Mumbai Coffee House

Yesterday I came out of a meeting about a new media vehicle which is yet to establish itself in India.  The possibilities sounded interesting though. The owner of the company told me about the growth of this media in the US. I listened to his reasons for believing that it has potential in India too. The reasoning sounded interesting.  I thought about our chat after I went home. I was keen to know more about this medium.  Then I happened to go on Instagram then and suddenly saw a live story from my cousin there. She has just graduating from the NYU in New York. She often puts up examples of her design work on Instagram. That's when I remembered that media studies were part of the seemingly complex course that she had done. By 'complex', I mean a course that seemed more fluid than the Sociology or Literature or Physics or Geology Hons of my time in college in Kolkata. I suddenly got the the idea to reach out to her to know more about what we had discussed ...

“The philosophers have only  interpreted  the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to  change  it." We were introduced to this quote from Karl Marx by a gentleman named Samit Kar who taught us Marxism in Presidency College. We had a paper on Marxism as a part of our Sociology course designed by the Calcutta University in the mid 1990s.  I was not into Marxism, which seemed so anachronistic in the post Berlin Wall fall days, and wasn't too keen on these classes. However there was no forgetting this line of Marx as Professor Kar would keep repeating it.  He was so fond of this line that a friend of mine and I wondered if this is what he told his wife the night he had got married!  I must mention that prof Kar had graciously invited all of us from class to his wedding at a place called Shinghi Park and it was a happy evening. Whether his favourite Marxist quote was a part of what was discussed later that night was not something that w...

Bumped into a few Bangladeshis at Sydney's Miller Street. They were talking in Bengali and I asked them for directions in Bengali. We began to talk. Turned out they were at the 'Uni'. On hearing I was from India, they asked me if I was from Kolkata. Mumbai, I replied without thinking. Got a bit philosophical when I left them. Where am I from?

Tapen Chattopadhyay, who played the character of Goopy in Satyajit Ray's Goopy Bagha series passed away a few days back. The Goopy Bagha films defined children's films in a country where there weren't many. Films you could grow up with as you kept discovering layer after layer each time you saw them. For many of us they were the rare home grown super heroes cum rock stars. Though more in the Asterix quirky, double meaning, genre. This post is not about Goopy Bagha. You can check this excellent post by the Great Bong to get an idea of the phenomenon that was Goopy Bagha if you want to know more. I first heard about Tapen Chattopadhay's death from a college friend on Facebook. Soon status updates from others of my vintage began to pop up. Culminating with the above blog post which was linked by many including me. I guess the mid thirties is a strange period. This is when the icons you have grown up with begin to leave you. Bagha, or Robi Ghosh, was long gone. Goop...

If you are in your mid thirties then you would possibly be at a stage where you see your family elders growing old. Parents. Grandparents. Ailments. Debilitating at the worst. Scary at the least. Heart wrenching in most cases. You would probably feel it more because this is the time when many of us move out of the more selfish and self obsessed twenties to the domesticated thirties. There is nothing as painful as to see those who have brought you up, protected you, helped you stand, picked you up, nurtured you, beginning to tremble themselves. Nothing as deadly as to listen to the feeling of doubt in their voices. To detect the hidden fear and anxiety when they talk. To imagine their unsteady steps. To hear about their obstacle ridden lives. Health ailments are so frustrating. You can't do anything against nature. There are things that even money can't fix. And we are not talking of common colds, the odd bloated feeling or a little pimple here and there. Failing vision, weakeni...