Going all out for big-ticket private investments is the new mantra with government mandarins in Bengal. Any good development is always welcome, but if we pause to think why this suddenness and dig a little more, we’ll be startled by unwelcome facts. A glimpse of what ails the state is reflected in a news report […]
Friends 91.9 FM
In old days, when there was no TV and government didn’t allow private radio broadcasts, media companies’ life was laidback and easy. For them mostly it’d be publishing newspapers and newsmagazines. Today life has changed beyond what anyone would have thought barely 5 years back. Big publishing houses have their fingers in nearly all the […]
Kolkata Book Fair, 2007
Belying Publishers’ & Booksellers’ Guild’s (Guild for short) firm belief and contrary to expectations of many (including me), the Kolkata Book Fair this year is a resounding success at the new venue at the sprawling peripheral area of Salt Lake Stadium complex at Kadapara on EM Bypass. The area of the fair is spread wide, […]
Kolkata trams
One of the most enduring images of Kolkata is the python like tramcars. Talking of trams in Kolkata, the visions that pass like a kaleidoscope are their trundling with a droning crushing noise often at a speed less than a cyclist’s, the utterly unkempt and dangerous tracks they run on, and of course the lengthy […]
Sex fair
Sex fair in Kolkata! Well, why not, would be the echoes of 65,000-strong Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC), the apex body of sex workers in Bengal. The fair, called the All India Conference of Entertainment Workers (AICEW), billed as the biggest and first such meet of entertainment workers in the city, is slated to commence […]
Stopping traffic
Guess what stopped traffic yesterday afternoon on busy Rashbehari Avenue for close to 90 minutes! Not ‘Valentine’ celebrations (notwithstanding love-oozing young couples in hordes out on streets), not also the enthusiasm of street-people watching India’s batting prowess at Goa on roadside TVs, but the 3 km long procession it was to celebrate Swami Pranabanandaji’s birth […]
Bengali in British schools
When the sahibs came to colonize India and much of South Asia and elsewhere, there was onus on learning English, the then numero uno language. Indeed the British made a well-demarcated distinction between those who felt comfortable in English and those who didn’t. The natives who could confabulate in English (some even better than them) […]
The ABCs of Bengalis
Fun here, pun there. This more or less sums up the ‘V-Day’ gift below I received this morning. These are what ABCs suppose to stand for in Bengali lexicon for each English alphabet. Know no Bengali? Oh, you miss an interesting tribe (not the least ’cause I’m one)! Never mind, take a peek below. Also […]
Defiance
The fanfare was missing when the book fair at the Salt Lake Stadium was inaugurated on Feb 9. The CM decided to give it a miss, and instead spoke of ‘pain’ he suffered when the court decided not to permit Kolkata Book Fair at the Maidan. In absence of CM, the onus fell on transport […]
A visitor’s account of Kolkata
Calcutta? No thanks. This is the title of yesterday’s post in his blog, BigTripBlog (see the post), by globetrotter Kevin Allgood. He and his companion, Valerie Marshall from US evidently had a different image in mind about Kolkata, but on setting feet here, they did not like the city at all. In ‘our’ humble opinion, […]
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