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INDIA New book: ¡ESTO ES CALCUTA!.
This is Calcutta! December of 2002 I travelled to India with Andrés, an excellent artist who was in the 70’s and 80’s sending monthly from West Bengal his chronicles in the shape of vignettes to the magazine El Víbora and they were regularly published. We went in search of his Indian wife Nilufar who years ago leaved Barcelona and never returned back. She was born near Calcutta and she belongs to the Moslem community of West Bengal. We found her and her story has become a book. I travelled again to Calcutta, I rented a small apartment with a terrace in the top of an old building in the neighbourhood of Rabindra Sarobar and I passed the monsoons there during the months of July and August of 2003. I spent my time talking with Nilufar and her neighbours. I visited her relatives and enjoyed buying in the New Market. I went to movies, visited our artist friends in Shantiniketan and had long conversations with Ruby-di, the developer and protector of a centennial foundation. February of 2004, I returned to Calcutta: It was spring in West Bengal. In a week we passed from cold weather to a warm and pleasant one. “Calcutta is hooking me”, I realized suddenly. The Marwaris, the Parsees, the big tea owners with their gardens in Darjeeling and their auctions in Calcutta, the mixture of strange people living around Sudder Street, the tourism of charity, the world of bidi manufacturers, the paddies, the forests of bamboos, the series of black novel by the filmmaker Styajit Ray and its detective Feluda. All this and a lot more are appearing in the book. The story of Nilufar is mixing little by little with the story of Calcutta and with my life in the city, and it reveals step by step hidden mysteries, taboos, greatness and miseries of an extraordinary world. This is Calcutta! The jury of the prize Grandes Viajeros 2005 has recommended its publication.
Drawings by Ernesto Carratalá
INDICALIBROS, online bookshop specialised in India y Orient.
**** Film maker Satyajit Ray interview **** He filmado en India un documental que se titula "VIDA-BIDI" y cuenta la vida diaria de una familia de Goberdanga, en la frontera con Bangla Desh, que se dedica a la producción de BIDIS, los puritos típicos de la India. El hijo es escultor, la nuera ceramista procede del Gujarat y es vegetariana, en la casa siempre cocinan pescado como buenos bengalíes, Falguni, la nuera se debe preparar su comida y su pan, roti, pues en la casa se cocina arroz todos los días. La librería de la familia contiene El Capital de Karl Marx, las obras completas de Lenin y 14 tomos de Stalin aparte de otras sorpresas. Dura 20 minutos. **** Course on India Universitat de les Illes Balears, campus Menorca: L'Índia al llindar del segle XXI
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