The stamp of Bengali film director Srijit Mukherjee’s bibliomania pervades his filmography – and one doesn’t have to be Byomkesh to figure out he’s a classic book-geek. A conversation on books – and memories.
Your second film Baishe Srabon (22 Srabon, 2011) was a literary thriller, the title of which references a date every Bengali knows: the day Rabindranath Tagore passed away. Your biggest grosser to date Mishawr Rahashya (Mystery in Egypt, 2013) was a tribute to not only a great writer – Sunil Gangopadhyay – but also to one of the most beloved characters we grew up reading about: Kakababu. The Kakababu novels were not for just children, of course. I remember, my father would steal my Anandamelas regularly to read Kakababu’s latest adventures. Jaatishwar (The Reincarnate, 2014), a retelling of the life and work of the popular 19th century Bengali poet of Portuguese origin, Antony Firinghee (Hensman Anthony), was about poetry, and the languages of love and exile that poetry both evokes and elides. Your latest film Rajkahini (Tale of Kings, 2015) is named after a book by Abanindranath Tagore that every Bengali knows of. The film that you are shooting at the moment is a double-adaptation of Shakespeare: Julius Caesar and Anthony and Cleopatra. You are such a book-geek. So, tell me, what are your most vivid book memories from your childhood?
It has to be the graphic violence and sensuality of Thakurmar Jhuli (originally compiled by Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumdar in 1907 and a staple in most Bengali households with kids); the humour of Asterix; and the flights of fantasy in Ukrainian Fairy Tales.
Oh, I remember those Ukrainian folk and fairy tales too! In fact, I loved the Soviet-era books that would find their way to Calcutta – some of my happiest hours as a child were spent with those books.
Raduga Publishers.
Of course. Beautifully produced books.
I think it was one of the best things about growing up in a communist Calcutta – those books. I remember how outside Durga Puja pandals there would be these kiosks selling books about Marx and Lenin and Stalin, lives, Bengali translations of their books. Some of these stalls sold the Raduga books too. I particularly loved the Ukranian tales. Hans Christian Anderson I always found very heart wrenching. And then, of course, Feluda (Satyajit Ray’s detective Pradosh C Mitter), Professor Shonku (a Bengali scientist who starred in Ray’s inimitable sci-fi), and Tenida (the quintessential “parar dada” of Calcutta neighbourhoods, created by Narayan Gangopadhyay) with their share of unforgettable memories.
Is there any one book which you turn to again and again when you are depressed?
The Poroshuram Omnibus. Rajshekhar Basu, according to me, was an untrammelled genius. And I don't use that word loosely. If I remember correctly, the Foreword to this book was written by Tagore.
Good choice of words. He really was an untrammelled genius. And he’s not been translated as widely as he should have been. I worry though that a lot of the humour might be lost, especially in an English translation. Even so. His dictionary of Bengali – the Chalantika – and the accompanying grammar were quite something. I remember my grandmother referred to it all the time.
And that was the first Bengali dictionary I think, the Chalantika. But did you know, since he grew up in Darbhanga, he learnt to speak Hindi rather than Bengali as his first language?
I didn’t know that. But tell us about three books that have had a deep impression on your artistic sensibility. These can be any three books, from any stage in your career.
This is impossible to answer. The least I can give you right away is a list of ten. The Hungry Tide (Amitav Ghosh), Shesher Kobita (Rabindranath Tagore, translated, among others, by Radha Chakravarty as Farewell Song), A Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Marquez), The Moor's Last Sigh (Salman Rushdie), The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Agatha Christie), Shei Shomoy (Sunil Gangopadhyay, translated by Aruna Chakravorty as Those Times), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera), Basic Econometrics (Damodar N. Gujarati and Dawn C. Porter), The Twelve Tasks of Asterix (René Goscinny, Albert Uderzo), Mahabharata …
We’re done with ten already. Stop!
Legends of Greece and Rome and The Collected Short Stories of Jeffrey Archer. This list will change totally if you ask me this question one hour later.
You have managed the impossible in your cinema, marrying art and commercial success, getting both Lakshmi and Saraswati to meet, as it were. Do you think there has been an influence of the world of Bengali literature on your specific path? Because in the world of Bengali literature, the common distinctions between the literary and the popular are often transcended and the story is judged on its authenticity to its own coordinates – not necessarily shaped by any outside market forces.
Absolutely! My films are but an extension of my pluralistic, non-Talibanesque, tolerant aesthetic fashioning and moulding since childhood. And literature played a big role there. Especially Bengali literature, which always emphasised the lack of class hierarchy in any literary creation and that “populist” could also be great in content.
Tell us which your three most favourite books on cinema are.
Our Films Their Films (Satyajit Ray), An Actor Prepares (Konstantin Stanislavski), The Screenwriter's Problem Solver (Sid Field).
One literary epic that you wish to make into a film?
The Twentieth Wife (Indu Sundaresan). Or, wait, maybe the Ibis Trilogy?
One book you were really disappointed to finish. A book that you wanted should go on and on forever – and left you bereft at the fact of its ending.
Has to be an omnibus – Poroshuram, Saradindu Banerjee, O Henry, Archer or Roald Dahl maybe?
And the final question. Have you ever stolen a book?
(Laughs) I haven’t. But I sure as hell wanted to – many many times, when I was a kid. My parents were quite strict. So they wouldn’t buy me lots of books at once, or buy me books every other day. So every time I did go to a bookstore, I would be sorely tempted. But in the end, I trod the strait and narrow, and never did steal.
I am slightly disappointed with this answer. Surely you have borrowed books with no intention of returning them? There is a possibly apocryphal story about Mark Twain. Once a visitor entered his study, which was filled with towering piles of books every which way, and wondered aloud why Mr Twain did not get a few bookshelves. “Because one can’t borrow bookshelves,” the writer is reported to have retorted.
Intent or not, I have of course borrowed lots of books from people and they have stayed with me. But the problem with being so absent-minded is that I am often at the receiving end of this borrowing-stealing continuum. Books, I never forget, but often I can’t remember who on earth I lent them to!
Devapriya Roy is the author of The Vague Woman’s Handbook, The Weight Loss Club, and along with Saurav Jha, of The Heat and Dust Project: the Broke Couple’s Guide to Bharat, the story of an eccentric journey across India on a very very tight budget.
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Your second film Baishe Srabon (22 Srabon, 2011) was a literary thriller, the title of which references a date every Bengali knows: the day Rabindranath Tagore passed away. Your biggest grosser to date Mishawr Rahashya (Mystery in Egypt, 2013) was a tribute to not only a great writer – Sunil Gangopadhyay – but also to one of the most beloved characters we grew up reading about: Kakababu. The Kakababu novels were not for just children, of course. I remember, my father would steal my Anandamelas regularly to read Kakababu’s latest adventures. Jaatishwar (The Reincarnate, 2014), a retelling of the life and work of the popular 19th century Bengali poet of Portuguese origin, Antony Firinghee (Hensman Anthony), was about poetry, and the languages of love and exile that poetry both evokes and elides. Your latest film Rajkahini (Tale of Kings, 2015) is named after a book by Abanindranath Tagore that every Bengali knows of. The film that you are shooting at the moment is a double-adaptation of Shakespeare: Julius Caesar and Anthony and Cleopatra. You are such a book-geek. So, tell me, what are your most vivid book memories from your childhood?
It has to be the graphic violence and sensuality of Thakurmar Jhuli (originally compiled by Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumdar in 1907 and a staple in most Bengali households with kids); the humour of Asterix; and the flights of fantasy in Ukrainian Fairy Tales.
Oh, I remember those Ukrainian folk and fairy tales too! In fact, I loved the Soviet-era books that would find their way to Calcutta – some of my happiest hours as a child were spent with those books.
Raduga Publishers.
Of course. Beautifully produced books.
I think it was one of the best things about growing up in a communist Calcutta – those books. I remember how outside Durga Puja pandals there would be these kiosks selling books about Marx and Lenin and Stalin, lives, Bengali translations of their books. Some of these stalls sold the Raduga books too. I particularly loved the Ukranian tales. Hans Christian Anderson I always found very heart wrenching. And then, of course, Feluda (Satyajit Ray’s detective Pradosh C Mitter), Professor Shonku (a Bengali scientist who starred in Ray’s inimitable sci-fi), and Tenida (the quintessential “parar dada” of Calcutta neighbourhoods, created by Narayan Gangopadhyay) with their share of unforgettable memories.
Is there any one book which you turn to again and again when you are depressed?
The Poroshuram Omnibus. Rajshekhar Basu, according to me, was an untrammelled genius. And I don't use that word loosely. If I remember correctly, the Foreword to this book was written by Tagore.
Good choice of words. He really was an untrammelled genius. And he’s not been translated as widely as he should have been. I worry though that a lot of the humour might be lost, especially in an English translation. Even so. His dictionary of Bengali – the Chalantika – and the accompanying grammar were quite something. I remember my grandmother referred to it all the time.
And that was the first Bengali dictionary I think, the Chalantika. But did you know, since he grew up in Darbhanga, he learnt to speak Hindi rather than Bengali as his first language?
I didn’t know that. But tell us about three books that have had a deep impression on your artistic sensibility. These can be any three books, from any stage in your career.
This is impossible to answer. The least I can give you right away is a list of ten. The Hungry Tide (Amitav Ghosh), Shesher Kobita (Rabindranath Tagore, translated, among others, by Radha Chakravarty as Farewell Song), A Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Marquez), The Moor's Last Sigh (Salman Rushdie), The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Agatha Christie), Shei Shomoy (Sunil Gangopadhyay, translated by Aruna Chakravorty as Those Times), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Milan Kundera), Basic Econometrics (Damodar N. Gujarati and Dawn C. Porter), The Twelve Tasks of Asterix (René Goscinny, Albert Uderzo), Mahabharata …
We’re done with ten already. Stop!
Legends of Greece and Rome and The Collected Short Stories of Jeffrey Archer. This list will change totally if you ask me this question one hour later.
You have managed the impossible in your cinema, marrying art and commercial success, getting both Lakshmi and Saraswati to meet, as it were. Do you think there has been an influence of the world of Bengali literature on your specific path? Because in the world of Bengali literature, the common distinctions between the literary and the popular are often transcended and the story is judged on its authenticity to its own coordinates – not necessarily shaped by any outside market forces.
Absolutely! My films are but an extension of my pluralistic, non-Talibanesque, tolerant aesthetic fashioning and moulding since childhood. And literature played a big role there. Especially Bengali literature, which always emphasised the lack of class hierarchy in any literary creation and that “populist” could also be great in content.
Tell us which your three most favourite books on cinema are.
Our Films Their Films (Satyajit Ray), An Actor Prepares (Konstantin Stanislavski), The Screenwriter's Problem Solver (Sid Field).
One literary epic that you wish to make into a film?
The Twentieth Wife (Indu Sundaresan). Or, wait, maybe the Ibis Trilogy?
One book you were really disappointed to finish. A book that you wanted should go on and on forever – and left you bereft at the fact of its ending.
Has to be an omnibus – Poroshuram, Saradindu Banerjee, O Henry, Archer or Roald Dahl maybe?
And the final question. Have you ever stolen a book?
(Laughs) I haven’t. But I sure as hell wanted to – many many times, when I was a kid. My parents were quite strict. So they wouldn’t buy me lots of books at once, or buy me books every other day. So every time I did go to a bookstore, I would be sorely tempted. But in the end, I trod the strait and narrow, and never did steal.
I am slightly disappointed with this answer. Surely you have borrowed books with no intention of returning them? There is a possibly apocryphal story about Mark Twain. Once a visitor entered his study, which was filled with towering piles of books every which way, and wondered aloud why Mr Twain did not get a few bookshelves. “Because one can’t borrow bookshelves,” the writer is reported to have retorted.
Intent or not, I have of course borrowed lots of books from people and they have stayed with me. But the problem with being so absent-minded is that I am often at the receiving end of this borrowing-stealing continuum. Books, I never forget, but often I can’t remember who on earth I lent them to!
Devapriya Roy is the author of The Vague Woman’s Handbook, The Weight Loss Club, and along with Saurav Jha, of The Heat and Dust Project: the Broke Couple’s Guide to Bharat, the story of an eccentric journey across India on a very very tight budget.
