India: Motherland or fatherland?

I am  intrigued....by a question...Is India our motherland or fatherland ? Every Independence day we say "Bharat Mata ki jay"....even Vande Mataram suggests we think India as our mother...however our National Anthem says " Bharat Bhagya Vidhata" or " Adhinayak" ...which suggests we think of India as fatherland....we never sing" Bharat Bhagya Vidhatri" Or "Adhinayika"....so we pray to a father figure in our anthem but in Vande Mataram we imagine India as mother and while we say Bharat Mata we think of her as feminine.

Onnyo Basanto Review

I could not but help write a few lines about this movie in Bangla....I read the story in '99 or 2000 in a Pooja barshiki...by Suchitra Bhattacharya...I did not know this favorite story of mine has been converted into a movie...it is all about as somebody suggested in a phrase : Proposed Bride's confusion.....the character Tannistha(Amrtia Chatterjee) is torn between two men ...one her fiance, a ruthlessly ambitious goal oriented man and another an ambition-less small scale businessman who makes perfumes for livelihood....you should see the end, I should not tell you, but the acting , the capturing of non verbal subtle gestures were touching, indeed moving....Kamaleswar Mukherjee as the father of the bride was effortless ( I knew he was a film maker !!, unaware of his fabulous acting skill)....Moments between Amrita Chatterjee (the bride) and Koushik Roy ( the failure) were subtle yet soothing and gentle....and hats off to the director Aditi Roy, this one and her first film Aboshesey show she has a talent...a talent to touch and evoke fine emotions, a talent to explore enormous layering and possibilities in a relationship.She made an emotion alive which is very rare and which I call " Brooding stillness " or " Gentle Brooding"....pangs or aches of heart which made my eyes moisten several times.....

I wish all of my friends understood Bangla ( no subtitles)....the new wave Bangla cinema is here to stay I guess....

Mutluluk ( Bliss) : A review

Yesterday evening I watched this fantastic movie in Youtube. It is about a girl in a village who is raped. The girl is now thought to be soiled and hence requires banishment. However she is escorted with a man from his village to Istanbul. After a brief sojourn in Istanbul fails to accommodate them they go to a resort-like place where they are befriended by a lonely professor in a yacht and tours with him. How this boat-tour changes the relationship between the girl and her man and how this professor shares his wisdom is a treat to watch for those who like humane storytelling. I enjoyed the transformation between the two. The scenic beauty of Turkey also adds to the experience. Go watch it.

Camp X Ray : Review

Camp X Ray is a nice movie I watched today online....a surprise from usual run-of-the mill Hollywood....Kristen Stewart played the role of an emphatic military officer who starts to understand an Arab detainee's pain ( played brilliantly by Payman Maadi)...

A nice departure from Hollywood masala.....the Twilight star proved to be a surprise offering a lot of insights....her face exuded a melancholy which in bengali can be called as Dhushar Bishaad

I was also reminded of Bimal Roy's film Bandini where the loving prison doctor, Dharmendra fell for the prisoner, Nutan.....Camp X Ray was however much more subtle in its treatment of humane feeling of a prison officer....

An ode to Xerox machines

I studied and got my degrees in a time when computers were not rage and internet was nascent. There was no google, no PDF, no eBooks and no printer at disposal. We had to rely on books and journals for whatever we learnt. And Photocopier or a Xerox machine played a supreme role in dissemination of knowledge. So many class notes, so many books, so many journal articles I photocopied. Without those photocopies my education would have been unfulfilled. In late 80’s Xerox shops sprung up in every locality of Calcutta; their numbers increased proportionately in front of Educational institutes (schools, colleges, and universities), courts and mercantile offices. I got introduced to Xerox machines when I was class 9, I joined a coaching centre and many times I needed notes to be Xeroxed. That was the beginning. I never knew Xerox copies of books will finally occupy half of my library space. During BSc and MSc days I could not afford many foreign text books because they were so highly priced. So started the habit of getting books from library and Xeroxing them. Some books were reference books, not available in lending library. Reference books used to be issued overnight. Many times the books were so fat could not be Xeroxed overnight. So I like many others found a loophole. If you issue the book on Friday you got the weekend to photocopy. In that way I copied so many books from libraries of Rajabazar Science College ( Physiology dept), Presidency College and Jadavpur University ( during my MTech Biotech ). The books were necessary for NET , GATE preparation and gave me a lot of mileage later on. Then from library of IIT Bombay I got so many books on biography, science and technology got photocopied.

Today as I clean up my racks and throw many old unnecessary printouts I am reminded of those decades of Xeroxing and how it enriched my knowledge. It is known photocopying is a crime but without that crime I guess many Indians will not get their education. For India xerox machine has done for dissemination of knowledge than Gutenberg's invention in past two decades. At least all engineering, medicine, science, arts and commerce students will agree that without Xeroxes their education here in India would have been unfulfilled. Thank you Xerox.