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My City: An Open Art Gallery

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The festival of Durga Puja is not just a celebration of the homecoming of the goddess but also a cultural bonhomie, celebrating art of all sorts. Read on for more.

 Durga Puja or as we bengalis fondly call it pujo, is probably the greatest celebration of art Calcutta sees on an annual basis. There might be special art drives in the Lake area where people end up drawing twelve feet long alponas (the bengali version of rangoli but done with ground rice paste traditionally) and bizarrely absurd, politically provocative graffitis on walls along the Jadavpur campus and other upcoming up-market cafe areas. There is also the latest mandatory tourist spot – the Old Currency Building, now turned into a three floor specially curated celebration of the Bengal School of Art – from colonial times to independent India. But none of these sporadic clusters exemplify the community euphoria in viewing and consuming art the way pujo does.

It is a cultural whirlpool. Turn a corner and you will see an entire alley, otherwise dingily darkened – now turned bright and dreamy with a canopy of yellow fairy lights hanging overhead. A few more turns and you will see a variation of the same display of luminosity in terms of a street where the lights are now multi-coloured and are strung together vertically, on either side of the road. As you make your way through, it is not just a simple lane you are walking through any more. It is like walking into the dreamscape of your unposted letters of love, now strung together in the form of a million glistening light orbs. But the magicality of the moment I described – nowhere near the actual experience because pujo as a festival can only be felt – is exemplified further in areas with the bigger pandals and celebrations where the canopy is no longer just strings of light bound together. But an entire canopy put together in glorious designs and colours. You are no longer in a street you have traversed all year round. It is a tunnel of a fantasy land from another world, which self activates every year briefly and disappears – only to appear bigger and brighter the next year.

Who is the sculptor of this figure? Did this club change their usual guy? Is Sanantan Dinda doing Naktala this year or did Chetla Agrani buy him out? Why did they have to distort the face thus? Doesn’t she look too angry in this one?

 A cacophony of voices asking the same questions together. Having spent so many years in the city and vehemently holding my ground before parents who would have much preferred to go on a holiday – far removed from the nauseating sweat and crowd infestations of the festival – I like many others have become quite familiar with the varied sculptural styles we see our idols built in. Kumortuli or the Potter’s Colony is the stuff of absolute photo stories across the world.

But the potters or sculptors as I prefer calling them, who spend their many years under makeshift shacks in the midst of floodwater and mud, have their own distinctive styles and contributions to the evolution of the festival as a whole. The traditional yellow face of the goddess with long draw, darkly lined eyes is still to be seen in many places, but in the larger discourse of the creation of idols, it has give way to the more humanist thickly eyelash-ed faces of the Rudra Pal brothers – who now are at the receiving end of commissions from the biggest clubs in the city.

Thousands of people flock every year to see these idols, which although unchanged in their style have served to give vision to the popular imagination of what the goddess looks like. Their figures are adorned in the traditional golden foil called the daaker shaaj or the ornament that came by post (the foil used to be imported from Germany at one point) or the pristine white of the sholaar shaaj or the ornamentation made from thermocol. Art historians will never consider this but the potters of Calcutta are the true holders of the legacy of Ravi Varma, the first Indian to give face to our gods. But even beyond these traditional portrayals there are daring artists like Bhashkar Sur and Sanatan Dinda, all exemplary modern artists in their own right who come up with visualisations of the goddess figure in accordance with the theme of the club they are hired by that year.

Which brings me to the next big thing about pujo in my city – the theme. Much before people even start their shopping for the festival, posters and advertisements proudly announcing the themes for each individual club go around the city. People sitting huddled in autos are found discussing-

Did you hear Chetla Agrani is going to be doing something based on Kalidasa? But I really liked what Bosepukur did last year- though I am not sure if I completely understood it – did you? I do not know about the rest but I am most definitely going to go to Sreebhumi first – haven’t you heard they are doing Burj Khalifa this year?

 I have been to galleries and seen art installations and then I have attended Durga Pujo in my city. If cities could be works of art then the thousand and more pujos spread across the length and breadth of the city are the many brush strokes and colour splashes on its expanding canvas. I have seen, within two months or sometimes three, artists and workers make an entire temple structure out of steel utensils. Award winning clubs which have conjured simply out of nowhere temple structures out of – wait for it- knit grass blades. But this is not just a celebration of empty art. This art is deeply political too. Many high concept pujos find people crowding the exit area poring over long standees explaining the concept of the theme and the decoration people just saw. For there are clubs standing in solidarity with the farmer’s protest – with massive installations of feet joined together and the blisters resembling melting faces of the heroes we will never know. Some turn an entire lane into a brothel with extra figures of women waiting for customers and finally leading upto the room of the brothel madame who sits there protecting them all – envisioned in the form of the goddess. But sometimes in the hands of a different artist, she takes the shape of a migrant woman – carrying her four children sitting on the back of a truck, her third eye glaring at you in the face.

During Durga Pujo, my city is an open art gallery with its people turning from one lane to another partaking in and bringing to life the glorious art on display.

 Anwesh Banerjee
[email protected]

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Arts & Culture

Social Media Vilification of the Nerd Archetype

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 A nerd’s deeply personal take on social media vilification of the nerd archetype across pop-culture . Read on for more. 

Humour is tricky business. Tracing back to the rasa theories of sentiments and emotions, every humour has an origin and the origin of our laughter too can be traced to different causalities. It can either be sourced as a something that makes us laugh through the display of deviance in an attempt to domesticate something that is wrong with society, or in what I wish to term as humour of a low order, it can emerge from a need to make a standing example of a non-conforming entity, who happens to stick out due to a deviance inherent to their character.

Such humouring of identities of “other” often unconsciously result in vilification of archetypes in popular culture which fuels social media content which on the grounds of generating humour to run their dubious algorithms end up putting on sacrificing social responsibility at the altar of parodying the non-conformist – in the case of this article the figure of the nerd. The nerd figure has long been relegated to a realm of marginality in popular imagination, one which has resulted in social media content creators to repeatedly generate humour at their cost. The normalisation of the same has become so exceedingly widespread that the archetype of the nerd figure now borders on the level of almost being a villain despised by one and all.

Take for example the widely popular film from recent years of Indian cinema – 3 Idiots. The supposedly antagonist in the film is the typical nerd figure as seen through the character of Chatur Ramalingam is repeatedly made to be the butt end of jokes due for no fault of his. He simply has a vision of academic achievement which is not in concurrence with that of the protagonist and in order to prove the point of the protagonist the nerd figure is not only made an example of the in the most vile ways possible but also made to take part in one of the most insensitive dramatisations of a rape joke in recent cinema history. Even in a film like Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani or something as cult as Kal Ho Na Ho the heroines are nerds who have their hair tied in buns and wear glasses and spend their days engrossed in books and academia. In order for them to be desirable by the hero, they have to shed their persona of the “typical nerd” and have hair flowing, while sequin dresses grace their lithe bodies. There is no room here for appreciation of a life spent behind the pursuit of knowledge – be it out of individual will or out of societal pressure, a deeply pertinent argument which is often relegated to non-existence.

Social media pages dedicated to generating humour based out of educational spaces and the lives of people involved in academia thrive on humour which emerges at the expense of nerd archetypes. Meme carousels take great pride in criticising students who spend hours devoted to studying and suffer from severe bouts of depression and performance anxiety by reducing their issues to the simplistic phrase – they are a topper and they always lie about the preparation. The truth of the after more often than not is different. The idea of the nerd as someone who deliberately gaslights their own readiness in order to feed off the mediocrity of others is a problem which completely exterminates the immense expectations – familial, societal and professional – the students have to cater to. To be someone who chooses to win and internalises winning comes at the cost of knowing that one is consciously ascribing an identity of marginality to oneself – an ascribing which should be free of any sort of shame or stigma.

Such humour further perpetuates a cycle whereby these students not only end up doubting their own self worth but are never allowed to take pride in what they believe to be a philosophy of life that must be adhered to. Humour for the sake of entertainment is of course something that should be and must be encouraged. But humour that is indulged in without realising the exact impact it has on marginal identities in society is something that should be shunned especially in our largely current virtual world where a single meme transcends time and space and more often than not does more harm than good when left unchecked.

Anwesh Banerjee

[email protected]

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Learning To Speak Truth To Power

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A deeply personal essay on the degree about to be gone past, and a final attempt at courting the essay form and being the Joan Didion of DU Beat one last time.

It has been three years. Let that sink in first.

Three years ago the world around us was struck by what will go down in history as a life-halting and soul-sucking pandemic. Freshly off my board examinations, like all students from my batch, I had dreams of making it big in this world. I too thought a liberal arts degree would equip me with words that would have the power to change the world around me and albeit propel me eventually towards a career in the liberal arts. However, the sudden imposition of the pandemic which immediately drove us within the four walls of our house seemed to indicate that I need to reconsider these choices.

At a time when my family was mourning for loved ones lost to the pandemic and finances seemed precariously perched, the obvious decision for me would have been to stick to a college in Kolkata, my hometown – and why not? There was an entire pool of prestigious institutions for me to choose from and one could always pick up the dream of moving out of your hometown for one’s postgraduate studies. To avoid giving my parents and family members weekly bouts of anxiety I even enrolled in a Kolkata college but everyone around me knew that my heart was not there. After a six month long wait that felt like an eternity when I got the merit list making it evident that I had indeed made it to one of the leading North Campus colleges in a degree I have wanted to pursue from the day I could think, I knew this was a decision I had to make. Back then, everyone around me seemed hesitant – is it really necessary? What was I trying to prove? But my guts said otherwise.

A year of online classes and two years of being in Delhi later, I am glad I stood my ground that night. Coming to the University of Delhi has not been the sweetest of experiences, but the bitterness that underlines this has now started lifting its head up in the form of a sweet melancholic nostalgia. With thirty days left for this degree to end, I look back on the years gone by and the moments of euphoria and heartbreak. I then look at the mirror (and trust me as a literature student freshly off Lacan that is difficult) and realise the person, or subject (yes I will crack Literature major jokes) is barely the lanky, long-haired boy who stepped into this institution so many moons back.

For one, this University puts you in place. And for good. Especially for a city-bred, English-educated man like me, buzz words like “Unity in Diversity” and “caste masquerading as class” became stark realities. Thrown into a liminal campus space where people of a host of disparate cultures not only lived together but often came into violent conflict with each other was a lesson in life. The spurious nature of identity politics left a stark impression upon me and while multiple friends and lovers became alien overnight, in the by-lanes of Gupta Chowk and Jawahar Nagar, I found my greatest lessons in kindness and empathy. You could be sharing a small plate of Malabar Biryani in Cafe Lucid all by yourself and the person sharing the table with you, suddenly strikes up a conversation and before you know it you have made a friend for the next set of semesters to come. You might be strolling down the ridge on a sultry evening and you will chance upon the sight of two lovers stealing moment, and you silently smile to yourself for this moment of rare affection that wasn’t yours to begin with you — but now is, because moments are meant to be borrowed and loaned, till you find yours.

During my tenure as an author for DU Beat, I have written on a wide range of subjects – ranging from student politics to cinema. But the one thing that I have continued advocating for and writing about relentlessly is issues pertaining to queerness and the queer experience. And on that note, in this final piece of mine, I wish to mention something. Loneliness is one of the biggest problems plaguing every student who lives on this campus on a daily basis. It is divorced from alone-ness and it is something that operates at a structural level. Its violence is less performative from the stone-pelting in protest marches and its cure amorphous. In fleeting moments it buries itself in the fists raised to the chant of azaadi and under the varying colours of the Pride flag. But it raises its uncanny head on metro rides where you see a stranger taking glitter off their jaws with tears in eyes and the person in tattered cargos as they scour your canteen for the millionth time with pamphlets people will stamp over in seconds.

The University of Delhi, and I never thought I would say this, is a family. Yes, because families are spaces with imbalance power dynamics. If there is anything I have learnt from these three arduous years it is this, there is nothing greater in this world than your truth and you alone and speak the same (Foucault says hello at this point) . If you choose to let this university teach you anything then let it be the urgent need and the requisite power required to speak this truth and claim your space. Be it a battle of queering the space, or gendering the discourse, or dismantling caste hierarchies. This is a place, and you belong, let no one tell you otherwise. For the ones who think the reality of the world begins when you step out of the bubble of your college, you are wrong. Aren’t you the real world in all earnest?

 

Anwesh Banerjee

[email protected]

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This Lonely Spring

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A non-resident Bengali relative of mine groaned to me on call, how he scarcely felt Saraswati Puja this year. Something seemed off, he complained. I don’t think anything was off, just that the sedentary yet meditative festival somehow got ferociously conflated into the pompous celebrations of Repubic Day this year, I chimed in with my know-it-all voice. But I was not entirely wrong in drawing this connection. Saraswati Puja or Vasant Panchami, has always been a massive cultural celebration in Bengal. Every year beyond this annual ritual of worshipping and invoking this (Brahminical) Hindu Goddess of Knowledge, Bengali students across ages are supposed to dress up in colours of Spring – yellow, ochre, orange, red, blue and the likes. It is a day dedicated to eating khichudi and begun bhaja, praying for academic wisdom and most importantly going on dates with your romantic interests.

The origins of the concept of vasant panchmi as the “Bengali Valentine’s Day” is something that is a futile exercise in the labyrinthine annals of Time. The cultural construct of this festival is now unquestioned and widely embraced and celebrated. This day, in the early morning cold breezes of January, the city wistfully turns into a liminal space of sanctioned transgressions. The best, and often most provocative, pieces of traditional finery are donned. The greys and greens of schools give way to loud pinks and bright reds of lipsticks which are hidden in purses – stolen the previous night from the mother’s dresser. Blisters from wearing forbidden heels are hardly any price for a day spent in the company of your lover, giggling your way through sidewalks and standing outside already-full-at-10-in-the-morning bars across Park Street and Quest Mall.

This year, after a brief annual hiatus, I had the fortune of being in Kolkata again for the occasion. But even as my mother rudely awakened me from my sleep to help her with preparations, an early morning disoriented me found myself almost unconsciously drawing himself to the television set first, switching on Doordarshan and sitting down brush in hand to see the live telecast from Raj- oops, Kartavya Path. The conflation of a day which, all my woke understandings of nationhood and patriotism notwithstanding, had been carefully constructed to invoke feelings of patriotic fervour in my heart somehow felt at an alien odd with the other natural emanating sense of desire and youthful fervour for this annual celebration of springtime extravagance. As post-colonial queer subjects in a world where ideas of the post-nation are at their highest, where does one erase the line between multiple registers of desire? Is militantly performed desire for the historically amenisa-inducing nation anyway similar to the exhaustive desires of love on display on this singular day? Are all desires essentially linked to performance and demonstration? If so then what about lonelinessand its performance? How do you navigate the contours of that?

 

As I sat in the backseat of my cab in the evening of the same day, on my way to airport to catch a flight back to Delhi in time for the 8:30 AM class the next day, I found myself unconsciously smiling at the familiar of sight of multiple young girls and boys in love – or atleast pretending to be in love. All my school days, before the pandemic took away from me the privilege (I use this word fully aware of its connotations) of attending college in person, I had been a blessed witness to the Saraswati Puja romances of my friends. The month-long plans, the carefully colour coordinated outfits, the lies told at home, the multiple tuition places to hop onto under the excuse of attending the “puja”, the innocent grazing of the fingers and the final stretch of weeping from the blisters on the ankle – I have seen it all. At twenty-one years of age, that day when I whirled past these young hearts in love at the very peak of springtime, I pondered a few moments over the politics of performing a love that is qeer. What would it mean for young girls or boys or gender non-conforming minorities to be out there, on this same day, hands clasped and in love? Would this liminal temporal space of the city embrace their transgression as willingly as it did of their heterosexual counterparts? Especially in the context of this year’s festival, in the occurrence of such a rare conflated oddity, what would one make of surveilling love in a Nation State that is increasingly intolerant towards delinquent expressions of desire?

As I sat on my aircraft, pondering about the many like me who must have spent lonely festivals of love for years on end, I found myself wishing if this Valentine’s Day our markets would perhaps for once sell not love but a soothener to the itchy aesthetics of structural loneliness.

 

Anwesh Banerjee

[email protected]

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Humour – But The Cost?

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On the occasion of Teacher’s Day here is looking at one of the most loved scenes of comedy, from one of the most beloved comedies of our times and asking if we realise the cost of the humour we so amply glorify.

It was genuinely all fun and games.

Every time people, peers, and elders, would sit down to discuss 3 Idiots, the film, invariably the Teacher’s Day speech would come up. Look at how Rancho so smartly explains his point to Raju. Did you see how Chatur was put in place? Serves him right. Love watching Virus being put in his place, it’s such fun!

Growing up around people who revered the now cult classic as a rip-roaring comedy on the farcical nature of our education system and parental expectations from children, aspects of the film ever hardly struck me as odd. Until recently while speaking to one of my high-school teachers I was pleasantly taken aback to hear,

I have no respect for a film that makes such comedy out of a public humiliation of teachers and that too by making them the butt end of rape jokes. It is obscene and crude.

Here was a man, a teacher at that, who disliked what is arguably one of the most impactful and successful films of recent years. Not because it spoke about herd mentality, and emphasised excellence over success, but because of the way it treated it’s teachers in the process of proving a point.

Of course not all teachers deserve to be worshipped on altars. Some are mean, insensitive and just bad at their job. But is it okay to make an entire nation laugh by making your professor the butt end of rape jokes? Think about it.

The scene in question serves a dual purpose in the narrative of the film. It is to explain to Raju the importance of excellence and enjoying your curriculum as opposed to rote learning the same. But at the same time it is yet another widely lauded vilification of the figure of the nerd, who is close to his professors, knows nothing but studying, is socially awkward and of course is the butt end of bullying and abuse. And in the context of the film, this very same stooge of the professor becomes the instrument by which the cool students get back at the professors they hate so much.

My argument is simple. In no way am I endorsing a cut-throat competitive world or a teaching persona who believes your life is of no worth unless you pursue engineering or medicine. My problem is simple and different. How can we, as a society come together to hate b laughing at them and making them the butt end of rape jokes? The perpetrators of the crime literally go on to celebrate the victory of the same in the next scene and by the end of the film are hailed as heroes. The nerd is the one who is made to appear in poor light.

Humour is tricky business. Comedy is purposely designed to critique societal norms and the establishment but if the core purpose of comedy is to relieve through laughter then isn’t it important to question where that humour or laughter is coming from? Really think about it. Sexual harassment and abuse in academia is a widespread problem across the world. Horror stories of students, male and female, being abused by professors and teachers galore. We all have that one friend who confided in us about that one evening, in one empty tuition class, when the teacher they revered for so long transgressed from all acceptable social norms.

Another, easily overlooked aspect of the scene in question is the use of language as a tool of oppression. The student in question, Chatur, grew up in Pondicherry and Uganda and speaks, quite unconvincingly, broken hindi. How is it alright to use this as an excuse to vilify him and the teachers he so deeply adores? As a student of a university as large as Delhi University, every day I see students from distant parts of the country, struggling to convey the most basic of questions. Why? They do not know Hindi and their English is not perfect. But they still try. And even as they try and helplessly request people to not speak in hindi, there are people in abundance who think it fun to reply to their questions in hindi just for the sake of a few laughs. It is 2021 and yet linguistic chauvinism is a tool of abuse in the student community.

In the post-MeToo scenario, films, especially cult classics like the one in question, need to be recognised for their casual humouring of abuse. As an outcast nerd myself, I do not know how long it will take for society to actually come around to stop vilifying us. But that is a different issue altogether. But what we can start off, as students, is to recognise these instances of trivialisation of deeply troubling issues such as abuse in educational spaces. Our teachers are not without their faults and by god we are part of a deeply fundamentally flawed education system. But really our teachers and by large our students deserve better representation than this.

Now that I think, is it really all fun and games?

Anwesh Banerjee

[email protected]

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