Panoramic view of Kolkata through prose, poetry, music

• Why did you choose Kolkata as your muse?

I have lived all my life in Kolkata. I am what I am because of her. I love this city irrespective of its flaws. It is a warm city, warmth of its people. The city equipped me to face life with degrees of displacement and acceptance. It’s my tribute to her.

• How do you plan to capture her 'rich past and relentless present' through prose and poetry?

Of course through words deep, penetrating, fleeting, ephemeral. The music is there to help and in the beginning, there is a five-minute video on Kolkata capturing her nuances.

• What insights about Kolkata will be brought out through the script?

Many different insights, probably it will be personal. The warmth together with indifference.The sameness of smart cities, the relentless monotony of a planned metropolis is absent here. Rather, here among anonymous street corners, ugliness, packs of dogs, beggars and street children (the last three mentioned by every Western writer or film director who wants to make it differently big in the occident), the presence of human dimension, is, perhaps, what uplifts the city and makes it alluring almost.

• How poetic is Kolkata?

Every nook and corner is poetic. One must have the eye to see. Not only great architecture, the lingering isolated time, trapped in bricks and mortar and creepers are poetic as far as I am concerned.

• Kolkata has given birth to many well-known poets, not just Tagore. Which element of the city do you think helped and still helps to nurture creative minds?

It’s affectionate embrace and openness.

• If you can summarise the ethos of Kolkata that you will interweave in your presentation

Let me summarize this way:
        Everynight Kolkata knocks at the closed door of sleep
“let me in, love me”, she says.
Suppose all of us contain Kolkata within us
        with a consciousness shaped by the past and present
        waltzing to the future.