Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Pining for Pujo
Durga Puja has begun, I am told. Where is it? Want to grow young again, enjoy the pujo, and the pandals, in new clothes. Show off the new buys, brag about the new shoes... Life was simple. Or was it :)
Saturday, September 11, 2010
first Eid in Dhaka. As McD's says: Yum loving it
Saw another face of Dhaka today. Sort of dusky amid throbbing life -- everyone's out in droves, as are the lights. Out.
Who would ever have thought Star Kebab Restaurant on Dhanmondi Road # 1 would be closed on a Saturday evening? The place that could well advertise itself as the eatery that never sleeps! (And one whose rolls left Subject here with a ugh tummy, and a tale to tell).
And those restaurants near Rifles Square? Switched off for Eid, buddy, all of them.
You go, grab your grub at a relative's place; that was the motif of the city today.
Needs sort of getting used to, especially after weeks of dhingchak during Ramzan. Sobriety, after all is, part of human nature. Loved it. Need to now sit back and reflect.
Who would ever have thought Star Kebab Restaurant on Dhanmondi Road # 1 would be closed on a Saturday evening? The place that could well advertise itself as the eatery that never sleeps! (And one whose rolls left Subject here with a ugh tummy, and a tale to tell).
And those restaurants near Rifles Square? Switched off for Eid, buddy, all of them.
You go, grab your grub at a relative's place; that was the motif of the city today.
Needs sort of getting used to, especially after weeks of dhingchak during Ramzan. Sobriety, after all is, part of human nature. Loved it. Need to now sit back and reflect.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
On Bangabandhu: My first piece after relocating to Dhaka
All of 31, it was barely days after he was promoted as a senior photographer with the daily ‘Dainik Bangla’. Life could not have been smoother for Babu Ansari.
It was August 15, 1975, and monsoon was in the air in Dhaka. Ansari had just kicked his motorcycle to head for the day’s first assignment -- Dhaka University, where Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was to be present.
It was that split second before a motorcycle guns to a start that Ansari got the shell-shocking news: the Father of the Nation had been assassinated. He did not know what to do. His wife rushed out, and when told about the killings at the house on Dhamondi road number 32, asked in naivete: “So Begum Mujib is widowed now?”
Ansari told her about the news of the assassination and the coup.
Like others in the still-nascent nation-state of Bangladesh, the news took time to sink in.
Ansari, meanwhile, gunned his bike towards his office.
Cut ahead to 2010, he told The Independent on the eve of the National Mourning Day: “I heard in office that our chief photographer, Golam Mowlah, had gone to Bangabandhu’s house after the assassination and got the photos. He came in, soon, and narrated the scene: bullet-ridden body of Bangabandhu; his wife and son Russell lay close to each other; Sheikh Mujib’s brother was shot halfway into the bathroom; Sheikh Jamal’s bullet-ridden body lay close to a car -- he must have been about to head out somewhere…”
Now 66, Ansari’s voice cracks just that slightly over the phone, recalling the horror of August of 1975. But the seasoned photo-journalist in him soon gets the focus back. “Mowlah had taken all these photographs; there were two or three frames at least of each. From different angles.”
Soon, he said, two Armymen came to the daily’s office. “They were armed; their eyes were bloodshot -- they did not look human from any angle,” he recalled. “They wanted the photographs. Mowlah said he was too devastated and exhausted and asked me to go up to our third-floor dark room to develop the prints.”
Neither Mowlah nor Ansari could fathom what the Armymen were after.
“I was a little surprised when they followed me into the darkroom, but I did not say anything. They jumped up when I closed the door. But I had to explain patiently that we could not let light enter the room.
“As I readied the chemicals for the film, I switched off the light, and they flinched again. They wanted the light switched back on -- this time I realised the feeling off the barrel of a gun on my back.
His pulse racing ahead, Ansari told them as patiently as he could that I could not work with the lights on. “It took time to develop films those days -- and they wanted to switch on the light even before I was done. After I switched on the red light in the darkroom, they counted the films. I showed them the exposed copies and then gave them some prints.”
Intuition told him not everything was going all right. “I tried to hide a few films; I didn’t want to hand everything over to them. But they counted the exposed copies and the prints and asked me about the mismatch. I felt the gun barrel again.
“There was little I could do but hand them everything. They counted everything several times and took away everything with them -- negatives, positives, wastage… everything.”
Thirty-five years on, it still rankles Ansari that he could not save the films for posterity. “I regret till this day that I wasn’t able to preserve even one photograph. I have not talked about these issues, about the films of Bangabandhu’s assassination, because I do not want to sound supercilious about what I did -- I did what any photographer, any journalist, any nationalist, any humanist would have done. And I want people to know how the fate of those films.”
Asked about Golam Mowlah’s reaction when told that his films were taken away, he said “He was too shocked, disheartened and exhausted to react.”
He died three years later.
What survives is a colleague’s version of truth; one that no bullet can expose hollow.
(PUBLISHED IN 'THE INDEPENDENT', DHAKA: AUGUST 15, 2010
It was August 15, 1975, and monsoon was in the air in Dhaka. Ansari had just kicked his motorcycle to head for the day’s first assignment -- Dhaka University, where Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was to be present.
It was that split second before a motorcycle guns to a start that Ansari got the shell-shocking news: the Father of the Nation had been assassinated. He did not know what to do. His wife rushed out, and when told about the killings at the house on Dhamondi road number 32, asked in naivete: “So Begum Mujib is widowed now?”
Ansari told her about the news of the assassination and the coup.
Like others in the still-nascent nation-state of Bangladesh, the news took time to sink in.
Ansari, meanwhile, gunned his bike towards his office.
Cut ahead to 2010, he told The Independent on the eve of the National Mourning Day: “I heard in office that our chief photographer, Golam Mowlah, had gone to Bangabandhu’s house after the assassination and got the photos. He came in, soon, and narrated the scene: bullet-ridden body of Bangabandhu; his wife and son Russell lay close to each other; Sheikh Mujib’s brother was shot halfway into the bathroom; Sheikh Jamal’s bullet-ridden body lay close to a car -- he must have been about to head out somewhere…”
Now 66, Ansari’s voice cracks just that slightly over the phone, recalling the horror of August of 1975. But the seasoned photo-journalist in him soon gets the focus back. “Mowlah had taken all these photographs; there were two or three frames at least of each. From different angles.”
Soon, he said, two Armymen came to the daily’s office. “They were armed; their eyes were bloodshot -- they did not look human from any angle,” he recalled. “They wanted the photographs. Mowlah said he was too devastated and exhausted and asked me to go up to our third-floor dark room to develop the prints.”
Neither Mowlah nor Ansari could fathom what the Armymen were after.
“I was a little surprised when they followed me into the darkroom, but I did not say anything. They jumped up when I closed the door. But I had to explain patiently that we could not let light enter the room.
“As I readied the chemicals for the film, I switched off the light, and they flinched again. They wanted the light switched back on -- this time I realised the feeling off the barrel of a gun on my back.
His pulse racing ahead, Ansari told them as patiently as he could that I could not work with the lights on. “It took time to develop films those days -- and they wanted to switch on the light even before I was done. After I switched on the red light in the darkroom, they counted the films. I showed them the exposed copies and then gave them some prints.”
Intuition told him not everything was going all right. “I tried to hide a few films; I didn’t want to hand everything over to them. But they counted the exposed copies and the prints and asked me about the mismatch. I felt the gun barrel again.
“There was little I could do but hand them everything. They counted everything several times and took away everything with them -- negatives, positives, wastage… everything.”
Thirty-five years on, it still rankles Ansari that he could not save the films for posterity. “I regret till this day that I wasn’t able to preserve even one photograph. I have not talked about these issues, about the films of Bangabandhu’s assassination, because I do not want to sound supercilious about what I did -- I did what any photographer, any journalist, any nationalist, any humanist would have done. And I want people to know how the fate of those films.”
Asked about Golam Mowlah’s reaction when told that his films were taken away, he said “He was too shocked, disheartened and exhausted to react.”
He died three years later.
What survives is a colleague’s version of truth; one that no bullet can expose hollow.
(PUBLISHED IN 'THE INDEPENDENT', DHAKA: AUGUST 15, 2010
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Write back after being left out
Okay, long time no write.
So, on the second day of the new year as per my calendar (and yours), I am back.
Yup, same day as you or I see (or don’t see -- depends on the state of fogginess outside. No, not because of still-lingering hangover, but the ‘thick blanket of fog enveloping the skyline’, as weather reporters love to put it.)
Yes, the very same day fog has been playing truant with visibility and trains (again, colliding with fellow train at Kanpur; Gorakhdham Express hit a “stationary” Prayagraj Express).
Yes, I am a day late, but here’s my wishlist for 2010. You keep your rear side on the chair and your hands off the ESCAPE key, and read on:
1. I shall not lie and say I am not lying.
2. I shall not tell a reporter that he’s a lousy writer, and a lousier reporter.
3. I shall not tell a deskie that he should quit journalism and try a call centre or airline calldesk job.
4. I shall try and cut down on the number of packs (cigarettes, I mean, so Shahid Kapur, Hrithik Roshan and all the filmi types can get their salary cheques).
5. I shall genuinely, genuinely, and honest-to-my-heart genuinely, try and reduce my dates with Bacchus.
6. I shall love all human beings and not tell them that they shouldn’t have tried to outlive the Neanderthal Age.
7. I shall even try and love all the dogs of this world (their population seemingly split between Vaishali, Ghaziabad, where I live; and Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, where I work).
8. I shall not tap-dance my way to the DELETE button on the keyboard the moment I see a mail from the HR guys (admission: I might just slow-waltz my way to it, whatever the difference is).
9. I shall try and do an honest day’s work every day (but, maybe, for the Sundays, when wife dear expects more out of human specimens in a day than is humanly possible in a week).
10. I shall try and keep this blog a little less spaced-out than six months, when I last wrote on it, as I just saw while logging in.
That’s it. Goodbye and good day. Now hit the ESCAPE key
So, on the second day of the new year as per my calendar (and yours), I am back.
Yup, same day as you or I see (or don’t see -- depends on the state of fogginess outside. No, not because of still-lingering hangover, but the ‘thick blanket of fog enveloping the skyline’, as weather reporters love to put it.)
Yes, the very same day fog has been playing truant with visibility and trains (again, colliding with fellow train at Kanpur; Gorakhdham Express hit a “stationary” Prayagraj Express).
Yes, I am a day late, but here’s my wishlist for 2010. You keep your rear side on the chair and your hands off the ESCAPE key, and read on:
1. I shall not lie and say I am not lying.
2. I shall not tell a reporter that he’s a lousy writer, and a lousier reporter.
3. I shall not tell a deskie that he should quit journalism and try a call centre or airline calldesk job.
4. I shall try and cut down on the number of packs (cigarettes, I mean, so Shahid Kapur, Hrithik Roshan and all the filmi types can get their salary cheques).
5. I shall genuinely, genuinely, and honest-to-my-heart genuinely, try and reduce my dates with Bacchus.
6. I shall love all human beings and not tell them that they shouldn’t have tried to outlive the Neanderthal Age.
7. I shall even try and love all the dogs of this world (their population seemingly split between Vaishali, Ghaziabad, where I live; and Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, where I work).
8. I shall not tap-dance my way to the DELETE button on the keyboard the moment I see a mail from the HR guys (admission: I might just slow-waltz my way to it, whatever the difference is).
9. I shall try and do an honest day’s work every day (but, maybe, for the Sundays, when wife dear expects more out of human specimens in a day than is humanly possible in a week).
10. I shall try and keep this blog a little less spaced-out than six months, when I last wrote on it, as I just saw while logging in.
That’s it. Goodbye and good day. Now hit the ESCAPE key
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