“Malik ke giye bol Khoka esechhe (go tell the owner Khoka is here)”. With the release of Srijit Mukherji’s film ‘Dwitiyo Purush’ in January 2020, this line passed into Bengal’s film history. The ‘Khoka’ in question is an apparently insane killer who terrorises people from
“A pen is the tongue of the mind” Creation of pens has essentially facilitated the basis of our civilization. It is through pens that we could write and communicate information for generations to come. The greatest works of art from authors like Shakespeare or the greatest
The life of a honey collector is not an easy one, particularly for those in the Sundarbans. The reason is easy enough to pinpoint – attacks by man-eating tigers. The Royal Bengal Tiger, pride and joy of the Sundarbans, is also the biggest threat to
Tucked away in one corner of Uttarpara stands Uttarpara Bengal Photo Studio, the brainchild of 41-year-old Arindam Saha Sardar. A self-taught archivist and restoration artist, Arindam makes biographical documentaries, curates exhibitions of rare artefacts, collects old still and movie cameras, Bengali magazines of yore, and
The great Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay once wrote that Bengalis as a race looked to their rulers for even the history of their own race, and were experts at forgetting their past achievements. Even if we were to set that aside, we can say with certainty
To put it blandly, food and Bengal, or food and the Bengali, have always shared a special relationship. The popular theory is that Bengali cuisine is the only traditionally developed ‘multi-course service’ in the Indian subcontinent, similar in structure to the modern ‘service à la
One movie of Ray among many other pathbreaking ones that brought two idols together was Nayak. 55 years ago in 1966, the story of a humble theatre actor turned matinee idol Arindam Mukherjee hit the screens, catapulting Uttam Kumar to a different genre of acting
For most of us, Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury is a name we think of only in connection to his famous son, or even more famous grandson. But is it enough to think of him simply as the father of Sukumar Ray and grandfather of Satyajit Ray?
Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, and Jawaharlal Nehru are the three Indians most likely to feature in commemorative stamps released by other countries. While empirical evidence for this would be difficult to find, this is what one of Kolkata’s preeminent philatelists has to say. Sekhar Chakrabarti
Few outside West Bengal, or even inside the state, are aware that Rabindranath Tagore directed a film based on Notir Puja, a dramatized version of his long poem Pujarini, written in 1899. Notir Puja or its original long poem offer different perspectives on death in