Bloomers: On the 200th year of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio’s birth, one can’t help notice a memorial dedicated to the Young Bengal leader outside the Park Street cemetery. Commissioned by the Calcutta Municipal Corporation, the display board is riddled with spelling errors (memorium, unput downable) and atrocious English (blooming India...). The fiery teacher-poet must be turning in his grave. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

If there was a prescription on how to end terrorism, perhaps the British government would have one. Notwithstanding the 7/7 London bombings of 2005, the UK has successfully brought an end to violent freedom war waged by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). And who better than the head of politics at Queen’s University, Belfast, Richard English, who is also the author of the award-winning Irish Freedom: The History of Nationalism in Ireland, to talk about it?

But as English, in the city recently, addressed a gathering at Jadavpur University with his talk titled ‘How Terrorism Ends: The Case of the IRA’, the case of the British government and the IRA was perhaps lost on a part of the audience, seated as it was in a corner of a Third World country riddled with terrorist violence every second day with the death toll running into hundreds.

English said: “IRA lost its popularity soon after the 1987-88 violence that killed 27 civilians. The incident backfired immediately and IRA leaders realised the violence campaign wasn’t yielding much.” When will our terrorist outfits lose popularity? They have killed many more civilians in one strike.

English assured: “There was no one universal template for peace and it varied from one conflict to another.”

We hope we shall overcome some day — and find our way to a peaceful life.

Brain-dead

If the film festival doesn’t create a stir, then at least its website should. There was no reason for the 14th Calcutta Film Festival not to create a stir though, with its 276 films (give or take a few, since some prints invariably fail to reach or are damaged or are lost unaccountably) from 62 countries in 15 categories.

But since it is now fully a sarkari do, patronised and attended by friends and family of ministers and bureaucrats, the film buff has lost interest; you could get tickets 15 minutes before a show at Rabindra Sadan.

Back to the website. It is a beautiful one, all orange and cream, proudly proclaiming that Nandan has “bestowed fruits to the Bengal intelligentsia for cerebral cultivation”.

The best way to ensure “cerebral cultivation” of such “fruits”, it seems, is through spreading confusion.

If Kim Ki-duk’s Breath was up for three screenings, the website listed it thrice, in succession, each time with director, country, runtime, year, category and synopsis, instead of just mentioning the three different venues, dates and times in a single entry.

But why well-known films by directors like Jacques Tati (who, the website informed, made a film called Mosiure Hulots Holiday), Eric Rohmer and Werner Herzog (spelt ‘Warner’ on the site) were not accompanied by a synopsis was beyond comprehension.

A bouquet of 11 films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder required some introduction. Only if you were intrigued by the name of Hans-Günther Pflaum as the director of I Only Want You to Love Me (which was listed immediately before I Don’t Just Want You to Love Me) and cared to check would you find that this was a film on Fassbinder made by Pflaum.

Last year’s fest had paid tribute to Abbas Kiarostami, whose Tickets was listed sometimes with Kiarostami as director, and sometimes with Ken Loach. It happens to be jointly directed by Kiarostami, Loach and Ermanno Olmi. That’s “cerebral cultivation” for you.

Vintage wheels

One of Choudhury’s vintage cars

If collectors and restorers of vintage cars in the city got together, it would be an amalgamation of wealth, power, knowledge and stunning beauty on wheels.

If these wheels were then brought together in a museum of sorts, we would have another landmark added to the tourist map of the city — a vintage car museum.

Collector and restorer Pratap Chowdhury talks of such a museum at his Unsani factory in Howrah, with his collection of vintage four-wheel drives and classic cars.

He plans to bring about his dream museum in four years. The piece de resistance would be his 1907 Stoewer that his grandfather Iswar Chandra Choudhury, the zamindar of Malighati, Midnapore, bought from Germany.

Chowdhury had a strange attachment since childhood to the car that was rusting away in his garage. “I would hide in the car and play,” he recalls.

Later, he restored the car and it has since won a number of trophies at The Statesman Vintage Car Rally, including the best restoration prize in 1999.

Apart from the Stoewer, Choudhury proudly displays his vintage four wheel drives — a 1957 Willey Station Wagon, a 1970 Kaizer Jeep, a 1942 Ford Jeep, a 1971 Mitsubishi Jeep Station Wagon. Among his classic vintage collection are a 1961 Austin Cambridge, a 1957 Chevrolet BelAir, a 1951 Chevrolet Super Deluxe, a 1956 Sunbeam Talbot and a 1970 200D Mercedes. He also has a collection of 500 miniature cars.

(Contributed by Anasuya Basu and Sreyashi Dastidar)