Calcutta: passion amid the poverty and dust

Press, 10 March 1988, Page 12

Calcutta: passion amid the poverty and dust

CLARE COLVIN,

i | | I of the “Daily Telegraph,” reports from Calcutta

CALCUTTA has received a bad press for so long that it . is preparing for its tercentenary in 1990 in a mood of j" cheerful defiance. Its pollution is allenveloping and the night air is a damp, dense smog that goes straight to the throat. I The traffic is stationary during rush hours, the pavements are covered with a fine layer of dust and the poverty is a condition of life. Yet Calcuttans are proud of their city for the vitality and good humour with which it survives. More than any other in India, it has a passion for the arts and culture. Not for nothing is the festival for Saraswati, the goddess of learning,( the most important here. Go to Calcutta University and you pass streets lined with bookstalls. Theatre productions attract full houses — Utpal Dutt’s adaptation into Bengali of “The Lower Depths,” set in the slums of north Calcutta, has been packing them in, as has a Bengali adaptation of Wesker’s “ChickenSoup With Barley." ’ The film industry manages to find space for artistic titles among the commercial song-and-dance films that are its bread and butter. Satyajit Ray, famous for the Apu trilogy about a child growing up in modem India, has been a dominating influence for years, but there, are a number of younger directors who are making their mark, among them Aparna Sen (who directed “36 Chowringhee Lane”) and Goutham Ghosh. Victor Bannerjee,’star of Ray

films and who played Aziz in “A Passage To India,”/plans to make a serious filmJafter learning his trade by! directing what he calls “a commercial pot-bpiler.” Everyone tells ’me that Ray himself is not jgoinjg to make another feature 'film ■ because he is still too ill after his heart bypass j operation four years ago. Ray, who lives in ah apartment with high ceilings and verandahs at the top of a crumbling colonial building, maintains 'that rumours of his retirement 'are greatly exaggerated. I ! ■ I We talked in a room whose shelves are lined .with books, records, files and papers where he has worked on his -films over the years. He is tall, imposing -and dressed injwhite kurta and shawl. I i i The problem j riowj, he says, is to get a film idea that will not worry his doctors. They tell him that he should riot work outside a studio, but all his ideas need to be filmed on location. “All my films have been about the middle classes,” he said. “What I would | like jto do next is a film on bonded labour.” Although there are probably no more than 70 Britons living in Calcutta, there is still a feeling that the Raj (hasj not entirely vanished. Its great monument, the Victoria memorial, floodlit at night, is one of jthe great tourist attractions. j | I When I visited it, hundreds of pilgrims, returning from their annual trek to Sagar Island at the mouth ofjthe ’Ganges, were swarming through’ the building, gazing at pictures (of Queen Vic-

toria’s marriage and early Gov-ernors-General and their wives. Park Street Cemetery j is a monument to the. effect of Calcutta on the! health of members of the Raj, ( particularly of the memsahibs, jit is sobering jto see the ages on the ’gravestones at which the latter’ departed this life. Mrs Eliza Smith, aged 17; Mrs Margaret Kinsey, 21 (years, 10 months; (Mrs Elizabeth Jane Barrett, noted on her gravestone as the former “celebrated Miss Sanderson,” jat “about 23.]’ The Bengalis have embraced the parts of the ’ Raj they like, such as the clubs — the Turf Club, the Calcutta Club and the famous Toltygunge, one (of the oldest buildings in Calcutta and originally trie home of an! indigo: merchant iri the’lBth century. But the statues of GotjernorsGeneral oh horseback,’ once numerous cjn the streets (of Calcutta, have been banished to Barrackpore , and are now grouped en masse in a [garden, like a set] for ( “Last Year in Marienbad.” . | On my last night in Calcutta the Raj had a fling with the Caledonian] Ball, attended by 120 guests, five of whom were Scots A team! of Gurkha (bagpipe players piped in the j haggis, flown in for the. occasion. The cermonial [ address was | by the Deputy High Commissioner — one of the! few’ Scots present. Sitting in the garden, soaked in the Calcutta night dew, the guests drank whisky, ate their haggis, neeps and tattjes, and then took (unsteadily to an eightsome reel! ]