miscellaneous

Calcutta Diary

Calcutta is perhaps the city with the highest concentration of clubs in the country.

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Calcutta Diary
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Clubbing the lexicon

It was late in the evening and the humidity was killing. Even as I year­ned to get inside the air-conditioned comfort of the lounge bar at DKS, I could not help stopping to watch, with a mixture of admiration and envy, four senior citizens slug it out on the tennis courts, clearing the ball over the net stroke after stroke with practised ease. DKS—or Dakkhin Kalikata Sansad—was established in 1928. I wasn’t aware of the sprawling space it occupies on Lansdowne Road (not many call it Sarat Bose Road) or the facilities it offers.

An even more pleasant surprise was the lounge bar, which overlooks the open-air swimming pool. The pool was crowded with people seeking relief from the heat. A young father was earnestly dunking an infant in a smaller pool meant for toddlers. The sight of water bodies is therapeutic and the tinted glass walls offered a magnificent overview. I failed to recognise popular actress and TV anchor Rachana Banerjee on the next table and was ticked off by my host. But then everybody present, I suspect, was distracted by the tall and leggy beauty, who had made an appearance at the club in the shortest of shorts. DKS is probably the least snooty of the clubs in the city. Calcutta is perhaps the city with the highest concentration of clubs in the country. Some of them promise such delights as “adagio pace” and “flavours of fine life savoured up as in a brandy snifter”. I had to go to the dictionary.

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Silk inside

“He is magnificently rich, dri­nks only grand cru claret, smokes only Davidoff cigars, accepts only Bolivian coffee, has his silk underwear made in Lahore, and insists on having his suits made there as well because the tailoring is so superior to Savile Row,” wrote Nicholas Coleridge of Aveek Sarkar in Paper Tigers, published a quarter century ago. He also paid Sarkar the compliment of being India’s “most sophisticated newspaper proprietor”. Since then, the Ananda Bazaar Patrika boss has acquired TV channels and expanded into film production and digital media. With him turning 70, a birthday bash is planned in Delhi. “There will of course be a party here, but the big do is in Delhi,” confided my informant. And added with a puzzled look: “I wonder why.”

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A regular at Wimbledon, dressed almost always in spotless white dhoti and kurta while not playing tennis or golf, Sarkar retains the energy and enthusiasm for news and gossip that many of his younger editors find difficult to keep up with. He twice turned down offers of a seat in the Rajya Sabha. I once overheard him turn down an invitation to join the governing body of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) and audaciously asked him why. He gave a bemused look and said, “Conflict of interest.” On another occasion, he startled his editors by saying he never had tea at home or in his office. “Nobody knows how to make tea,” he said, by way of explanation, adding that he always had it at the Royal Calcutta Golf Club, the second oldest golf club in the world. No restaurant in Paris was worth eating in, he once quipped at another editorial meeting. One wonders why he has not written a book yet. But even as I wish he would let us into all the scandals he is privy to, one can almost hear him speak: “I will never write a tell-all memoir, because only fools burn bridges.”

Mind-watching

Uncontrollable anger, suspicion and jealousy are far more common than we care to imagine. So are fear and feelings of inadequacy, inferiority and persecution. But hardly anyone thinks of these internal states as having connections to mental health, says Ishita Sanyal, founder of Turning Point, a voluntary group. A decade ago I had observed her work with schizophrenics in the city. On this visit to the city, I caught up with her at the Calcutta Club. Ishita, daughter of a retired IAS officer and married to a doctor, lamented the ignorance about mental health and the stigma attached to mental illness. The time has come, she says, to set up a museum of mental health. Ishita has trained some of them to create handicrafts which, she tells me, sell well in special exhibitions at all three branches of Shoppers Stop.

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Sharp scenes

I missed attending Bratya Basu’s Boma (Bomb), the most talked about Bengali play in the city. But having watched Rip Van Winkle, the playwright’s searing satire on the former Left Front government, I can imagine why Boma has created such a sensation. Bratya (which means outcast) is a former communist. He is now the state’s tourism minister. Clearly a misfit in politics, Bratya was recently divested of the education portfolio. He seems to have wisened up after that. Good for Bengali theatre.

Last Week...

I tasted baked mihidana tart at Banchharam at Rs 25 a piece. Worst of both worlds?

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Deputy editor Uttam Sengupta was formerly Resident editor of the Calcutta edition of The Times of India; E-mail your diarist: sengupta [AT] outlookindia [DOT] com

(The print version erronously describes Deputy editor Uttam Sengupta as the editor of the Calcutta edition of The Telegraph. The error has been corrected in the online version.)

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