Playing Brass

Strolling down the Mahatma Gandhi Road from the College Street end towards Howrah Tram Depot in the vibrance of the Kolkata metropolis, one can spot a unique world of orchestral cacophony. Little shops from the colonial days of the British showcase a wide array of musical instruments and jazzy uniforms of starking colours with gilded…

The Red Bus Robbery

In their quest for colonisation, the British faced many tenacious races all over the so-called third world colonies; men and women of varied colour, creed, ethnicity, and metal. Stories of whose bravery and strength are etched in the annals of human history. Of all the people they dealt with, perhaps they found the Bengalis to…

The Man Who Brought The River

Somewhere on the mighty Himalayan range in the northern mountain lands of the Indian state of West Bengal flickered the hilly settlement of Kharapahar. Surrounded by deep jagged cliffs on the east, west and southern sides and a colossal mountain wall in the north, the tiny village was not easily accessible to the outside world….

The Tunnel

Deep in the bowels of the Eastern Ghats Mountain Range nestled the small and obscure village of Cheenna Gato, meaning a tiny hole in the native tribal dialect, a mix of the Odiya and Telugu languages. The year is 1960, and while the rest of the world celebrated many human advancements, the villagers of this…

Over The Rainbow Bridge

Hatchu opened his eyes and found himself in a mesmerising meadow of greens. The constant pain in his hind limbs was no more there. Neither was there the nagging agony in his kidneys. He slowly lifted his right leg just a little bit to mark his territory. He was scared, that like every time, there…

Bat Brigade

“Steady your breathing Naba. You are one with the forest. The jungle is an extension of you, an amplification of your senses. That which grows, creeps, crawls, and moves in it – you are aware of its presence. The night is your prowl and darkness your element,” whispered the ninety-year-old warrior Akoijam to his prodigy. War…

The Last Click

At 141 Surendranath Banerjee Road in the New Market area of Dharamtala, in the post-colonial city of Kolkata, stands a dilapidated building named Photographe. Established in 1840 by famous Calcutta lensman William Howard from Britain, the studio was taken over by the British photographer and traveller duo – Samuel Bourne and Charles Shepherd and renamed…

Duburee

Atop a small hill, on the banks of the mighty Damodar river in the steel city of Durgapur in the Bankura district of the state of West Bengal in the Indian subcontinent stood a rickety little mud cottage. In front of this tiny earthen adobe towered a metal and concrete two-way vehicular bridge atop a…

Kaali of Malana

In a small stone tribal hut devoid of any hint of natural light, under an abnormally pitch-black night sky, with the moon and the stars hidden behind a veil of a never seen before black cloud, a mother gave birth to an unnaturally dark-skinned curly-haired girlchild. At 8,600 feet above sea level, isolated from the…

Hucchuman And His Humber

Horogobindo Haldar was the funniest looking man anyone could ever come across. A strikingly protruding lower lip & jaw topped with a tiny button nose coupled with a pair of beady and squinty eyes under a large shiny dome with a few strands of flickering hair perfectly sat in place to create his hilarious look….