On Children’s Day, a look at two men whose Bengali rhymes for children became proverbs Hattima Tim Tim, tara mathey parey dim Tader khara duto shing, tara Hattima Tim Tim. (Untranslatable, but we’ll try: ‘In a field they lay their eggs, they are Hattima Tim Tim/ They have
Both January and February are special months for a very special Kolkata landmark, so we figured this was a good time to put this article out. The landmark in question is what we know as Alipore Zoo, though officially it ought to be called Zoological
The Poet being conducted to the dais by Sir S. Radhakrishnan and Sir Maurice Gwyer at the Special Convocation of Oxford University at Santiniketan On August 7, 1940, Great Britain’s renowned (and ancient) Oxford University broke a very important rule. For the first time in its
For those who have read Jibansmriti, the memoirs of his childhood by Rabindranath Tagore, it is easy to see why Tagore became the kind of teacher that he did. Homeschooled as a little boy, the youngster resented the hours spent under the harsh guidance of
“The time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part wish to stand, shorn of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen, who, for their so-called insignificance, are
The Civil Disobedience Movement was a non-violent protest against British rule that lasted from 1930-34, led by Mahatma Gandhi and beginning with the Dandi March. This is widely recorded history. But decades before civil obedience became an official movement, a young man was reading a paper
Title: India in Monochrome Author: Sajal Ghosh Publisher: Bee Books, 2024 Price: Rs 2,990 On a trip to Nagaland to cover the state’s famed Hornbill Festival, photographer Sajal Ghosh stayed with a Naga family. On the surface, the man from Kolkata had nothing in common with the tribes of
Title: Bangaliyana Publisher: BlueOne Ink Price: Rs 399 If asked to describe himself from a creative standpoint, Rajiv Banerjee would probably use the term ‘self-taught cartoonist’. Which is what he still is, in whatever spare time he can manage from his demanding job as a corporate bigwig in
Legendary singer Sandhya Mukherjee About a decade ago, I was coordinating a music video project involving 100 icons of Bengal. Naturally, Gitashree Sandhya Mukhopadhyay would be foremost among them. Having been warned that she was not particularly receptive when it came to anything other than music,
Naku babu (Sushil Kumar Chatterjee)-Image : Abhijit Chakraborty In January 2021, a 94-year-old man died in Kolkata. His name was Sushil Kumar Chatterjee, though everyone in his north Kolkata neighbourhood knew him as ‘Naku babu’, the museum man. He was, indeed. In one room of his house,