Dacoit or dacoity are not words you will find in any standard English dictionary, even today. They are a peculiarly British-Indian coinage, originally intended for legal use only, from the Hindi/Urdu ‘dakait’ (robber or bandit), also the origin of the Bengali word ‘dakat’. So pervasive
Babu Baisnab Charan Adhya, or ‘Bustomchurn Addy’ as the British called him, is not a name many Bengalis remember. Or even know. But over the course of August and September 1848, this Calcutta babu pulled off a most remarkable if short-lived achievement, which ought to
Titas Ekti Nodir Naam (1956) Written by: Advaita Mallabarman Publisher: Various Four surviving stories, and three novels. That is all that we have of Advaita Mallabarman (1914-51). And that is all that is needed to justify his reputation as one of the brightest stars of Bengali literature, a
Basanta Bilap (1973) Cast: Soumitra Chatterjee, Aparna Sen, Rabi Ghosh, Kajal Gupta, Anup Kumar, Sumitra Mukherjee, Chinmoy Roy Director: Dinen Gupta How does one define a masterpiece? The standard dictionary definition reads: “a work of outstanding artistry, skill, or workmanship”. By that definition, Basanta Bilap would not qualify
New Market-1905 In the first part of this article, which you can read here, we started out with old Calcutta neighbourhoods bearing the suffixes ‘tala’, ‘tola’ and ‘para’, as an indication of the predominant professional communities inhabiting the city, as well its geography, in the 17th
Shriman Prithviraj (1973) Cast: Ayan Bandyopadhyay, Mahua Roychoudhury, Sandhya Roy, Utpal Dutt, Biswajit Chatterjee, Satya Bandyopadhyay, Rabi Ghosh, Chinmoy Roy, Santosh Dutta, Padma Devi Director: Tarun Majumdar Sweet, laugh out loud funny, wholesome, yet meaningful. In a nutshell, that sums up one of Bengali cinema’s most beloved classics.
In its edition dated October 10, 1825, the English-language daily Bengal Hurkaru published a gushing eulogy to the Durga Puja at the residence of ‘Baboo Pron Kissen Holdor’ in Chinsurah. The residence, which apparently resembled a European mansion, had a huge salon on the ground
Arogya Niketan (1967) Cast: Bikash Roy, Subhendu Chatterjee, Ruma Guha Thakurta, Chhaya Devi, Sandhya Roy, Bankim Ghosh Director: Bijoy Bose Three days ago, on September 14, most of us quietly missed the 51st death anniversary of Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay, who passed away in Kolkata in 1971 at 73. During his
Nimantran (1971) Cast: Anup Kumar, Sandhya Roy, Sandhya Rani, Jahar Roy, Nandini Maliya, Kali Banerjee, Pahari Sanyal Director: Tarun Majumdar Nimantran won the award for Best Feature Film in Bengali at the 19th National Film Awards announced on February 5, 1972. It also fetched its music director and
Raj Kapoor and Uttam Kumar in a film directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Uttam Kumar, not Soumitra Chatterjee, in ‘Kinu Goalar Goli'. Rekha and Uttam Kumar paired in a Bengali film. Not figments of a passionate fan’s imagination, but three among a series of misses in