HOME ALONE: Soumitra Chatterjee

Love and loss in London and Calcutta

Director Pinaki Chaudhuri and producer Ganesh Bagaria are trying to get their new movie, Ballygunge Court — it tells of the loneliness of middle class Indian parents whose sons have settled abroad — selected for the London Film Festival. Having just seen a cut, I believe it will go down well with audiences, not only in Calcutta (where Ballygunge Court is due for release on August 24), but also in the UK.

“The London portion was shot in Victoria Station, Leicester Square, Oxford Street, Piccadilly Circus, near London Eye, Big Ben, near Parliament, and in the house of Mr Animesh Mukherjee where Sourav Ganguly stays during his London trips,” reveals Pinaki Babu, who had to make three trips to shoot the UK sequences.

The director, who was confident enough to promote his Rs 90 lakh film in Cannes in May, explains: “If you go to Salt Lake, you will find so many houses locked because the parents have left to see their sons in America. The children themselves are too busy to come.”

Nowadays, bright Indian boys head for the US but I am pleased when Pinaki Babu says: “I am traditional and sent the boy to the UK.” (in the old days, all Bengali boys stood first class first before proceeding to UK for higher studies).

Soumitra Chatterjee plays a father who is happiest when his son returns home after a period in London. Sabyasachi Chakraborty is very good, too. But the performance I like best is that of the beautiful Mamata Shankar, who plays a mother who dies while her son is in London, persuading him to come back home to Calcutta — and his father.

Migration is a part of middle class Indian life (even Pinaki Babu’s son, Raj, lives in the UK where he is an inspirational cricket coach at Worth, an English public school.)

But I must enter a qualification about the nature of parental love — especially the hold Bengali parents exercise over their children — and suggest that the flip side is emotional blackmail: “It’s all right for you and your wife (whom we have never quite liked) to enjoy yourself in LA/New York/London/ San Francisco while your poor mother and father are ill in Calcutta. No need to bother about us. My blood pressure is high and you know about your mother’s blood sugar.”

I intend having a word with my friend, Cary Rajinder Sawhney, who selects the Indian entries for the London Film Festival, to gently draw his attention to the finely nuanced Ballygunge Court.

AFTER THE FLOOD: England today, India tomorrow?

What’s hot

While parts of England are being savaged by some of the worst floods witnessed in the past 60 years, Lucky Dissanayake strikes a cheerful note: “This is the good bit.”

She adds: “This is global warming.”

What Lucky means is that compared with what we are currently witnessing — and big parts of England are now under water as river after river burst its banks — worse is to come. “What’s happening in England is because of what happened to the planet in the 1970s — there is a 30-year time lag.”

Lucky’s firm, Dakini Books, published Global Warning: The Last Chance for Change last year, written by Paul Brown, a journalist for 40 years and the former environment correspondent of The Guardian.

This is the same Lucky, a businesswoman of Sri Lankan origin, who had earlier brought out well-received books on Bollywood and cricket.

Journalists should certainly sign up for the three workshops on climate change Brown and Lucky are planning to hold in Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta from October 26-31.

“The workshops, organised by the British Council, are intended to create awareness of climate change among the media,” she says.

The outlook for India is not encouraging, she warns. “Mumbai is built on reclaimed land, Calcutta is on the tributary of a river, Delhi is not far from the desert — the predictions for the three big cities are not good.”

BRUSH WORK: Chandra Bhattacharjee (centre) with one of his paintings

Safe but not unsound

The artist Chandra Bhattacharjee is a brave man because he has been wandering around London in a beard — just joking (but not entirely).

Actually, the need for ever increasing security is the underlying theme of his paintings included in his excellent solo exhibition, “Visioning the World”, at The Gallery in Cork Street, London.

Chandra, who is 45 and lives and works in Calcutta, is paying his first visit to London, accompanied by his wife, Shoma, a former journalist, and their 10-year-old son, Aranya. They were full of happiness despite being able to take in only part of the massive (and free) National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.

“It would take a week to see the National Gallery,” enthused Shoma.

Chandra agreed: “Each painting is catalogued so well.”

Explaining what motivates him, Chandra said: “If you leave something on the grass and come back a few days later and lift it, the object will have left its shape on the grass.”

He fears a similar scar is imprinted onto the human soul when we surround ourselves with oppressive security. His distinctive paintings make the point: “Because of our intimacy with menace, we have developed another basic need besides food, oxygen and shelter — the craving for high security. We envelop our homes with rods made of reinforced iron. We triple-lock our doors. We have perforce learnt to make these foreign interventions gaspingly beautiful. But the more secure we feel, the more security we need.”

Both Britain and India are being forced by modern terrorism to abandon the basic truth that Chandra is, I think, trying to reflect in his art — the greatest security is to have no security at all.

Swaraj to Swarup

BBC Radio 4 is to mark 60 years of Indian independence with an adapted reading of Vikas Swarup’s amusing novel, Q and A. I spent many an evening at Vikas’s home when he was a diplomat in London but had no idea he was working on this masterpiece, which, as he later confided, has earned him enough money “for myself and my next three generations”.

Tittle tattle

THE LONG AND THE SHORT: Shilpa Shetty

The statement issued by Shilpa Shetty, angrily denying she was responsible for the break-up of Kavita Kundra’s marriage, was a bit long. Even The Times remarked: “Shilpa Shetty has issued a long (924 words), slightly rambling statement.”

Slightly tongue in cheek, the paper added: “Frankly, we are inclined to believe every word, even if it is all a bit like the e-mails we get from crazy bag ladies when they get into trouble with the law.”

Endearingly, the statement was dotted with words written in capital letters, was a little contradictory in places and contained distinctive use of English grammar. But the statement could be used in school examinations requiring candidates to produce a précis.

The 924 words could be reduced to: “I met Raj Kundra three months ago, long after his marriage had broken down. He is flogging my perfume. He is a nice chap and I quite like him in the way I like my puppy, Champagne. But I am NOT having an affair with him. Would you? He is certainly not rich enough to keep me in the style to which I have become accustomed.”