The Eken: Ruddhashwas Rajasthan

Ekenbabu is back in the big screen, and this time in the majestic Rajasthan! Rides on camel, visits to palaces, desert tours are there as are tasting the local cuisines, a necessity, according to Ekenbabu, to have a complete feel of a new place. With Bapibabu and Pramathababu as the usual tour mates, the holiday is all set for a joyride. But alas, where there is a detective, there ought to be at least a crime and the audience will be rejoiced, riding the merry wheel of adventure, wrapped in mystery.

The ever fussy Ekenbabu is no exception and Rajasthan, a hunting ground for Feluda, now seeks the chubby detective to look for stolen artefacts, missing persons and solve murder!

With a pace that will never feel unnatural, the movie is a thrilling ride of suspense and fun. Blending humour in just the right amount, the central theme is very much focussed. A museum curator with a queer interest in replica, an alleged professor of archaeology who drops in uninvited and a chemistry professor with an interest in lost antiques, the list of suspects grows equally diverse. Thus it remains to be seen how Ekenbabu handles the confusion and solves the puzzles and fights against a vicious villain, rumoured to gulp his opponents, without leaving a trace of the body anywhere.

Joydip Mukherjee directs the thriller and trims it perfectly for the old and young to enjoy together. The audience packed halls easily indicate the growing popularity of Ekenbabu, much of whose credit must be given to Anirban Chakrabarti in keeping the character consistently lively. Playing the satellites and supporting the irritatingly clever sleuth, Suhotro Mukhopadhyay as Bapibabu and Somak Ghosh as Pramathababu enhances the chemistry between them and Ekenbabu in styles, which are fascinatingly unique for each yet contrastingly comic, completing the package of smart entertainment. Another notable cast is Sudip Mukherjee as the local police chief and a training mate of Ekenbabu in the start of their career, whose appearance and dialect were so astonishingly perfect throughout that I held him as a Rajasthani actor for the initial few introductory sequences, at least.

Echoing a creepily crooked concept from Elementary, the film is a fantastic entertainer but will fall short of critical applause due to the coarse commercial inserts that felt way out of the context and appeared childishly scripted, given the flurry of tributes reserved for Ray and his subtleties in Sonar Kella, Joy Baba Felunath. Thus, the movie will be appreciated for the uncompromised suspense that it gifts but will be appreciated less for the lack of finesse it serves.

Natya Gaaner Parampara

The Poila Baisakh, this year, couldn't have been better spent than what we enjoyed at Academy during the noon. Ambarish Bhattacharya and Sohini Sengupta presented one of the unique demonstrations of songs on stage titled, Natya Gaaner Parampara, a tribute to the composers and their musical creations for the Bengali theatres over the years. The programme was simply marvellous.

Mesmerising the audience with numbers, primarily designed for various plays, the performance celebrated the musical diversity that enriched the Bengali theatres through the ages. Melody, traditionally played as conventional Rabindrasangeet, was rendered by

Ambarish with his brilliantly supporting musical ensemble in a way, designed reportedly, by the great laureate himself, for drama! Sohini gave her voice to a Swatilekha Sengupta composition, yet to be included in a play and perhaps displayed the latest upto which Bengali music for the stage has evolved. Spanning, literally, over centuries, from the early nineteenth to the twenty-first, the depth of the musical contribution in Bengali theatres seemed never to be better explored! Songs were selected from plays of Shishir Bhaduri, Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay and presented to give us a taste of the yonder years of which we only might have heard! The Marjina Abdullah duet by Bhattacharya and Sengupta

from the play, Alibaba, displayed the perfection of comic timings in harmony. Rarest of the rare numbers, a song with music composed by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay belonged to the category of serious lyrics, while a parody composed by Jyotirindranath Tagore reflected the sobriety in satire, the golden art of forgotten old! The children in the audience also had something for them too, as besides the other hilarious pieces, a charmingly addictive cuddly rhythm, from Astronauter Thikana, displaying a novel and diverse manifestation of vocal skill, not only refreshed the younger batch, but this seemingly effortless singing, being far from a childish attempt, promised moments of innocent mirth and smiles on all the faces that listened.

Thus, the programme truly displayed the spectrum of theatrical ballads, composed for all the human sentiments and spanning over more than a century, a tradition of tunes, distinctly Bengali and one, which is evolving continuously in all the varied musical shades.

Harmonising majestically with their instrumental adroitness, Rajeeb Chatterjee on octapad, Dipankar Chattopadhyay on keyboard, Abhijit Basu on tabla and conducted by Subir Sanyal on harmonium, the accompaniment was both superb and absolute. The lighting arrangement by Sadhan Parui and the decor by Ayan Ghosh transformed the stage to the gorgeous gramophone period while the sound arrangement of Santu Das and Soumitra Das (Das & Co) preserved the acoustic elegance with modern appendages. Supervised by Arghya Dey Sarkar, this Nandikar production will remain memorable to music lovers for days to come if not years!

The magnetism of music was apparent in the way the audience synched gradually and actually played the main cast in the culminating Dhana Dhanye Pushpe Bhora when the real artists suggested the leads while the majority of the audience sang the entire song, standing, in a unique display of passion and musical harmony, a gesture so theatrical but so earnest - tradition is indeed so alluring!

Caveat: A soothing gesture of offering ORS to each and every audience in the waiting area of Academy by staffs of Nandikar was not only welcome in the scorching heat but won the heart even before a single note had started quenching the musical thirst.

pictures: Amrita De

পয়লার বার্তা

শুভ হোক পয়লা,

থেকো নাকো একলা -

নব এই বর্ষে

থাকো সবে হর্ষে।

যদি এই গরমে,

পারো খেতে ফর্মে,

তবে চপ কাটলেট,

খেয়ে নাও ফুল প্লেট।

যদি সেটা নাই পারো,

বলছি, সবুর করো,

সন্দেশ মিষ্টি,

করো এনে ফিস্টি।

তবে ভাই বলছি

মন থেকে চাইছি,

আনো যদি গ্লাস গ্লাস,

সরবত ফার্স্টক্লাস,

ভরে থাক কানাতে,

বরফের কুচিতে।

মন হবে ঠাণ্ডা,

দিলাম ফ্রি ফাণ্ডা।

তবু দিলে ঝাপটা,

বোশেখের তাপটা,

আছে আরো অপশন,

করা যাক মেনশন।

লস্যি ও কুলফি,

আহা আহা, কাফি কাফি!

ঠিক করে ভেবে নিন,

বছরের ফার্স্ট দিন!

তারপর হোল ইয়ার,

শুভ হোক, নমস্কার!