Personally I liked it in bits and pieces  because of the acting by Farhan Akhtar and Vidya . The movie seems to drag at the end and two unnecessary songs could well have been edited out.
Actually the movie pokes fun at the travails of a married man and trivialises the real issues for some laughs. But you don't carry any part of the movie with you after the show. It is not a great movie but a good one to watch with the entire family without bothering to flinch at the dialogues, scenes and violence .

Sau saal pehle ..............

Babu Narendra Chandra Dutta was a lawyer from Comilla (erstwhile Bengal, now in Bangladesh) . His early childhood was spent in penury. Later he built up a good practice and became a wealthy man. In 1914, Dutta founded the Comilla Banking Corporation. He started the bank with a declared capital of 4,000 rupees and raised another 2,500 rupees. In order to raise the capital he sold his own house for 1,500 rupees. Initially he drew a monthly remuneration of eight rupees from the bank.

Comilla Bank, as it was popularly known had substantial investments in the tea industry. Loans were issued to prospective investors in the tea industry for buying tea plantations and related properties.

Comilla Bank was was merged with three other banks, all based from Bengal in 1950 and United Bank of India was formed. It was again nationalized later in 1969 This is a piece of history. Maybe no one will be interested .



Who knows ……. The way things are happening, United Bank of India itself may also become a piece of history very soon.

Future foretold

As I sit patiently in front of him ,
once again, with my outstretched hand.
And once again, I feel the sense of doom
under the weight of barren expectations
of a lifetime, as I wait patiently now.
To have my future foretold.
So I sit there patiently in front of the silent man
his face masked in all seriousness as he peers
through a thick lens on the palms of my hands.
I wait patiently for him to announce
the results of his examination and perhaps,
his prescription to change the course of my life.
The silent man reading my fatelines perhaps
knows fully well , as I too do , that the game
is alll fixed in reality, but nevertheless ,
we all have to play and keep on playing.
I don't know my past, my present is so uncertain.
But when I was born , these lines were there
as I tried to grab all the luck of my portion
in my small fists and make my way in this world.
At that moment somewhere else , far away,
was that an unknown  star that shined
or was it a comet that hurtled to its end.

12.02.2014

I will rather be the pain
to make you remember me
now and then.
Had I been the wound
it would have healed long back
and remained like a scar.

Since the winter solstice on Dec 21st the days have lengthened a lot . About 6.30 p.m. now but the the Sun is still on. It will be setting in a few minutes .Actually got the chance to watch the sunset after many days. Lovely feeling of spring is in the air

Samadhi of a Godman. ........ once again .

Samadhi of a Godman. ........ once again .

Organised religions have always been a tool to fool the gullible and the perpetuate the most heinous forms of crimes on the masses. All organised religions are forms of bondages which take people away from the God and make them believers of some human with extraordinary powers. One such case that comes to fore with the recent controversy over a self styled godman Ashutosh Maharaj who is, for all practical purpose dead but his supporters claim that he is in a Samadhi.

Those who follow Godmen are actually have nothing to do with with God. By worshipping a human and turning him or her into a deity , they are actually following magicians and hypnotists. But still people flock to these charlatans which can be explained by the spiritual hollowness and the need to fall back on an emotional crutch. This is more like the addiction to cigarettes, which I have . And mind it , that's a vice.

But no doubt it is a sense of deja' vu that I feel when I read or watch the news about this strange incident of a dead man being preserved in a freezer. Reminds me of a similar incident 20 years back . In 1993 after the death of Baba Balak Bramhachari in Kolkata his supporters laid siege with his body, refusing to cremate it with the excuse that the Baba was in a deep trance.

At that time Subhas Chakraborty ,the maverick CPM leader and minister , under the instructions of Jyoti Basu ,then CM of WB successfully carried out a bloodless operation and freed the dead body from the custody of his followers along with the state administration. He was applauded all around for his leadership in defusing a tight situation and rightly so.

Let us now wait and watch when the dead body of this so called Godman is removed .

#Jaatishwar ...... The legend of Anthony Firingee.

Bengali cinema is alive and kicking. And I am not speaking about the variety which is a copy of some South Indian blockbuster hurting your sensibilities to the core with the loud dialogue ,overacting, item numbers,crass jokes ,mindless violence or unrealistic action. From the debris of the existential compromises which the Bengali cinema has had to make over the last three decades, some good filmmakers have come ahead. And they are not of the typical intellectual variety.Rather they are good craftsmen who understand the idiom of cinema as an interactive medium. 

Srijit Mukherjee is one of them. One may find fault with his movies in a critical manner over his style of execution but not his ideas and his imagery. From the new breed of the filmmakers who are part of the revival in Bengali movies by attempting to make commercially viable intelligent movies , he has made his name. His choice of subjects has been varied and he has never bothered about the niceties of following the age old formula in his scripts. His latest offering, Jaatishwar is another attempt in this direction. And after the somewhat average Arabian adventure of Mishawr Rahasya, this time he has packed the killer punch in providing a wholesome entertainment without a well defined storyline , actually.

#Jaatishwar is the story which on the face value is a story about a split personality character who is a re incarnation of a historical Indo-Portugese person Anthony Kabial also known as Antony Firingee , who inspite of his European lineage adopted Bengal as his home and Bengali as his language to create folk songs and participate in competitions in the 18th Century , almost 150 years back. But this actually is just the platform of the movie which explores so much other contemporary facets of the Bengali life.

Srijit has shown in his earlier films that he has a keen sense of music and his song picturisations stand out in conceptualisation a nd execution. This time he is firmly on his territory and plays on his strength by tackling the subject of the reincarnation with music at the heart of the film. And that really pays dividend. the songs and their picturisations are the highpoint of this movie. The lyrical finesse of the songs and their rendition are superb. You take the songs with you as you leave the cinema hall.
The simple narrative of the movie actually brings forth a complex collage of events, past and present and brings forth the role of music and its evolution in the Bengali society in the last two centuries. It also is a story of love, lost and found. There is actually two stories that move parallely throughout the movie with a coterminus climax and a twist at the the end. But the suspense of the climax is maintained till the very end and this is the hallmark of a good director. The story itself moves forward and in some places, the director has used a documentary style and tried to follow the reality show type format by roping in famous contemporary music makers . All in all the experiments gel and are not jarring.

The excellent camera and editing helps the movie to move forward in an easy pace. After many days I found a title scene where the audience is compelled to follow the camera. The cast of actors led by Prosenjit have turned out a wonderful performance. His dual role play of an ordinary man with visions of reincarnation has been really good. And as Anthony Firingee , he has been able to overcome the strong association which cine goers have for this character with Uttam kumar. Swastika as the heroine has proved that she deserves better roles . But Jishu Sengupta is outstanding with his under acting . He really deserves more and more meaningful roles . He is the best surprise of the movie.

Movies like #Jaatishwar are to be seen and then criticised. But if you do not watch these movies then you are actually perpetuating the rule of crass commercial cinema bereft of intelligence. One thing is clear. Bollywood with its big budget and overhyped stars can never dream of making such movies. And this is not only for Bengalis . With a very good sub title , everybody can watch the movie . If not for the cultural package but for the technical brilliance and idea . The movie is bound to get a national award . But what it really needs is public support. Go and see Jaatishwar. You will not regret it if you understand Bengali.