My first encounter with Mrinal Sen’s work was through his film, Kharij. At that time I knew nothing about films, I didn’t even know who Mrinal Sen. I had read about carbon monoxide only in textbooks. So, I was really touched when I watched the film.
Yet, if you are looking at the film solely for Shyam Benegal’s magic touch, you could be quite disappointed. It seems less of a Benegal film and more of a state sponsored political agenda. Not only is history narrated rather selectively, but entire communities have been wiped off the surface of the storyline.
Excerpts of an exclusive conversation with the veteran performer Mamata Shankar, as TheSpace.Ink caught up with her backstage after an electrifying performance.
It is like walking into an era of extreme suffering faced by fellow countrymen and more importantly, freedom fighters. Only ‘suffering’ wasn’t what they called it. They took great pride in serving jail terms, carried it like a feather on their caps and boasted of it while comparing terms with other inmates.
This was not something that was peculiar to just one party contesting the polls. Several candidates or better still ghost candidates, talked along the same lines about their spouses, who in reality were the ones actually nominated by the party.
I love interacting with Bengalis in general, though I do miss being present physically at the literary fests in Kolkata. Writing is a lonely process and it is always good for a writer to go out and meet his readers, talk to them, take a walk along Victoria Memorial and Botanical Gardens.
The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (Intach) has also been working diligently on paper conservation. Some of the techniques used at most laboratories of Intach for paper conservation are ultrasonic humidifier, nebulizer, specialized sinks for wet chemical treatment, light tables for mending, lux meter to keep light exposure in check, thermal cameras, multi spectrum imaging kits, etc.
Chirodeep Chaudhuri finally decided to document the village way of life in the backdrop of a centuries old Durga Puja. His account of memories is as riveting as the photographs themselves.
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