He was the ‘Mama’ of the Golden era of Bengali Cinema. For he acted in the role of several maternal uncles, some good, some cunning and some evil. Haridhan Mukherjee was a multi-talented gem of Tollywood. Satyajit Ray had a keen eye for details and
“My problem isn’t that I have a sweet tooth. It’s that I have several of them.” And as everyone knows, that’s the problem with a majority of Bengalis. Bengalis absolutely love sweets, so much so that sweetmeats like ‘sandesh’, ‘mishti doi’ etc remain an integral
The sudden growling of a hand truck in the distance when no one is about, the diesel engines of a crane starting up on their own in an apparently deserted cabin, the crane moving from side to side as though operated by an invisible hand,
TThe mines at Singbhum have been producing Copper since the last 2500 years. Hindustan Copper Limited extracts copper from these mines. But the port that once used to export copper no more exists. This was called Tampralipta, a port that primarily exported copper. One of
Author Sunil Gangopadhyay Author Sunil Gangopadhyay’s enduring popularity among his dedicated band of readers is the result of his astute understanding of a fundamental weakness in the Bengali psyche: A deep-rooted desire for tacky claim to a glorious literary past. A prolific author, he successfully delved into
Did you have any clue about Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s breakfast love? Well, he loved to eat bread and pudding and was in for a proper English breakfast during his internment period that he spent at Kurseong’s Gidda Pahar (hills) in 1936. But why this
My ancestors are from Barishal, Bangladesh, and we shifted to Kolkata in the ’40s. My grandfather and grandmother started to live in Hooghly district. They had a family of four sons and three daughters. They all grew up in a South Kolkata locality. When I
If rural Bengal has been practising alpona designing for decades, they have their roots in the first civilisation of India --- Indus Valley Civilisation. Parallel in motifs seen on pots and vases of Mohenjodaro and Harappa made historians and archaelogists believe Bengal’s alpona art has
Beginning this week, we will be looking back at a few groundbreaking Bengali films and books for review, and we start the journey with Saptapadi, one of the most memorable films of Uttam Kumar’s glittering career. Aconservative Hindu boy falls in love with an Anglo-Indian Christian
Was there really a Portuguese traveller named Diego Alvarez as depicted in Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay’s "Chander Pahar"? Well, this Portuguese explorer who was also thought to be a gold and diamond prospector and befriended protagonist Shankar, was in reality, afictional character. The way Bandopadhyay ropes the two men and sets them on to explore