When Shankar walked to the Chander Pahar!

Ask anybody around you, what does he/she would like to do given a vacation or has a break, one of the inevitable answers would be traveling other than sleeping. To see places, visit them after you have read so much about them and witnessing a dream come true, it is always special. And to watch your favourite hero doing a film which is so similar to the above mentioned lines, I definitely felt he lived a part of my dream.

Chander Pahar or Mountain of the Moon, a Bengali movie produced by Shree Venkatesh Films and directed by Kamaleshwar Mukherjee had Dev in the leading role as Shankar Roy Chowdhury. Based on the novel penned by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay in 1937. The novel chronicles the adventures of Shankar in the forests of Aftrica along with his Portugese partner, Diego Alvarez. 

Photo credit: Wikipedia.org

Yearning for adventure in life and liking for animals, Shankar wished to follow the footsteps of explorers like Marco Polo or Mungo Park. And as luck would have had it, Shankar lands himself a job as a clerk in Uganda Railway through references and let’s himself land in Africa without thinking too much. Africa or his employer did not give me too much official work to do except for wave the flag to let the train pass. But what it offered was more than what he would have expected or dreamt of. Fighting the lion after a fellow colleague gets brutally killed, deciding to explore Africa and especially, Mountain of the Moon along with Diego Alvarez, a middle-aged Portugese traveller and a diamond or gold prospector, every other adventure throughout his journey was a complete visual treat. 

Although I am not much of animal lover, watching the African jungle, its elements and the ultimate mythical monster, the Bunyip blew me off. Shankar's road trip with Alvarez to explore and locate Richtersveldt where Chander Pahar is, also was beautifully captured.

Regarding the casting of Dev as Shankar, I was personally excited. One, because, I liked Dev's earlier commercial flicks like Paglu series and the many others, and two, he looked apt for the role with the kind of physique that he has. Quoting his own lines, Dev said "Chander Pahar is going to be the biggest challenge in my life and I'm not afraid. Being afraid will mean no shooting for the project". It was certainly one of his most ambitious projects and also for Tollywood for it has taken the standard of Bengali films to a height that is at par with other film industries across the globe and this is a sincere and honest confession.

Chander Pahar is like Life of Pi. You need to watch on the big screen to enjoy it completely and I watched it at a theatre in Bangalore amidst a huge Bong crowd. It was a fun experience that was almost like watching the movie in Kolkata itself. Expecting more of such movies to hit the screens in this years and many more years to come. 

Reborn to live the past!

 An awesome year for Bengali movie industry and for movie buffs like me, 2013 witnessed some of the best works.  Following its predecessor’s footsteps, 2014 began with the blockbuster nationwide release of Jaatishwar. This was a movie I watched with my mother after a long time in a theatre in Kolkata. Although both of us keep watching movies now and then and discuss them over, it was after quite some time that we were each other’s movie partners.

Starring Prasenjit Chatterjee as Kushal Hajra, an associate librarian at Central Library in Chandannagore, Jisshu Sengupta as Rohit, pursuing colonial history studies in Portugal and chooses to a Portugese Indian poet as his dissertation subject, Swastika Mukherjee as Mahamaya, a RJ at Radio Mirchi who proudly voices her love for the language and need to reach out to people through songs that are long lost in people’s memories, Jaatishwar was quite an interesting watch for me.

Srijit Mukherjee’s fifth offering after blockbusters like Autograph and Mishar Rahashya, expectations were sky-high from the time the movie was announced. Curiosity peaked when the trailer got released and Kushal Hajra announced, “Ami Anthony Firingi” (I am Anthony Firingi). Now that we knew it is going to be a re-incarnation of Heynsman Anthony or Anthony Firingi in this life, it got added to the list of “have to watch” movies.

Photo credit: Twitter.com

A character lesser known, Anthony in 19th century Bengal had impressed people with his musical talent in Bengali as he learnt the language by reading Hindu scriptures and by understanding the meanings of folk music and lyrical compositions. He participated and won many of Kavigaan concerts. But what made him reborn as Kushal in this era was the question that tickled the mind throughout the movie and the director made a commendable job by revealing the answer right in the end. An interesting method of making your audience stay glued to the scene and not concentrate anywhere else, the idea worked brilliantly.

The next high point was its music composed by Kabir Suman. Some master compositions by the musical genius after a long time, the music got equally lauded alongside the brilliant acting from the actors.

The transition in Prasenjit Chatterjee’s characters of both Anthony and Kushal was unique. To get away from the trauma of living a past life and losing balance in his present life, Kushal narrates Anthony’s life in sequences. 

With movies like these, I do not think there could be any other way of entertaining myself most of the time. A treat for eyes, mind and ears, Jaatishwar gave a good and entertaining start to the year. 

Why we should be on a break at times?

Titled as Vacation vs Work: Why Indians prefer to work than take leaves, The Economic Times had released an interesting report. As the title suggests, it is all about our preferring to work more than taking a holiday or getting busy with work over the weekends rather than catching up on a movie or even just taking a stroll in the park with a friend or family member or even your pet. Not exaggerating any bit, I had the same outlook at the very onset of my career. The reason could be either because I was fresh out of college where studying during weekends was more normal that watching a movie or because, I was more enthusiastic about working and finishing assignments and be the good employee that my seniors would praise. Luckily, I am not the same anymore. I do work at home over the weekends at times, but haven’t made it a normal phenomenon of life.

Photo credit: www.forbes.com

I had recently been on a vacation back home after a year. It took a year for me to visit home for an obvious reason, work commitments and not being able to plan a proper and timely holiday for myself. Although going back home for a couple of weeks isn’t quite a vacation, however, it is nothing less. I tend to behave like a tourist and ask my mom to accompany for shopping and visit places. This is only for a couple of days and then, I am back to being normal! Staying put in a different city due to work doesn’t really leave anyone with time to enjoy vacations and weekend gateways are very rare.

The hypothesis that the study, 2013 Vacation Deprivation conducted by Expedia revealed looked and sounded true in many ways: a lot of Indians prefer to work, putting off or cancelling their holidays. According to the study report:

a.       63% Indians feel that they are deprived of vacations and holidays. India, in fact, has been ranked as the 10^th most vacation-starved country in 2013, a deep slide from its earlier of 4^th in 2012.

b.      38% Indians are known to work at least 41-50 hours per week, way more compared to other countries. And what has been worse is the fact that about 74% have cancelled or postponed their vacations due to work commitments.

c.       Another interesting fact is that about 37% of employees in our country prefer earning money in exchange of the unused holidays, a figure that is the highest in the world.

d.      46% of the countrymen have been found to save their vacations so that they can avail it at some future date. India, in this case, ranks third following Malaysia and Singapore.

e.       59% Indians have responded in affirmative when asked whether planning their vacations depend on their work or not. This figure is, again, the highest among the other surveyed countries.

Photo credit: www.joshdesha.com

The study has undoubtedly got some very interesting findings but those are not very encouraging to me. For all workaholics, this is their life story and they are the people who believe in planning vacations once they retire. For others, it’s either the passion to visit new places and take a refreshing break from the monotony of work life, or it’s about just about spending good time with family and friends and come back with a fresh outlook towards life and work. Vacations act as important healers for a stressed mind that helps you calm down mentally and relax your physical body.

Not exactly a resolution, but taking a break from work and keeping myself away from stress is part of my big list of promise to myself. While stress is inevitable and unavoidable, breaking up with it isn’t a bad and a stressful idea!