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| Sketch of the tortoise by Banaphool |
In Sthabar, the protagonist feeds on ants’ eggs and kills a shankhachud. But Haate Bajaare was a social novel and Bhuban Shome a sweet comedy. His autobiographical story was Agnishwar, made into a film like Haate Bajaare and Bhuban Shome. Banaphool alias Balaichand Mukhopadhyay was a writer of many kinds of stories, some of which barely crossed a page but told a compelling tale.
He was an artist too. He started to wield the paintbrush at the age of 50. Following Tagore, who had inspired him in more ways than one, Banaphool painted and sketched in watercolour and oil landscapes and portraits that often have a child-like simplicity and a touch of humour about them.
On September 10, nearly 40 years after the writer’s death, a coffee table book, A Writer’s Palette, Paintings and Drawings by Banaphool, was released at the ICCR. The book is a tribute to the author by his youngest son Chirantan Mukherjee, who is the publisher. In his note, he says that to his family Banaphool “appeared as short-tempered, slightly detached, (a) gourmet, amateur cook, but not a writer. Later we came to know he used to write during (the) dead of night …” Banaphool started to paint in the Sixties after his children grew up.
A Writer’s Palette was conceived by the artist, Suvaprasanna, and designed by Prabir Das. Many of the paintings and sketches have verses or captions to go with them. The sketch of a happy-looking tortoise is captioned “Kachhap mad kheyeche” (an inebriated tortoise). A portrait of a gentleman with a pipe reads: “Came to see India, not bad”.
Writer Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay had interviewed Banaphool at his Lake Town residence for Doordarshan. He had read Banaphool from school. “I used to idolise him,” said Mukhopadhyay, who remembered how Banaphool answered every question with humour. He had asked for Shirshendu’s writing and written to him critiquing his work.
But Writer’s Palette, a well-produced book priced at Rs 1,900, unfortunately suffers from a number of typos.
Etiquette police
She came on time and followed her schedule by the clock. As the co-author of Broom and Groom, which aims at improving our civic sense, ex-cop and social activist Kiran Bedi leads by example. The first woman IPS officer was in the city recently to launch the book at an event organised by FICCI Ladies Organisation, Calcutta chapter.
Co-authored with motivational speaker Pavan Choudary, Broom and Groom is about following an etiquette in public and improving our sense of hygiene and discipline. Bedi remembered the time when she fined the driver of a former Prime Minister’s car for flouting parking rules. Some of the don’ts mentioned in the book, such as: “Do not ogle at co-passengers in the elevator,” or “Do not use your cellphone when in company” or “do not quarrel among yourselves while there are guests,” were appreciated by the audience.
“There are no dry days in India. We are spraying the city liberally every day with our saliva,” laughed Choudary at the book launch.
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| Sunita Kumar at the book launch. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta |
Memories of Mother
The Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, a pictorial biography of Mother Teresa, was released at the Oxford Bookstore on earlier this month. The book has 124 photographs of Mother in various moods as she went about her daily life.
“None is a formal photograph. I wanted to show what Mother was like,” said Sunita Kumar, who collected the photographs and wrote the text.
The photographs have been procured from across the world. “The proceeds from the book sales will go to the Missionaries of Charity,” added Kumar, who was closely associated with Mother for 32 years.
“Once an American gentleman saw Mother attending to a destitute, dying man and said that he would never have the ability to tend to such people even for a million dollars. Mother replied that even she wouldn’t but she did it for Jesus,” recalled Kumar.
A photography exhibition on Mother, curated by photojournalist Sunil Dutta, was also held at the bookstore.
