The year was 2001, the setting a slum in Tikiapara, Howrah. Mamoon Akhtar sat in a 300-sq ft house, surrounded by a small group of six children. This was his ‘school’, which he had been driven to set up as a result of the passionate
Do you remember that famous Mrinal Sen movie Neel Akasher Neechey (1959), based on the travails of a Chinese street hawker of Calcutta in the backdrop of India’s freedom struggle? What many of us are not aware of is that this movie was produced by
No other metropolitan city in India can claim of having a biodiversity register. But our very own Kolkata can now boast of being the first major metropolitan city of India to have prepared a detailed register of biodiversity. It was unveiled recently by the city
He had left us on 10th June. Internationally acclaimed ace director Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s demise undoubtedly created a void in the world of cinema, the last of the doyens of Bengal’s filmmaking circuit perhaps. To remember this day, Sohini Dasgupta, wife of Buddhadeb Dasgupta on behalf
A group of youngsters has made us all proud with their wonderful achievement. Yes, at a time when detractors are crying hoarse to prove the fact that, Kolkata, once the cultural capital of the country, has degenerated into a creaking, dilapidated ‘old-age home’, that’s sighing
You must have often stepped into the General Post Office of Kolkata, but have hardly ever realised this iconic building is not just a place where you get postal services, post cards, envelopes and stamps. There is also a world-renowned Postal Museum and Philatelic Library,
What do films like Habji Gabji, Hritpindo and Bela Shuru have in common? They all deal with different kinds of mental disorders of which, some are placed with proper research into the issue and the others are just done without much thought but only with
Buddhadeb Dasgupta will perhaps remain the most awarded and least screened Bengali filmmaker post the Ray-Sen-Ghatak era. Which is a tragedy for one of India’s most outstanding filmmakers, who acquired international fame for the lyrical quality of his work across three decades. He began with films
In 2020, director Meghna Gulzar’s feature film ‘Chhapaak’ was released and it made quite a splash and brought to the fore the traumatic battle of acid attack survivors. The biographical film was based on the life of Laxmi Agarwal, then a 15-year-old girl, who was
Born in Bombay in the year of India’s independence, died by suicide in a small Los Angeles jail cell in 1994. In sum, this was the life and death of Somen ‘Steve’ Banerjee who remains, till date, the most infamous Bengali immigrant to have landed