Me and I

by Nabendu Ghosh, Devottam Sengupta

Genres: Classics

Synopsis

?A story that breaks the barriers of space and time? They all had the same question for Mukul: ` Why didn?t you recognize us? And why did you look so dark?? Mukul was perplexed. The day had started as any other Sunday morning would, with him going out to meet his aunt, his friends and his mentor Noni Kaku of the Telescope. But when everyone, including his own parents, insisted that he was lying about his whereabouts, Mukul had to look around for the imposter? And he found Lukum, who had travelled light years to meet his intergalactic `twin?. Little did Mukul know that he had set out on the longest Sunday of his life. How would this all end? And where? Written by Nabendu Ghosh, path-breaking novelist, screenwriter and film director, this racy story about a parallel universe has been translated by his grandson Devottam Sengupta. Fusing human curiosity about space with a futuristic vision, it delivers it all with a suspenseful, gobsmacking punch.

Release date: April 15, 2017

Publisher: Hachette India Children's Books

Print pages: 123

Sample

INTRODUCTION

My Father and I

I was, at that point in time, with The Times of India in Delhi. One day in the course of my work I called the renowned writer-lyricist-director, Gulzar.

‘Namaskar, this is Ratnottama Sengupta, the Arts Editor,’ I introduced myself.

‘What’s the name?’ Gulzar Saab’s voice floated over. ‘Ratnottama! Who gave you that name?’

‘You know the person,’ I responded, ‘my father, Nabendu Ghosh.’

‘Nabenduda, did you say? Arre, he’s my guru! He led me by my finger when I started writing for Bandini!’ Indeed, the celebrated poet, then a mere mechanic in an auto garage, had started by writing songs for the 1964 film directed by Bimal Roy and then gone on to dialogues and screenplay. And even in the case of the lyrics for Bandini, Nabenduda had opened for him the storehouse of Vaishnav Padavali1, I’d learnt.

My first name has, all through my life, arrested attention. Indian mythology has it that, during the Churning of the Ocean, among the most coveted treasures that surfaced was Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity. Bengal’s 19th-century poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt described her as ‘Ratnottama,’ meaning, ‘the best of all jewels.’ When I was born after two sons, my litterateur father considered me the best of his family jewels. As a little girl I found it quite a liability. Most people, especially in Bombay* where we lived, couldn’t pronounce it properly. Some friends would call me ‘Rat,’ my friend Deep Pal onomatopoeically added ‘rat tat tat’ to make it sound like a gunshot, and some others turned me into a ‘Rattle-snake.’ How I longed that I be rechristened as Rosy or Rita!

The grace and uniqueness of the name dawned on me when I started reading Kalidasa as part of my Sanskrit lessons at Elphinstone College. And then I silently thanked my father for naming me what he did.

Ever since I can remember, I had seen my father dress in superfine cotton dhoti and white kurta. The white had to be just that, with not a spot of dust or blemish on it. That was his indulgence. And I hated it. Every friend’s father came smartly dressed in a trouser-shirt-coat – and here was mine dressed, I thought then, like the milkman from a UP village!

Then came the winter of 1977–78 when, along with Ma and Baba, I set out on a tour of Western Europe. Deep in January we were winding up and down the snow-covered terrain of the Alps bridging Austria and Switzerland. So Baba traded his trademark attire for a bandhgala coat, trousers and shirt. And I was close to tears. Who’s this!? Not my father, for sure – he dresses only in crispy white dhoti-kurta!

An unadulterated Bengali in his attire, a citizen of the world in thoughts and letters, Baba was born in Dhaka on 27 March 1917. When he was four, his advocate father Nabadwip Chandra Ghosh relocated to Patna for his practice of Law. Baba grew up in the capital of Bihar, then part of the Bengal Presidency. He did his MA in English although, even when he was in school, he would write stories in Bengali, for a handwritten magazine Jharna that he brought out with his friends. That was the beginning of a journey that saw him write Daak Diye Jaai (The Clarion Call), centred on the Quit India Movement.

Soon, as the Calcutta*-based literary magazine, Shanibarer Chithi started serializing it, Baba was bracketed as a ‘subversive’ writer, one who wrote against the established system. Those were the days of British India, and he was working for the Defence Secretariat. The moment he was told that he must stop writing the novel, he resigned and joined the Police. This was the time he got married, but when it was time for confirmation, the ‘subversive’ story was repeated. That marked the end of his life as a government employee for, by this time, he had already written scores of stories and novels, and though they were not ‘subversive’, the rulers of the day were not pleased with their political undertone.

So, in 1945, Baba moved to Calcutta to live by the dint of his pen. Books and screenplay, he felt, would see him through the troubled times of early fatherhood (my eldest sibling had already come into this world). That was the time when, after the three Bandopadhyays (Manik, Bibhuti Bhushan and Tarashankar), three N’s were the rising stars of Bengali literature – Narayan Ganguly, Narendranath Mitra and Nabendu Ghosh. Baba developed a special closeness with Narayan Ganguly – the author of the extremely popular Tenida of Pataldanga stories – since they lived on two different floors of the same building on Pataldanga Street. Ganguly was a professor, Ghosh a writer. A unique camaraderie built up between them: Together they’d go out to the market, to the publisher’s office on College Street, to the coffee shop adda, to unpremeditated destinations… This became their daily routine.

In the course of writing screenplays Baba came in contact with Bimal Roy, the film director. Meanwhile, the Radcliff Line had divided West Bengal and East Bengal, and turned Dhaka into a foreign land. If it was a sad day for those whose roots lay in East Bengal, it was far worse for those who eked out a living through books and films. For, along with the roads and rivers, the readers and viewers too got partitioned. So when Bimal Roy got a call from actor Ashok Kumar to make a film for Bombay Talkies, Baba also packed his bag and joined him, as did Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Asit Sen and Paul Mahendra. Nazir Husain, Kamal Bose, Sudhendu Roy and Salil Chowdhury too joined them shortly. The year was 1951, and Nabendu Ghosh had become the father of two sons.

Apart from Bimal Roy, Baba also scripted films for almost every renowned director of his times (the 1950s, 60s and 70s): Guru Dutt, Phani Majumdar, Gyan Mukherjee, Vijay Bhatt, Shakti Samanta, Raj Khosla, Satyen Bose, Lekh Tandon, Sushil Majumdar, Mohan Segal, Sultan Ahmed, Dulal Guha, Subhash Ghai, Basu Bhattacharya and, of course, Hrishikesh Mukherjee. And I feel proud when I see that most of these rank among the classics of Hindi cinema: Devdas, Sujata, Bandini, Teesri Kasam, Parineeta, Abhimaan, Ganga ki Saugandh, Do Anjane, Biraj Bahu, Yahudi… Eventually he directed his own film Trishagni, which too is a classic set in a Central Asian monastery in the times of the Buddha.

Very close to the Bombay Talkies Studio, in the northwestern suburb of Malad, was a quiet neighbourhood called Pushpa Colony, dotted with Goan-style bungalows owned by Sequieras, Perieses, Marchons… One such bungalow fell vacant when Mumtaz Ali – father of Mehmood and Minoo Mumtaz – moved out, and my father lost no time in moving in with his wife Kanaklata and sons Dipankar and Subhankar. I was born in this very house, in 1955 – the year of Devdas and Pather Panchali.

This little bungalow surrounded by a patch of green had a drawing room, a bedroom, and a room-sized passage to the kitchen-cum-dining-space, and bathroom. Eventually, as his family grew, this passage became my father’s room, complete with his almirah and writing table! The house was perennially filled with friends who came to ‘see Bombay’ or for medical treatment, cousins set for higher education or seeking jobs in the fast industrializing metropolis, aspiring writers and wannabe directors. They came from Calcutta, where Baba had a large circle of writer-friends; from Patna, where his family lived; or Malda, where Ma came from. Their unfailing camp address was 2 Pushpa Colony, c/o Nabendu Ghosh. That was also the starting point for film directors Sachin Bhowmick, and Basu Bhattacharya.

As a child I remember watching artist Debabrata Mukherjee doing his watercolours, many of which later I recognized on the cover of Baba’s novels. I was barely nine or ten when I interacted with writers like Phanishwar Nath Renu and Samaresh Bose. I have vivid memories of listening to Ritwik Ghatak and being spellbound by his elder brother Sudheesh Ghatak’s storytelling. And I cherish the interactions I had with poets like Premendra Mitra and Nirendranath Chakraborty. I treasure the signed copy of a children’s storybook Asha Devi had gifted me, and as an art critic, I came to doubly admire the book covers by Phalguni Dasgupta. Little did I know at that time that these ‘Kaku’, ‘Jethu’ or ‘Mama’ were celebrities! Some of these personalities came in for brief spells; with some others I developed a lasting friendship. Can you imagine a better way of growing up? And I had this good fortune only because I was born to Nabendu Ghosh.

Yet, Baba was a rare commodity at home. Ever since I can remember, he would leave in the morning to go to Mohan Studios, where Bimal Roy had his office. There he would sit with the other members of the legend’s team who would all discuss, argue, agree or disagree over the characters, situations, casting, dialogue, locations… at the end of which Baba would write the script.

Most nights I would be asleep by the time he came home, but Baba would have his dinner and then sit down at his desk to pen down his stories and novels. These were published in various little magazines in Calcutta, some of which we got to see and some we never did. Many of these were collected in anthologies that give us a robust picture of the land and the times in which they were written, reflecting as they do the riots, the famines, nuclear testing, urbanization, smuggling, drugs, corruption in political life and decay in the morals of individuals. The sum total of this was that Baba was always writing – I grew up knowing that my father was a Writer, but until my teens I did not know what he was writing. Actually, I did not even know that he was writing for the movies. And even when I got to know that, I had no idea of what a ‘screenplay’ entails – until my mother explained that ‘Screenplay is direction on paper.’

So writing – and reading – is what Baba was immersed in, round the clock. Yes, reading: Every few weeks he would frequent the Strand Book Stall . . .