The young and perpetually smiling male nurse from Shillong pulls the curtains apart. “Wake up. You’re alive.  Another day is here!” I blink at the sunlight streaming through the wide window in Fortis hospital feeling groggy of anaesthesia, fighting the biting pain of laparoscopy below my chest.

A few days ago Len Cohen (Leonard Cohen) died. Now I’ve lost my gall bladder. It’s another crazy year gone from my life.

I cried like a child for Puran

2016 began with the loss of my best and most precious friend called Puran Gongba. On February 24, my son Neel (Dutt) woke me in the wee hours and made me sit down before telling me that his ‘Puran uncle’ had breathed his last at the Planters Club Nursing Home in Darjeeling. Numerous calls from Darj followed. I bought my plane ticket, packed a bag, drank one-and-a-half bottles of wine, babbled mindlessly with my associates who dropped by to comfort me, realised I couldn’t face Puran’s funeral, cancelled my flight to Bagdogra and cried like a child on the terrace.
Exactly six years ago Puran had landed in Calcutta with chest pain, planning for an 11-hour open-heart surgery. I cancelled my shoot of Ranjana Ami Aar Ashbona and got drunk outside the Rabindranath Tagore hospital. Puran was advised to remain in the city for regular checks for three months. A hotel was not at all feasible. Someone said that Rituparno Ghosh had an empty ground-floor flat in Jodhpur Park. Though I never really liked Rituparno much, I went over and begged for the keys and a reasonable rent. Ritu, being the way he was, initially thought Puran was my lover, then realised he was a brother and gave the apartment for free. Bang! Rituparno and I became great pals.
The owner of the iconic Joey’s Pub in Darjeeling, Puran Gongba will be missed by numerous musicians in Calcutta, Shillong and Sikkim as the Hank Marvin of Darjeeling. Those who care for the good, old-world charm of Darj will miss their lovable, radical, witty uncle. To me Darjeeling will never be the same without him. I seriously don’t feel the urge anymore to rush up each time it gets cloudy in Calcutta. I loved Puran because he made me believe that I am one of those “who deserve to wear the white hat”. “We don’t change the world mate,” he always said after we were both eight pegs down, “We are the white hats who make a difference silently. Just hang on to your hat mate.”

I bowed my head to Shaffer

I have hung on. I just took it off briefly and bowed my head when Peter Shaffer died in April. The creator of historic plays like The Royal Hunt Of The Sun, Five Finger Exercise, Amadeus, Equus, Black Comedy deserved at least a seminar of sorts in a city that claims to celebrate theatre lovers.

I was toying with the idea of Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan. But suddenly April made me re-read the great British playwright and I realised that I simply had to produce his Amadeus for the stage. I began writing Medha and staged a production in November.

The more we delved deep in the rehearsals, the more I got sucked into the passion and dark satire of Shaffer. As we celebrated Shaffer in Calcutta for the first time last month, I realised how desperately close we are to the truth of his Amadeus. How deeply this once cultural capital is engulfed in mediocrity. Peter Shaffer died at 90 leaving me struggling against mediocrity at 61. Medha turned out to be much more austere, stylised and passionate than my earlier productions and I have plans of continuing shows next year.

Acid, Bowie & a bathtub

This year the bell tolled for the 70s generation of rockers. Leon Russell — the giant keyboard player of Eric Clapton, Elton John — died. Kieth Emmerson and Greg Lake of Emmerson Lake and Palmer left us. Prince overdosed in Minnesota. David Bowie died of liver cancer at 69.

They were all part of my music and youth in convoluted ways. Bowie was the deepest. Though I never really dug his stuff, I remember taking acid tablets at 16 and lying in my friend’s bathtub at New Alipore with Bowie’s Space Oddity on the record player, waiting desperately for a high. Nothing happened. I just fell in love with the lyrics of Space Oddity. We later found out that the shady peddler on Sudder Street called Jax had sold us Codopyrin tablets stuck to a blotting paper. That was Bowie for me. But I must admit that I was fascinated by his performance in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation Of Christ as Pontius Pilate. He was also outstanding in Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence. I always believed Bowie and Mick Jagger could have been fantastic actors. They were both fab live performers anyway.

The best part of The Bongs Again

May found me shooting in London for the first time for my forthcoming The Bongs Again. London was different from my experiences in Houston or Berlin. The rules and procedures were more rigid. Yet the brilliant set of young professional actors was an absolute joy to work with. A Pakistani, an Italian, three Brits and a Turk, who usually live by bit parts in soaps and commercials, swayed me off my feet. My conviction that celebs cannot make up for actors was further strengthened.

Yes, 2016 has been a year which has seriously reaffirmed my disdain for the current acting scenario in Bengali cinema. I can only think of a handful who are actually worth the effort and money spent. Unless the industry sits up and literally stops confusing media hype with stardom and celebrities for actors, the future is pitch black.
The best part of The Bongs Again shoot was to finally get my one-time boss, Dhritiman Chaterji, to act in my film. He hopped on to a flight from Goa and performed with so much elan, and refused to be paid. This year again made me doff my hat to friendships.

Hurt of Hemanta...

My Hemanta flopped in August. Like Dutta Vs Dutta it hurt badly again. I had stopped drinking whisky since last year, so I guzzled almost two bottles of red wine and puked spirit for the second time. The first was at my marriage reception 40 years ago. I had put in almost all that I can boast of in this adventurous adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. But, apart from a handful who claimed Hemanta to be my best work, the audience neglected it in the first week and distribution booted it out of the theatres the following week. The reason beats me. Why did people rave about The Bong Connection or Ranjana Ami Aar Ashbona and dump Dutta Vs Dutta and Hemanta? Why did Ranjana win three National Awards and Hemanta not even get past the National Panorama?

Actually I have long given up questioning failures. My desperate days in Berlin in the 1980s living on milk, tap water, cheese, bread and trying to pursue theatre, had taught me one thing: to somehow hang on till the expiry date. You don’t forget the hurt. You use it creatively for your next climb. For me, the pain of my failures has led me to another script, another song or courage for an acting assignment.

...Jimmy hits the target

So, the expiry date came in August itself with Pratim D. Gupta’s Shaheb Bibi Golaam. Jimmy Luke, the hired gun I played, overwhelmed the audience. I’m very glad for Pratim that the film did rather well at the counter. It proves that he is here to reckon with as a fresh flame in Bong cinema. Much of the stuff produced by my younger colleagues have ceased to inspire me in the last three years. Pratim’s broke the routine. I sat up.

Bobby the Nobel man

Then came October. Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan! The cowboy outlaw, the circus gypsy, the hobo on a freight train… the rambling genius of rock’n’ roll. How does it feel?

When it comes to the Nobel Prize you tend to think of quiet scholars, selfless, suffering humanitarians working tirelessly without recognition, until the day the Nobel committee shines their light on them. You don’t think of a globetrotting rockstar.

But then this contradiction is what sums up the entire life and times of the 75-year-old troubadour called Bobby. You don’t ever read his lyrics without hearing the mesmeric, monotonous melody, the raspy voice, the plaintiff harmonica. Yet when you hear It’s Alright, Ma or Idiot Wind you know that it’s not just another song but prophetic truth of our violent, troubled, disjointed times.

The man who deliberately disowned his “acoustic folk” image with heady electric sound in the late 1960s, reportedly introduced The Beatles to weed and rambled out “Everybody must get stoned”… is the same man whose lines written five decades ago are still extremely valid: “You better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone”.

For me, Dylan is neither just rock’n’roll nor plain literature. Shakespeare or Bert Brecht may be taught or analysed as literature but not totally absorbed unless produced or performed as theatre. Similarly, Dylan’s magic lies in the fact that though you cannot take away his lyrics from his soundscape yet his writing gave us a completely new, alternative way of thinking despite the music: “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now…”

Many still refer to Dylan as the protest singer. But most of his so-called topical songs of the 1960s have outgrown their immediate political urgency and the very same material has remained explorations of timeless romance, grief, loss, individuality and existential despair.  Where his folk imagery was steeped in alienated sarcasm … “If my thought dreams could be seen/ They’d probably put my head in a guillotine/ But it’s alright, Ma...”.

Lost in Calcutta, found by Dylan

I was introduced to Dylan in 1974 at Calcutta Medical College which I used to frequent to get high in my late teens. There was this Fiesta turntable, a raspy voice belting A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall and myself, a zoned-out boy from the hills completely lost in this crazy, concrete Calcutta. The song apparently had something to do with the missile crises in Cuba. But for me it somehow seemed like my ugly, dark city opening up its arms. Yes, Dylan made me accept my dirty city as my home.

Last year, I saw and heard him live for the first time at Royal Albert Hall. He hardly sang from his old repertoire. But the latest ones from albums like Modern Times, Tempest, Fallen Angels seemed even more prophetic in our current violent, corrupt scenario. Scarlet Town once again seemed like my own mad city. He sang more Sinatra than his own catalogue but they seemed as sarcastic and sad as his own… I wept more than I clapped.

So, despite the fact that he didn’t attend the Nobel Prize Ceremony and sent Patti Smith to sing A Hard Rain’s... for him, this honour is not just a salute to Bobby’s genius but a recognition to the intellectual strength of a whole movement that has generally been looked upon as ‘sex, drugs, rock’n’roll’.

Byomkesh and beyond

Then Byomkesh O Chiriakhana worked in October. No big deal.

Byomkesh Bakshi has never let me down. But the icing here was that none subscribed to stupidity by comparing it to Satyajit Ray’s version and it was a huge wholesome hit this Puja. The fun part is that both me and my producer Kaustuv Ray felt that we should not get stuck to this yearly success routine and try out a new franchise. Yes, Bakshi has not only given us money and fame but the courage to seek new adventures. What this new brand will be is a secret you’ll have to wait for.

Solace in chaos with Cohen

Then two things happened. I was diagnosed with a stone in my gall bladder and had to stop smoking and drinking alcohol till the operation. And Leonard Cohen died in LA.

The man who gave us erotica, politics, Bible, Buddhism and existentialism all rolled into a grainy, deep blue voice that sang turbulent prayers was suddenly gone. It is extremely difficult to verbalise what Cohen actually meant to us who grew up in the 1970s. It wasn’t the angst or cynicism of Dylan to help fight the dark times but to find spiritual solace in between the battle. Many seek spiritual guidance from their idols. Cohen was actually someone who provided it unconditionally.

Boston Globe wrote about Cohen’s first novel Beautiful Losers in 1966; “James Joyce is not dead. He is living in Montreal under the name of Cohen.”

I first heard Cohen during college. I think it was Chelsea Hotel No. 2 and I did not understand it at all. But the rhythm of the syllables and the voice remained buried in my heart till much later when I was composing my album Shunte Ki Chao, which was a convoluted tribute to Sisters Of Mercy from my middle-class Calcutta. Finding solace in chaos. The song Duto manush was a direct take off from Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye. My constant inference of Jesus smiling sadly from calendars on damp walls came from Cohen’s biblical imageries. When I heard Famous Blue Raincoat again in the 1990s I was much more at home with the references. I came up with Sheetkaler chhiti which no one heard. Various Positions, Democracy, Joan of Arc all made so much sense and finally Blue Alert (produced by Cohen) in 2006 made me question my musical output and stop writing. Though they were heard repeatedly through two decades, my songs had no second layer. It was after almost 10 years, in 2014, that I could voice my inner anguish and not mere sentimental hurt and came up with Unoshaat with Amyt Datta. An album that owes its entire spirit to Mr Cohen whom I keep going back to for meaningfulness in this overwhelming mediocrity.

Shokolei jane in Hemanta was a direct adaptation of Everybody Knows. His last album is a rather clairvoyant prophecy of his demise. Perhaps great men can predict their future. But I, like many, will miss more metaphorical, spiritual reassurance like You Want It Darker in this chaotic change and will keep seeking solace in So Long Marianne.

An inner urge to do something

In November Firdausul Hasan, the producer of Shaheb Bibi Golaam, literally drags me into Kamaleswar Mukherjee’s rather wacky and out-of- the-box film called Mukhomukhi. I am cast as this larger-than-life alter ego of Jisshu Sengupta who can fly, light a fire with his fingers, move furniture with psychic powers, cook armadillo meat, play the pan flute and paint a portrait of your mentality. So, I have a ball on the sets of Kamaleswar who turns out to be one of the finest gentlemen I’ve met in recent times. I end up feeling grateful to Hasan for gifting me such a gentle, accommodating director.

As we all struggle desperately to accommodate our time queueing outside ATMs and regulating our funds, the year rolls towards an end. My wife Chanda, having originated from Taunggyi in Burma, had planted a dream last year in the form of a restaurant called Chanda’s Khaukswey at Golpark for Myanmar cuisine. Though we were once the same nation, I have always found it strange why Calcutta never had enough of Burmese food places and those that do serve are far from authentic. I feel proud to see so many of her regular customers cram the 15-seater despite the cash crunch, to cheer her and slurp up the best steamy, juicy, spicy Khaukswey I’ve ever had. Having decided to cut down on cigarettes post my operation, I plan to go on a Sandakphu trek. I feel an inner urge to do something which I have not for a long while. Like say a musical instead of Byomkesh. Travel like a backpacker and end up writing a book. Create a new franchise for the screen. Maybe produce a new album for Bangladesh… despite stepping on the wrong side of 60 I feel I still have much to do or offer.

Mentor and me

As it gets colder, Mrinal Sen’s house at Bhowanipore turns out to be the warmest place for the heart. As the year ends, it feels so great to frequent my mentor and friend who complains about my hair loss and smiles like a child. The 90-plus master and his 60-plus student both end up chatting like schoolboys. We talk of our rambling journeys on celluloid and Czechoslovakian cinema. I remind him of Karel Kachyna and we are Jumping Over Puddles Again.