Relationship that forever remained undefined – Tagore’s Bijoya, Victoria Ocampo

In 1924, when Rabindranath Tagore fell ill en route to Peru, he was forced to disembark in Buenos Aires. This sudden break in the journey, opened a new vista for Tagore. He was to meet Victoria Ocampo with whom a new relation would open up soon. Victoria received Tagore and took him to her family estate at San Isidro in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. The poet spent the next two months recuperating in a garden villa overlooking the River Plate in San Isidro. Ocampo, then 34, was enamoured after reading Andre Gide’s French translation of Tagore’s Gitanjali. For her, Tagore was an idol. She looked after him with the diligence of a devoted admirer. It was during this time that the two authors, it is said, developed a very emotional but platonic relationship and started corresponding and exchanging gifts after they met.

Tagore recovered and wrote as many as 30 poems while in San Isidro. Ocampo’s relationship with Tagore was a big talking point at that time. Tagore had a huge influence on Ocampo, who was then in her mid-30s and Tagore was 63 years old. It is believed that Ocampo inspired him to take up his brush again and begin painting. In 1930, Ocampo organized the poet’s first art exhibition in Paris, where they met in person for the second and last time.

 

 

 

 

confessed to the enormous burden of loneliness he carried within himself.

Image source – Wikipedia

Belur Math opens gates for COVID warriors — doctors and nurses

It is often said Swami Vivekananda and Sister Nivedita had taken a big role during the plague epidemic in Bengal by literally bringing out manifestos, working on cleaning of neighbourhoods and building awareness. No wonder Ramakrishna Mission following their footsteps, will rise to the Corona crisis. Other than helping the poor and needy with daily food, rations etc across India, Belur Math has now opened its gates to COVID-19 warriors, doctors and nurses who are fighting tooth and nail to save patients.

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Also read : JU students rise to the cause of COVID-19 crisis. How?

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Unfortunately, many of them are being ostracized and are not being allowed to stay in their rented place or PG accommodation. Keeping this in mind Belur Math is allowing its huge guest house to be used by doctors and nurses of TL Jaiswal Hospital of Howrah that is barely 2 kms from Belur Math. Around 26 doctors and nurses of the hospital are now staying at their guest house. Howrah District administration had written to the RK Mission headquarters in Belur asking to help in their accommodation and accordingly it was arranged by Belur Math promptly. After all their mission has always been to serve mankind.

On his birth anniversary, not the director – but calligrapher Satyajit Ray

Have you ever heard of Roman Script typefaces, ‘Ray Roman,’ ‘Ray Bizarre,’ ‘Daphnis,’ and ‘Holiday Script?’—Four new fonts invented by none other than Satyajit Ray, who apart from being one of the leading film directors of the world, was also a master artist. He had even found numerous Bengali fonts and used them for the ‘Sandesh’ magazine that was published from the Ray household since his grandfather Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury’s times. Ray Roman and Ray Bizarre won an international competition in 1971. Satyajit Ray indeed was a versatile genius. And having an artistic eye himself, and having learnt in Santiniketan, gave him an edge of even meticulously designing most of the sets, sketching characters of his movies and then hunting for actors and even designing their costumes. Being an ad man, Ray had at times even done the publicity materials for his movies.

Ray had stumbled upon filmmaking much later in his professional career. A fine arts student from Shantiniketan, his interest and mastery on art got him a job with DJ Keymer, a British-run advertising agency, as a ‘junior visualiser.’ Ray worked at the agency for almost 13 years before quitting the job to take up filmmaking as a full-time profession. While working for DJ Keymer, he illustrated book covers for Signet Press and even designed covers for books like Jibanananda Das’s ‘Banalata Sen’, and ‘Rupasi Bangla.’ It is around this time that he read and reworked on Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s Aam Antir Bhenpu and wrote a children’s edition of this classic.

We all know most of the illustrations in his written books like Professor Shonku, Feluda were done by him. He even had the habit of sketching characters of a film and then go out choosing actors for the same. And who can ever forget ‘Sandesh’ and his illustrations in that? Ray even introduced a unique calligraphy of the Bengali text which is still used in several publications and books- and known as the Satyajit Ray style.

Kalyani’s scientists discover mutant Indian COVID strain that transmits faster

As we all know the COVID 19 strain has mutated several times and different forms have infected people of different nations. However, the nature of the dominant strain in the country is needed to be known as that will help the doctors to treat patients better. Scientists Nidhan Biswas and Partha Majumder from National Institute of Biomedical Genomics in Kalyani have successfully located the A2a mutated form of the virus strain that is predominant in India and is quite a potent strain. Their study will soon be published in the prestigious Indian Journal of Medical Research, approved by ICMR.

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Also read : Two Bengali scientists of CSIR device low cost rapid testing Corona kit!

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The A2a mutated strain of the novel coronavirus is highly efficient in entering human lung cells in large numbers. The previous SARS-CoV was not as efficient as this strain in transmission. The study is crucial as it helps vaccine manufacturers to set specific targets. While doing the study, the scientists studied 3,636 coronavirus RNA sequences that they acquired from 55 different countries. 35 Indian RNA sequences have also been checked and this mutated form is found in more than 50% patients. As the scientists have pointed out though some mutations help in bringing down the potency of a virus, in this case it is just the opposite. This mutation has helped the virus to transmit better and the mutant strain is moving so fast that it can even topple the original virus strain.

The A2a mutation can alter a component of the spike protein of the coronavirus, allowing it to bind more efficiently on the surface protein of the lung cell. And because this mutant strain can transmit easily, the disease has easily turned into a pandemic!

‘Bengali women are Special’ : Actor Irrfan Khan is no more!

What was perfection for one of the best actors of Bollywood, Irrfan Khan? Learning Bengali for Mostofa Sarwar Farooki’s movie, where the director wanted none other than Irrfan as he knew the movie could be pulled out in a mix of English and Bengali dialect by none other than Irrfan! He had many dialogues that had to be spoken in Bengali. Irrfan’s international movie ventures were phenomenal by then, from Hollywood to Canadian movies and then mixed dialogue movies from Bangladesh. Having a Bengali wife, Sutapa Sikdar, at home, Irrfan could always speak fluent Bengali and often spoke words in Bangla during his interviews. But for this particular movie the actor had to brush up his Bengali skills and pronunciation, as in Bangladesh the Bengali dialect is different. In 2016, when Irrfan started the movie, he was so perfect in his picking up the Bengali diction of the way Bangaals speak, that even the director was stunned.

A still from the movie DOOB (No Bed of Roses)

Way back in 2013, at an ‘India Today Mind Rocks Youth Summit,’ he even tried singing a Bengali song when asked to sing on stage. He chose the Bengali song ‘Ami Chini Go Chini Tomare Ogo Bideshini’ pulling it off as a chorus with someone from the audience. At an interview in 2017 while in Kolkata, Irrfan said that famous line: ‘Bengali Women Are Special.’ No wonder that love was seen in the famous movie Piku, where the actor pulled off in the role of a man helping a Bengali woman in handling her father travel and the journey depicted in the process was phenomenal. Even in real life Irrfan was married to his National School of Drama classmate Sutapa Sikdar, from where they graduated and they have two sons. Irrfan Khan’s death will leave a deep void in the world of meaningful movies and we are deeply saddened at his untimely demise.

Singer Mohan Singh’s beloved son Bikram, a talented musician died young

Mohan Singh was not just a singer, he was also a great musician and loved playing instruments while singing, including Tanpura and Esraj. These two instruments incidentally were also a great favourite of Rabindranath Tagore himself. Mohan Singh’s two sons, Bikram and Abir, were also raised in a musical environment and hence got attracted to music since their childhood. While elder son Bikram took song lessons from his father, younger son Abir took up an instrument. Bikram was born in Punjab and Mohan Singh’s wife called him Pinku.

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Also read : Mohan Singh’s favourite ‘Mohar Di’ Kanika Bandopadhyay

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Since childhood being raised in a home where songs and instruments were galore, Abir always used to be attracted to them. He often picked up different instruments in Ronodhir Roy’s home and played on them. Even Ronodhir Roy used to be surprised at the child’s interest and how he tried playing the instruments to perfection. However, Bikram Singh was as talented as his father, though he did not live long. Whenever his topic comes up, Mohan Singh remembers his son, his dear Pinku. He recalls often how the child born in Punjab was fair and could sing ‘Sa’ at the age of only one and a half years. Even Ustadji was surprised to hear the tune at such a young age. Bikram was also a regular at Kanika Bandopadhyay’s home since the age of 6. Many a time he used to sit on her lap, write poems, sing songs. Mohor di lovingly called him ‘Kobi.’ But that talented Bikram did not live long.

Transcribed from an original interview of Mohan Singh Khangura taken by Arpita Chatterjee

NIT Durgapur students build ‘Pranesh,’ an economic ventilator for COVID-19 patients

National Institute of Technology (NIT) Durgapur has developed an affordable, plug-and-use and easily maintainable semi-automatic Ambu Bag ventilator system in close collaboration and supervision of clinical physicians. A bag valve mask (BVM) has been in use for more than fifty years and is usually named as Ambu Bag. It is a manual resuscitator and self-inflating bag and a hand-held medical apparatus, which is commonly used to provide positive pressure ventilation to the patients, who suffer from inadequate breathing. A face mask is plugged over the patient’s airway and the required amount of oxygen is pumped by squeezing the Ambu bag at a rate of 12 to 16 breaths per minute for adults. The bag can be repeatedly squeezed out and re-inflated rapidly to resuscitate the patients by providing adequate oxygen. The same Ambu bag can be used to provide assisted ventilation through endotracheal tube to Covid-19 patients.

At a time when an increase in number of COVID-19 patients can lead to a shortage of ventilators in India, this Ambu Bag ventilator can come to the rescue. Generally, this medical apparatus is hand operated by highly skilled health-staff and getting so many staff engaged for each patient can be a problem in the current situation where the number of patients is quite high. Therefore, the present situation demands automatic pressurization of the Ambu bag and an affordable but reliable mechanism for the same. The mechanized Ambu Bag ventilator invented by NIT Durgapur students is economic, simple and amenable to easy production. The required clinical parameters of Ambu bag pressurization, such as strokes per minute, volume per stroke, etc can be controlled mechanically. A wonderful name has been given to these ventilators — PRANESH. Indeed, they will act as a messiah of life, or praan. The systems have been clinically tested and till now have been found satisfactory enough for crisis situations meeting the clinical requirements.

In case a large number of COVID 19 cases are reported, these ventilators can supplement a regular ventilator. The model can also be attached to each ICU bed and ambulances with slight modification. The key developers of this project were Dr. Nirmal Baran Hui, Dr. Nilanjan Chattaraj and Dr. Hardik Rajyaguru and the team under Prof. Anupam Basu are ready to help in the commercial production of this ventilator if need be.

Satyajit Ray, the man who brought out the best of Bengal’s rural life on screen

Existing in the world without having seen the sun and the moon

That’s what legendary world-renowned film maker Akira Kurosawa had once said after watching the movie Pather Panchali and while discussing the film-making style of another legend, born and brought up in Bengal, Satyajit Ray. Pather Panchali was indeed a timeless classic and the manner in which, Ray gave his own touches to Apu Trilogy (all three novels written by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay) had elevated the movies to a platform never touched before. From the depths of emotions subtly expressed to the heights of background scores, singers, actors, musicians, handpicked by Ray after a lot of experimentation, Ray was a class by himself. No wonder even Kurosawa was touched by his genuine creativity.

A scene from Pather Panchali

Ray was fascinated by the world of Bengal’s rural life. Having spent a sizeable portion of his life in Santiniketan, Satyajit Ray was close to nature and rural life, their style, their dialects. Not just Apu Trilogy, in movies like Ashani Sanket, a film set in a village during World War II and the Great Famine of 1943, through the eyes of a young Brahmin doctor-teacher, Gangacharan, and his wife, Anaga, Ray again brings out rural dialogues, underlying wishes and their world of innocence as well as deceit. The human scale of a cataclysmic event that killed more than 3 million people and the breakdown of traditional village norms under the pressure of hunger and starvation, somewhere struck a chord with the human tale of love and loss that Ray usually portrayed on celluloid.

A scene from Ashani Sanket

While, Pather Panchali was the first film of what came to be known as the Apu Trilogy – the second was Aparajito, in 1956, and the third, Apur Sansar, in 1959. All three were masterpieces, closely weaving hopes and despair of the common man, through protagonist Apu. There is a kind of musical cohesion in the trilogy that Ray made, bringing Apu and other characters to life. In an article Ray once wrote: “I chose Pather Panchali for the qualities that made it a great book: its humanism, its lyricism, and its ring of truth.” Ray kept focusing his adaptation on the poverty and simple living of a family in rural Bengal, just like the original novel does. Bibhutibhushan had a breath-taking narrative style, where he touched upon the details of every corner of rural Bengal along with the minute emotions that each of us suffer from, be it in death or birth. Ray could build up that atmosphere with his midas touch, from the subtle difference between dawn and dusk, to the stillness that precedes the first monsoon shower.

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Also read : When the twain met: Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay and Satyajit Ray

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Shooting of Ashani Sanket

Every detail of a rural life opens up behind Ray’s camera. They are put to life in scenes where the children follow the village sweet-seller with a dog trailing them and the procession reflected in a pond; Apu throwing a stolen necklace in the pond to save his sister’s secret, Apu and Durga racing through a field of kaash flowers for their first glimpse of a train or Sarbojaya’s outburst after Harihar comes home and learns of Durga’s death. They are all scenes with a contrast, of joy and anguish, of despair and love of simple rural folk. Similar emotions are reflected in another timeless adaptation of Tagore’s Postmaster. Ratan, the simple village girl and her undying attachment to the postmaster who comes to the village.

A scene from Pather Panchali

In words of Kurosawa: “Pather Panchali is the kind of cinema that flows with the serenity and nobility of a big river. People are born, live out their lives, and then accept their deaths. Without the least effort and without any sudden jerks, Ray paints this picture, but its effect on the audience is to stir up deep passions.” True, Satyajit Ray could indeed bring out Bengal’s rural life at its best on celluloid and touch the hearts and souls of the audience. On his death anniversary, it is proved again, some creative minds never die. Satyajit Ray was one such master director.

‘Yes, I heal, Yes I breathe’ – Mother Nature’s open letter to Humans

Dear Humans,

I am breathing at last, yes my wounds are healing too, my sky looks crystal clear, not a tinge of soot and smoke and my birds sing in glee. All my creatures have found their homes on the silent and abandoned city streets as you went back to your confinement, within the four walls of your homes. Yes, COVID-19 virus has probably made you realize at last how a caged bird or a zoo animal feels as you enjoy their lack of freedom, as you force them behind bars.

Yes, I am breathing at last, my own pool of oxygen that has risen above the loads of carbon emission that your vehicles and factories produce daily, scripting my slow poisoning tale, pushing me to eminent death. I shed tears as my clouds pour down acid rains, heavy with sulphur and nitrogen-di-oxide, choking my every breath, every joy and every free alveolus. My heart skips a rhythm as you chop off one tree after the other, clearing forests to set up industries and mines and what not! From the deadly forest fires of Australia to that of the Amazon, from the bush fires of Susunia Hills of Bankura to the jungles of Kenya, I burn and you hold seminars talking of zero-carbon emission and global warming. A lot of discussions, but no actions on ground ever. Across the globe, every government makes tall talks about climate change, but refuses to sign an agreement to cut down carbon emissions.

You breed, you take away the natural habitat of my animals and birds. I watch helplessly, as the arctic snows melt, as a starved mother Polar Bear walks around trying to feed its cub that would probably die in hunger, I shed tears watching the Amazon rainforest burn, killing exotic macaws, I watch in shame as you chain the Orangutans of Indonesia’s largest rainforests to make them work as slaves! Now you have no control. They are roaming free, they are happy. Peacocks are spreading their hue on the roads of Rajasthan, deer and even leopards are roaming city streets, monitor lizards walking past busy thoroughfares in Bengal and all my birds enjoying the silence of the urbanscape. For them and for me, it’s a new found love, that you robbed us off, decades ago in the name of modern urbanization.

Yes, I heal at last, a reboot button, pressed by none other than me. You killed even my wildlife, cooked them into meals, you did not even spare the flying mammals – the bats, or even a rare pangolin, you ate them too, bringing in a deadly virus that invades you and today you stand helpless. As you die, I heal. But believe me, humans and Mother Nature should have lived in harmony, only if you could have controlled your greed. You could not, I silently bled. Till now, when I smile again, and enjoy my freedom. Yet, I shall still keep giving you flowers, to be put on your graves and hold the hands of your new generation and let them play again on my green fields. Let them learn what harmony and love is all about. I promise, once you rise from these embers, you too will heal. Best of Luck. May you win over a tiny virus and learn to conserve me to avoid such a pandemic again in future.

Sending you a whiff of my rain-soaked breeze to heal you too.

Mother Nature

Tribute to Abhay Mitra, the master juggler of Joy Baba Felunath

Remember that scene from Satyajit Ray’s famous Feluda movie, Joy Baba Felunath, where Jatayu puts up a brave face as Magan Laal Meghraj’s juggler Arjun hits one dagger after the other showing a dangerous jugglery game? Though on-screen all saw Kamu Mukherjee in the role of the dagger thrower, the real hero who acted as his dummy was famous juggler Abhay Mitra. We find Mitra again cast in Phatikchand — playing the dummy, again, for a flame-catching Kamu Mukherjee — and Goopi Bagha Phire Elo, where he played himself on screen, balancing on rollers while juggling two hammers and a ball.

Abhay Mitra is often known as Ray’s juggler and he passed away last week, leaving behind a dying art whose reins he had one day taken up to keep the art of jugglery alive. He was so passionate about jugglery that he even set up an institute, his long-cherished dream and the first of its kind in the country. The institute that will train budding jugglers in an art that is inching towards extinction. Academy of Juggling at the Boy Scouts of Bengal tent on Maidan ran for free almost as Mitra had a wish that the younger generation would take up this art form and keep it alive.

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Also read : Meeting Manohar Aich, the man who hit the gym even at 100!

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Mitra himself had inherited the skill from his father, Kalosona Mitra, who died when he was just seven, has now passed it on to his children. His institute takes in any kid between six and 16 years of age and even admits physically-challenged and mentally-retarded children for Mitra always believed juggling in step with the rhythm of music, work wonders for such children.

Despite being a low profile person, Mitra had travelled the globe showcasing his skills. The past took him to Paris, saw him work with the legendary Satyajit Ray, meeting Mother Teresa, magician P.C. Sorcar (Jr) and so many more. From dagger-throwing act, to juggling balls and pins, to ball-and-stick-and-hammer-juggling, ribbon-dancing, sword-balancing, hat-throwing act,  and many more, Mitra was always happy to bring a smile to all.

After having staged more than 5,000 shows in the past 50 years, Mitra’s death will leave a deep void and his intent to spread the magic of juggling far and wide might take a back seat. Still his students would probably keep the show going. Hope Bengal’s jugglery would survive.