Calcutta Diary

Cal Reverie

Paul Theroux’s latest novel, A Dead Hand, is set in Calcutta: a mixture of literary novel, crime thriller and city book. But given Theroux’s characteristically crabbity—though affectionate—portrayal of the city, it’s unlikely that it’ll win him any popularity contests. Thanks to his acute travel writer’s eye, A Dead Hand is an intensely visual book, and reading it, one can almost see the movie playing inside one’s head. An interesting game to play is thinking up how the movie should be cast. It would probably be directed by Peter Weir, who is Theroux’s favourite director (though there’s a strong case to be made for Mira Nair). Only Ravi Shankar could do the music, perhaps in collaboration with Peter Gabriel, as in the Passion album they did together. Tommy Lee Jones would make a good Jerry Delfont, the book’s travel writer protagonist. Jessica Lange could have made a great, appropriately sensuous Mrs Unger, if only she’d been a few years younger. So I suppose we’d have to settle for Michelle Pfeiffer...or maybe Madonna? The exotic Parvati—danseuse, poet and kalaripayattu expert—would be who? Kajol? Bipasha? Surely not Lara Dutta? Theroux, who makes a startling cameo appearance as himself in the novel, would obviously be played by himself (hey, if Rushdie can do it, why can’t he?)

But the most important question is: who would be the cameraman? For ultimately it’s the city of Calcutta that’s the real heroine of the book/film, and the question is, which cameraman could do justice to capturing her tragic, eternal beauty? Would it be Calcutta’s own Abhik Mukherji? Or would it need an outsider’s eye, like the legendary John Seale?

Yes, Bose

A few months ago, The Telegraph carried ‘50 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Marry a Bengali Man’. Reasons like, “He will wear a dhuti for a wedding, but not before turning the household upside down. The dhuti has to be first located, then sent to the laundry, then have gile work done on it. It’s the same for the addir punjabi. Then the gold buttons have to be located.... The wearing of the dhuti itself is an event. There has to be at least one assistant, sometimes two, to help with it.... The end result is certainly not worth the fuss that goes into it.”

This caused quite a buzz, and someone responded with ‘50 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Marry a Bengali Woman’. Like: 1) Her English is better than yours. And she’ll never let you forget it; 2) She is dominating. She would control the colour of your underwear if she had her way; 3) All expressions of love must be accompanied by Tagore in his various moods. And if you can compare her to a Tagore heroine, even better; 4) The really beautiful ones leave for Bollywood. The ones who are left behind are not worth marrying; 5) Granted, you wouldn’t want a Mayawati. But do you really want a Mamata Banerjee?

To which I could add at least another 12 different reasons from my own personal experience: 1) She will give you a silly pet name (Oltu, Poltu, etc); 2) She will buy you a monkey cap and bed socks for winter; 3) She will feed you Hilsa, which is a unique experience, like trying to eat barbed wire through a mouthful of fish mousse: 4) She will throw away your precious World War II movie collection, and replace it with her own collection of Tarkovsky films; 5) She will instal an antique bust of Voltaire on your desk, specially retrieved from her grandfather’s baari; 6) If she spots a Bose music system in somebody’s home, she will immediately and loudly compliment them on their musical/technical connoisseurship; 7) She will wonder why Anjan Chatterjee has not yet won the ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ Award, and hint that the juries must be rigged; 8) She will urge you to smoke a pipe and wear a tweed jacket like her father used to; 9) She will insist on treating every household ailment with homeopathy, from common cold to rabies; 10) She will tell you that you look like the 1960s film star, Joy Mukherjee, and wonder why you don’t consider that a compliment; 11) She will have at least one uncle who insists that he spotted Netaji Bose on Elgin Road just last week; 12) She will never let you forget the adage that “What Bengal thinks today, the rest of India will think tomorrow”.

Peggers Can Be Choosers

I’M quite awed by the capacity of some of my Calcutta friends to put away the good stuff. One of them poured out a ‘Ballygunge peg’. If the definition of a Patiala peg is four fingers, and a Parsi peg is four fingers slightly spread out, a Ballygunge peg would appear to be only two fingers...but measured vertically.

Baulk on the Wilde Side

Where else in the world but Calcutta would you find an ‘Oscar Wilde Kindergarten School’? I kid you not; it’s on Sarat Bose Road!