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Tuesday, April 6, 2010 By

Indira Gandhi and Lee Kuan Yew

Indira_Gandhi1 lee_kuan_yew1

Singapore's Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew is compared to Indira Gandhi by the Indian journalist, Sunanda Datta-Ray, who once worked for The Straits Times.

In his book, Looking East to Look West, exploring India-Singapore relations, based on his interviews with MM Lee, he writes:

Lee and Indira Gandhi shared a brutal commitment to power, an almost brutal pragmatism and a fascination with mystic predictions of the future. Both dominated the scene around them. So much so that though lacking the alliterative resonance of the loyalist chant during the Emergency, 'Indira is India, India is Indira', it might be more accurate to recite 'Kuan Yew is Singapore, Singapore is Kuan Yew'. He is probably the world's only democratically elected leader who can boast, as France's Louis XIV is believed to have done, 'L'etat c'est moi' (I am the state). That, too, has an Indian parallel. It was only half in jest that British newspapers bestowed on Indira Gandhi the 'Empress of India' title invented for Queen Victoria.

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Tuesday, April 7, 2009 By

The allure of Suchitra Sen

Belated good wishes to Suchitra Sen, who celebrated her birthday yesterday. Reclusive as Greta Garbo and one of the most beautiful women ever to grace the screen, she personifies the Bengali ideal of beauty.

Her two grand-daughters, Riya Sen and Raima Sen, are film stars now — and Riya was said to have caught the eye of the Booker Prize winning novelist Salman Rushdie last year. Riya and Raima's mother, Moon Moon Sen, is also a former actress and a beauty.

But Suchitra Sen is in a class of her own.

This is a clip from a Bengali movie dating back to 1958 starring her and the matinee idol Uttam Kumar, the most famous Bengali star of all time. The film is called Indrani — an Indian woman's name.

The singer is Hemanta Mukherjee, my favourite Bengali singer. The song begins like Do Re Mi in The Sound of Music. The singer is singing that the sun is about to set and the twilight will create a dream world which will last all night.

The video gets better after the first minute when the camera focuses on Suchitra Sen's face. She looks lovely.

Suchitra Sen and Uttam Kumar created movie magic. Generations of Bengalis adored their films. From the 1950s to the 1970s, they reigned at the box office. Uttam Kumar died of a heart attack on the set of the Bengali film Ogo Bodhu Sundari (Oh Beautiful Bride) in 1980. He was 54.

Suchitra Sen last appeared in the Bengali film, Pranay Pasha (Gamble of Love), in 1978, according to Wikipedia.

Era of romance

The romantic films starring Suchitra Sen and Uttam Kumar portray India before globalization, when the country was less prosperous, the idealism perhaps greater, and when marriages seldom ended in divorce.

Jawaharlal Nehru was the Indian prime minister when this film was made in 1958.

The eminent writers and thinkers of today were still in their youth. VS Naipaul had graduated from Oxford and got married to Patricia Hale three years earlier – in 1955. The Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen was still doing his PhD in Cambridge – he received his doctorate in 1959, according to Wikipedia. The Bengali filmmaker, Satyajit Ray, had just started winning international acclaim with his Apu Trilogy since 1955 (he died on April 23, 1992, at the age of 70). It was a different era.

The one book that captures that era is Vikram Seth's novel, A Suitable Boy.

Era of rock 'n' roll

It was also the time of rock 'n' roll. Elvis Presley joined the army. But there were big hits such as Great Balls of Fire by Jerry Lee Lewis and Sweet Little Sixteen by Chuck Berry. Both charted in 1958, according to The Fifties Web.

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Saturday, December 13, 2008 By

A New World by Amit Chaudhuri

A New World by Amit Chaudhuri

Amit Chaudhuri is one of the finest but possibly less known Indian authors writing in English. His language can verge on poetry and be as vivid as a movie. But nothing much happens in his stories.

That didn’t matter very much in his early novels, A Strange and Sublime Address and Freedom Song. Both were critically acclaimed. I can think of no better books in English about my hometown, Calcutta (Kolkata), except Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy, my favourite novel, but there only part of the story is set in Calcutta; most of the action takes place in the Hindi belt.

To get a feel of Calcutta, what it looks like and understand us Bengalis, the natives of Calcutta, A Strange and Sublime Address and Freedom Song are invaluable. They portray our ideas, attitudes and lifestyle. And the writing verges on poetry, which is something we Bengalis love.

A New World unfortunately lacks that poetry. The writing is fluid and flawless. But as I turned from one page to the next, it felt like a lazy summer afternoon. It’s uneventful by deliberate design.

The story

Jayojit, a Bengali economist teaching in America, visits his parents in Calcutta during his college holidays with his seven-year-old son, Bonny. He has recently divorced his wife, also a Bengali from Calcutta, who has left him to live with her lover -– and gynaecologist — in America. The story describes his stay in Calcutta. In the process, we see his interaction with his parents, his parents’ relationship and his own relationship with his parents. There are also flashbacks to his broken marriage and his parents’ abortive attempt to arrange a second marriage for him with a Bengali divorcee. He had met her on his previous visit but they had got nowhere. She had backed out, he now learns from his father, because he had seemed to be looking not so much for a wife as a governess for his son.

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Friday, October 10, 2008 By

Bengalis in 1920s Singapore

I am glad that Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong spoke at the Global Indian Diaspora Conference this morning. His presence there while Singapore officially went into recession underlines the deepening ties between the two countries.

India too is caught in the economic turmoil.  Indian banks from tomorrow will be allowed to keep just 7.5 percent cash in hand, down from 9 percent. It’s the steepest cut in the cash reserve ratio in India since 2001, reports Bloomberg, releasing 600 billion rupees ($12.2 billion) into the financial system.

But this post is about what the Prime Minister said at the conference. The full speech can be read here. I only wish to draw attention to this remark he made:

Many early Indians started out here as humble labourers and plantation workers, but succeeding generations have made their mark in government, business and the professions.

That is only part of the story, passing over details like this: Sir Stamford Raffles founded Singapore with soldiers from India. But anyone can learn that from a history book.

What’s more interesting to me is this Singapore scene painted by Somerset Maugham in his short story, P & O. It appeared in his collection of short stories, The Casuarina Tree, published in 1926. He mentions “sleek and prosperous” Bengalis. Where did they go? Maugham captures the buzz, but it’s a totally different Singapore:

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Thursday, July 24, 2008 By

The beauty of Suchitra Sen

Here’s one more clip from a Bengali movie starring Suchitra Sen and Uttam Kumar. She was so beautiful.

I myself wonder sometimes how is it possible to love the music of the Beatles and Bob Dylan and these old Bengali romantic movies at the same time. It must be because I am a Bengali. There is something about these old movies that is Bengali to the core. They are dreamy and sentimental like the Bengali middle class has traditionally been. That is why Bengalis are so proud of their poets, writers, scholars, thinkers and artists.

The poet Rabindranath Tagore, the filmmaker Satyajit Ray, the economist Amartya Sen, Vivekananda the founder of Ramakrishna Mission, the writer Nirad C Chaudhuri are all Bengalis.

VS Naipaul wrote an essay praising Nirad C Chaudhuri where he described how Bengalis in the early 19th century were among the first in India — and Asia — to embrace Western education and how it fostered liberal ideas and aestheticism among them. Tagore’s early prose is as lush as Walter Pater’s. But I am digressing.

We Bengalis like most people nowadays can appreciate other cultures besides our own. So there is no contradiction at all between loving the Beatles and adoring romantic Bengali movies. But the latter must be more “me” than the Beatles.

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Wednesday, August 16, 2006 By

The poetry of Amit Chaudhuri

Amit_chaudhuri_three_novels Three Novels by Amit Chaudhuri: A Strange and Sublime Address, Afternoon Raag, Freedom Song

Amit Chaudhuri is like no other Indian writer I have read recently. He writes about ordinary day-to-day life like RK Narayan and Ruskin Bond, but in a language so vivid and evocative it sometimes rises to poetry.

His novels are not sweeping sagas or rich in symbolism, nor do they carry any messages. Their pleasure lies entirely in their language. Chaudhuri, who graduated from University College, London, and then went to Oxford, makes music and paints pictures with words.

Take the first page of Afternoon Raag, where he describes Oxford:

"On the first day of Michaelmas, men and women in black gowns walk to matriculation ceremonies, and at the end of the year they wear these gowns again, unhappily, to take exams; then, after the exams, the town is nearly empty, and the days, because of that peculiar English enchantment called Summer Time, last one hour longer; and Oxford, in the evening, resembles what an English town must have looked like in wartime, the small shops open but unfrequented, an endangered, dolorous, but perfectly vivid peace in the lanes, as the eye is both surprised by, and takes pleasure in, a couple linked arm in arm, or a young man conversing with a woman on a polished doorstep, and then the early goodbyes. It is like what I imagine a wartime township to have been, because all the young people, with their whistling, their pavement to pavement chatter, their beer-breathed, elbow-nudging polemics are suddenly gone, leaving the persistent habits of an old way of life, the opening and shutting of shops, intact, a quiet, empty bastion of civilisation and citizenry. It is because of its smallness, repetition, and the evanescence of its populace, that Oxford is dreamlike."

Chaudhuri writes beautifully about Calcutta (Kolkata) too.

No Indian writing in English has described Bengali middle class life more faithfully. If anyone wants to know what we Bengalis are like — our love of gossip, arts and culture, our gentility, our modest ambitions and the closeness of our family ties — Chaudhuri is the author to read.

His privileged background shows through in his first novel, A Strange and Sublime Address. I was surprised to read someone owning a car in Calcutta in the late 1980s or early 1990s could have been considered hard-up. True, it’s a battered old car, but a car — any car — in Calcutta then would have been a symbol of wealth.

Chaudhuri, who was born in Calcutta, clearly grew up in more affluent circles in Bombay (Mumbai).

But the last novel, A Freedom Song, captures the Calcutta I know beautifully. He could have been writing about people I know. And no one has described them better, not in English.

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Saturday, June 3, 2006 By

Bob Dylan on Roy Orbison and Ricky Nelson!

Bob_dylan_chronicles I have just started reading Bob Dylan’s Chronicles, taking it slow and easy. This is a book to savour for anyone who remembers the music and culture of the 1960s and ’70s. And the first few pages are just like his songs — evocative and impressionistic. He recalls a room full of books where he spent much of his time in his early days in New York and he writes about the books with the same feeling he describes his own hunger to hit the limelight as a singer.

What is surprising is his regard for singers who passed out of fashion because of artistes like him. He admires Roy Orbison. The passage where he describes Orbison’s unique range is extraordinary coming from him because they are so different in style: Orbison is dramatic, rising from throaty growls to sweet falsettos sometimes in the same song, while Dylan is deadpan, taunting, teasing, often in a flat monotone. But they are both great, though Dylan of course is greater by far because of his style and lyrics which are absolutely unique. But as he himself points out, Orbison can’t be boxed in as a rocker or a torch singer because of his incredible range. I love his Pretty Woman which is so different from Only the Lonely, my favourite Orbison classic which invariably gives me goosebumps. 

I was even more surprised to discover that Dylan used to be a fan of Ricky Nelson. He writes about hearing Travelling Man for the first time. Travelling Man, Hello Mary Lou and A Wonder Like You are my favourite Ricky Nelson songs. Dylan sums up Nelson perfectly. "Ricky had a smooth touch… His voice was sort of mysterious and put you in a certain mood… but that type of music was on its way out." Thanks to artistes like him — Dylan himself. It’s a pity.

Popular music has got grittier and grittier until it’s even kicked off melody now to gyrate to the herkyjerky rhythm and rapid-fire bursts of rap, which doesn’t sound like music at all to an old-timer like me. We Bengalis did have something like rap music in the olden days. It was called "kabir larai" in Bengali which means fight of the poets — "kabi" is Bengali for poet and "larai" means fight — and it was something like a poetry slam with musical accompaniments. But give me blues, soul, rock’n'roll any day.

A computer microphone for my son

I bought a microphone-cum-headphones for my son today. I will give it to him when I fly to Calcutta (Kolkata) later this month. He will take it back to his college in America. Somehow we forgot to get one when he enrolled in college last August. So he borrowed one from a friend to chat with us online on his laptop. But he will be moving to a new room when he returns to college now that he will be a sophomore. Of course, he could have bought a microphone from Wal-Mart. That’s the only big store they have near his college. But to go there, too, he needs a lift from someone. He has friends and some of them have cars. But here in Singapore shopping is so convenient. There are electronic and computer stores almost everywhere. Still I went to Sim Lim Square off Little India to buy the microphone because that’s one of the more popular computer malls.

My wife also asked me to check the price of the Encarta CD. One of her colleagues at her college wanted to know how much it costs in Singapore. At Sim Lim Square, I found the Encarta Standard costs 49 Singapore dollars and 90 cents, the Encarta Reference 99 Singapore dollars and 90 cents and the Encarta Premier more than 120 Singapore dollars. One Singapore dollar is about 63 cents. So the Encarta Standard costs 31 (US) dollars in Singapore and the Encarta Reference, 63 dollars. But the price may vary from one shop to another.

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Sunday, March 19, 2006 By

Veerakaliamman Temple, Little India


Veerakaliamman Temple, Little India
Originally uploaded by rana2u.

This is the first temple I visited in Singapore and I still love to go there. Located in the heart of Little India, it attracts tourists -like the woman in the white hat – especially in the morning and late afternoon. The temple, open till noon and again from 4 pm every day except Tuesdays when it reopens earlier in the afternoon, attracts a lot of devotees during evening prayers. The Singapore Tourism Board’s Uniquely Singapore website, which calls it the Veeramakalimman Temple, says:

"Built as early as 1855 by Bengali labourers, this magnificent temple was constructed for the worship of Goddess Kali, the consort of Lord Shiva. Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple is thought to be the first temple in Singapore to venerate her. The goddess is often portrayed as having many pairs of arms and hands; each hand carrying weapons of destruction used to fight evil on earth.

"Temple doors are covered with tiny bells. Devotees ask God to grant their requests by rining the bells before entering. Inside, the ceiling is rimmed with statues of the many Hindu Gods while the main shrine housed a jet black statue of Goddess Kali, flanked by her sons Ganesha and Murugam."

There’s one mistake there, however. The temple could not have been built by Bengali labourers. Hindu Bengalis never came to work as labourers in Singapore. The Bengalis who ventured abroad back then were more likely to be Muslims, called Lascars or Lascars, because they were usually sailors. A Lascar is mentioned in a Sherlock Holmes story: The Man with the Twisted Lip.

One possible reason why the Singapore Tourism website says the temple was built by Bengali labourers could be the Indian soldiers the British brought with them to Singapore could have come from the Bengal Army. There was the Bengal Army, the Bombay Army and the Madras Army when India was ruled by the East India Company, which also colonised Singapore. And the Bengal Army was not filled by Bengalis but Hindi-speaking recruits from neighbouring provinces. The Hindus among them resented being sent abroad because they became outcastes if they sailed overseas. The Muslim soldiers had their own grievances.

The soldiers rebelled in 1857 — two years after this temple was built — in what’s called the Sepoy Mutiny or the Indian Rebellion of 1857. That put an end to East India Company rule.

Queen Victoria then became Empress of India. Queen Victoria, whose great-great-granddaughter "Lillibet" just ended a three-day State visit to Singapore yesterday.

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