‘Delhi is two enemies forced into friendship’: Dibakar Banerjee interview

ANURAG MALLICK and PRIYA GANAPATHY in conversation with filmmaker Dibakar Banerjee, who talks about travel, films and his relationship with the cities he has shot in – Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai

From Titli to Khosla Ka Ghosla, Oye Lucky… why are so many of your films set in Delhi?Apart from the fact that I grew up in Delhi and know it well, what fascinates me is that it’s the city where the faultlines of India are exposed most. Where absolute feudalism conflicts with absolute consumerism. They are two completely incompatible ideas belonging to two different periods of the planet’s history coexisting cheek by jowl. The compromises they make with each other and the conflicts that erupt are fascinating to watch in Delhi. Patriarchy and consumerism, feudalism and consumerism… it’s most apparent in Delhi.

Having grown up in a DDA flat, you also wanted to represent the Delhi that you know, not what Mumbai feels about Delhi…
Yeah. Now it’s done enough. Because till a decade ago, when Khosla Ka Ghosla was released, everybody associated Delhi with India Gate or Qutub Minar or such historical staples. Outside of Garam Hawa and Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, nobody had gotten into the belly of Delhi. There might be some films that I’m missing, but nobody got into the actual bloodstream of Delhi. But since I was from Delhi, I was not even conscious of [the stereotypes]. And Kanu (Behl; director—Titli) is also from Delhi though he’s about eight years younger, but from roughly the same background. Extremely middle-class. Neither upper nor lower, but absolutely, firmly in the middle of the middle class…

Places seem to influence you and your films quite significantly. What kind of memories do you have of Delhi?
I have no nostalgia for Delhi and I have nothing I hold onto. I only go to Delhi because my parents are there. I am not a very nostalgic person. After Khosla Ka Ghosla, I made Oye Lucky… which was in Delhi. But LSD could have been in any small town in north India where Hindi was spoken and Bollywood was understood. Shanghai was solely set in Mumbai, Bombay Talkies was also set here. Visually, Shanghai came from just outside of the room where I’m sitting right now, in Parel, Mumbai.

You can see Shanghai right from where I am in my 20^th floor apartment. Bombay Talkies was not only Mumbai… it was shot in a chawl within walking distance from my office in Lalbaug. And Detective Byomkesh Bakshy was treated as a fictitious world of old Calcutta that I visualised in my head as I read those books. So I’ve moved on… I go back to Delhi if a story goes to Delhi. I really don’t have any nostalgia for it anymore.

Detective Byomkesh Bakshy draws a lot from the Kolkata that you read about in Satyajit Ray’s Feluda and Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay’s Byomkesh series in your adolescent years. How did you recreate old Calcutta?
We did everything we could. Trams rides, heritage walks, going through a lot of historical records and black and white photographs, meeting different kinds of people to researching street sounds–from sounds of the industry to hawker’s cries. A very handy manual was Radha Prasad Gupta’s Kolkatar Feriwalar Dak (O Raster Awaz) on the calls of bazaar sellers, which we used to create a soundscape for Calcutta in the ’40s.

What was it like going to Calcutta? Was the city different from how you imagined it to be?
It kept evolving. The thing is, you start from the flash of a memory which is childhood. Then you go from there and start building on the soundscapes. As you start building on the soundscapes, your memory becomes less constructive and your thinking of the scenes becomes more constructive. My memories of these kind of stories was: “It was a dark alley and the last ‘red turban’—a code word for thieves—had walked his tired round around the corner, and now there was just the gas lamp in the fog of Calcutta that was witness to this macabre event I am about to recount…” That’s how all these pulp stories started. Where the headlights of a car were compared to the eyes of a hungry predator in the jungle… You start from the memory and take off from there.

If cities were characters, what would Delhi be?
Delhi is not any one thing. It is two enemies forced into friendship.

And Mumbai?
Mumbai, I think, is an accident of commerce. If you read the history of the city, it languished as a commercial centre for 100 years. A death zone of malaria and pestilence… nothing happened. It’s only after Surat had its downfall that Bombay came up, mainly through trade. First, ship-building, then cotton. So it’s an accident of commerce. Of course, that doesn’t demean Mumbai in any way.

Across the world, these kind of societies are usually independent—Hong Kong, Mumbai, New York—they are entities to themselves and often they can be quite different from the rest of the nationalistic identity that they belong to. They haven’t come up because of the so-called nation state they belong to, but have come up because of some other reasons, which are totally different. And usually they are extremely cosmopolitan and mixed in terms of their population. So a number of conflicting cultures exist together for commerce.

That would also hold true for Kolkata, especially in the 1940s when there were American GIs stationed there, Chinese natives, a war going on…
It was, it was. It was a trade centre but what had happened was that Calcutta had a slightly different history. It was the first cultural centre that the British colonials founded. And as a result the influence on the development of the city was quite cultural. It was informed by the late 18^th century British belief system – a hodge-podge of puritanism, egalitarianism, rational ideals, enlightenment, everything kind of rolled together into one strange kind of a character. And you can see it in the Bengali bhadralok.

It’s almost dying, the quintessential Bengali bhadralok would be in his late 80s today, the average middle-class bhadralok – anybody from Amartya Sen to my father—would belong to that. Amartya Sen is an intellectual because he’s an academic but the fact is that it is a continuation of a tradition from Jeremy Bentham, David Hair, Derozio, Thackeray, 19^th century novelists to Tagore, the upheaval of the ’30s and ’40s and there it stops…

When did you start travelling? What has changed since then?
I started backpacking in the early ’90s. From the Jaisalmer and Goa that I have seen, we have a world of difference today. The slightly repulsive part of the Indian travel scene has come about in the last 5-6 years, where we’re seeing the bad Indian traveler who’ll come from the cities to a beach and not take off his trousers and sit cross-legged on the waves in his trunks. Or in a baniyan under a waterfall. It’s fairly elitist for us to say this. But from a tourism point of view, it will drive away the tourism dollars. It will drive away the Indian tourists who want to go there and peace out. I am finding less and less places in India to be peaceful. And the few peaceful places that I go to in India, I swear to god I will not reveal to anybody (laughs)! And I’m not alone. People who are looking for peace have now stopped recommending.

What your favourite places to travel? What other places in India inspire you, besides the places you’ve shot or lived in…
I won’t. I won’t tell you because then everyone will start coming there. (‘Think of what we face as travel writers every day.’). I can tell you what’s slightly going wrong with travel right now. What’s happening is that the world over, people are moving towards boutique hotels and homestays and because of the sudden rise in the Indian traveller, the boutique places and homestays are in danger. They tell you to step into a different environment and experience that, whereas the typical Indian traveler wants to take his TV, his match, his housie, his whatever-it-is and transform the land he’s travelled to into the land he has just left. A few resolute people are still holding on and they are not giving into popular culture.

But everybody is not so lucky. Places like Goa are exhausted, ravaged and raped. Six years ago about 500 chartered planes landed in Goa. Last year there were less than 100. And it has happened because of political meddling and lack of awareness of what a western traveller wants. India, as a tropical hot paradise, is often a joke compared to Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bali and Indonesia. We earn a fraction of their tourist dollars. Secondly, it’s become much more convenient for an Indian wanting to get out of the noise, trash and crowd of Indian travel destinations, to travel to Sri Lanka or Maldives. A person will think twice: should I pay the airfare for Goa or Bentota? Same paise mein foreign chale jate hain. Then when you land there, you realise it’s so much like Goa or Kerala, except a lot cleaner, people are more chilled out and it’s simpler to be there.

What kind of a traveler are you today?
Now we have kids so we go any place where the kids can be happy. Our ideal place is to go to a homestay where we can cook ourselves or we tell the cook what to make. We are at our happiest over there. Eating simple food and enjoying new places has become the most peaceful way of relaxing. And of course, lot of walking. If you’re not walking then you’re not on a holiday.

Authors: Anurag Mallick & Priya Ganapathy. This is the unedited version of the article that appeared on 13 November, 2015 in Conde Nast Traveller online. Read the story on CNT at http://www.cntraveller.in/story/delhi-is-two-enemies-forced-into-a-friendship/

Tryst with Destiny: Indian Freedom Trail

As part of an Independence Day Special, ANURAG MALLICK and PRIYA GANAPATHY retrace the journey of India’s freedom struggle, profiling some key and lesser known historic sites they’ve visited across the country

 

Andaman & Nicobar Islands
Allegedly used as a pitstop by Lord Hanuman on his aerial flight to Lanka (hence the name), the Andamans played an important part in the Indian struggle for independence. The 1857 Sepoy Mutiny prompted the British to choose the remote Andamans as a penal settlement. Thousands of Indian revolutionaries were sentenced to ‘Saza-e-Kala Pani’ and made to toil night and day under extreme conditions for 10 years to build a seven-pronged prison. Nearly 30 million bricks, made from crushed corals sourced from Dundus Point were used. Each wing had three storeys for solitary confinement in 693 individual cells, thereby giving its name – Cellular Jail. When the siren blared from the central watchtower it indicated that three martyrs had been hanged. The photo displays, sculpted models, relics and Sound & Light show offer a vivid portrayal of the suffering and sacrifice of the patriots. Ross, at 0.8 sq km, the smallest island in the Andamans served as the British headquarters. When Lord Mayo, the Viceroy of India, visited Ross Island in 1872, he went to Mount Harriet, the highest point in South Andamans to enjoy the sunset. When he reached Hope town jetty for the ferry back to Ross, he was ambushed and assassinated by Sher Ali Khan, who was later hanged at Viper Island.

 

During World War II, after occupying Singapore and Rangoon, Japanese troops landed at Port Blair on 23 March 1942 and captured it without firing a shot. Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Supreme commander of the Provisional Govt of Azad Hind, had allied with the Japanese to oust the British. On 30th December 1943, Netaji hoisted the Indian tricolor in British-free India for the very first time. Andaman and Nicobar were renamed as Shaheed Dweep (Martyr Island) and Swaraj Dweep (Self-Rule Island). Netaji stayed in the British High commissioner’s house and a memorial near Netaji Stadium at Port Blair commemorates his visit. However, the Japanese atrocities at Cellular Jail and the island were kept hidden from him. Over 700 innocent people were taken in 3 big boats and thrown overboard near Havelock Island in the dead of the night. In a similar incident, 300 islanders were killed at Tarmugli Islands off Wandoor. Just off the road to Wandoor, lies a dark gloomy park on a small hillock at Humphreyganj. On 30th January 1944, 44 innocent people detained at Cellular Jail on false spy charges, were brought here and brutally murdered. Today, the trench where they were buried is marked by a memorial… Ironically, while India’s freedom fighters perished in prison, some of the islands were named after British heroes of the mutiny like Havelock, Neil, William Peel, Outram and John & Henry Lawrence.

 

Madurai, Tamil Nadu
Madurai was an important landmark in the life of Mahatma Gandhi. Surprisingly, he made five visits to the city. On his second visit to Madurai in 1921, disturbed by the plight of poor farmers, Gandhiji shed his long coat and donned his trademark loincloth. In 1934 he refused to step inside the Madurai Meenakshi Temple when his escort was not allowed inside because he was a harijan. This triggered the ‘Temple Entry Movement’ for untouchables. Only after Vaidyanath Iyer opened the doors of the temple to everybody in 1939, did Gandhiji enter the shrine in 1946! During the renovation of the temple, a mural artist was so inspired by this event, that he painted an image of Mahatma Gandhi on the temple walls. The Gandhi Memorial Museum in Madurai, set in the beautiful Tamukkum Summer Palace of Nayaka queen Rani Mangammal is one of the seven museums in the country dedicated to the Mahatma. It showcases Gandhiji’s life through rare photos, quotes, murals and letters. The Hall of Relics and Replicas contains 14 original artefacts used by Mahatma Gandhi including a shawl, spectacles, yarn and the bloodstained cloth worn by him when he was assassinated.

 

Vellore Fort, Tamil Nadu
Few people are aware that the first mass rebellion against British rule took place at Vellore Fort, 50 years before the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny or the First War of Independence! Though it lasted just for a day the 1806 Vellore Mutiny wreaked immense havoc and damage on the British. The cause of this revolt was a change in the Sepoy dress code in November 1805. Incited by the decision of the British to disallow Hindus from wearing tilaks on their foreheads and the demand for Muslims to shave their beard and trim their moustache, Indian soldiers stormed the bastion and killed nearly 200 British troopers in a day-long attack that rewrote history. Tragically, they were subdued by reinforcements from Arcot and nearly 700 Indian soldiers were gunned down. However, this wasn’t the first challenge the British faced in Tamil Nadu. Veerapandiya Kattabomman, an 18th century Poleygar chieftain fought against the British alongside the brave Marudu brothers. Treason led to his execution on 16 October 1799 at Kayatharu on NH7, near Tirunelveli. Today, a memorial has been erected at the site. The historic Vellore Fort is a 16^th Century citadel that served as the erstwhile headquarters of the Late Vijayanagara Empire. The fort was built in 1566 by Chinna Bommi Nayak and Thimma Reddy Nayak, subordinates to Sadasiva Raya of Vijayanagara. As a result of the struggle for power among the squabbling Raya families, the fort suffered gradual decline and witnessed the brutal royal genocide of Vijayanagar king Sriranga Raya’s kith and kin. Soon the Deccan Sultans swept in to take control followed by the Marathas, the Nawabs of Arcot and the British.

Pazhassi Raja’s Tomb, Wayanad
This is the story of how the tiny district of Wayanad in Kerala influenced one of the world’s most famous wars, The Battle of Waterloo. Under the treaty of Srirangapatnam, when Tipu Sultan ceded Malabar to the British, Pazhassi Raja of Kottayam (a small village 70 km from Mananthavady) was among the first to revolt against the British. Persecuted, he took refuge in the dense jungles of Wayanad and organized local tribals into an irregular army, launching a long period of guerrilla warfare against the British. In a famous incident, an entire division of 360 soldiers of the British army camping at Panamaram was slaughtered. News of his courageous exploits spread like wild fire, earning him the title Keralasimham or the Lion of Kerala and he soon garnered support from far and wide.

For nine years, he managed to elude the British by constantly moving and hiding in the caves at Pulpally. In a bid to capture him, the British launched a two pronged attack. Young Lord Wellesley camped with his contingent at Mysore while TS Baber, the Collector of the Madras Presidency called in the British army from Thalassery and studied his guerilla tactics. When they caught Pazhassi Raja’s two generals, the Britishers amputated their limbs and hanged them as a warning to locals. Eventually, someone betrayed Pazhassi Raja who chose to end his life by swallowing his diamond ring rather than being caught alive by the British; bringing the rebellion to an abrupt end. Impressed by his bravery, TS Baber carried the king’s body in his own palanquin as a mark of respect. Pazhassi Raja’s tomb is located in Mananthavady.  It is said that Lord Wellesley learnt the rules of guerilla warfare while pursuing Pazhassi Raja in the hills and jungles, which the Duke of Wellington later employed in the historic Battle of Waterloo against Napoleon.

 

Phillaur Fort, Punjab 
Located on the banks of the Sutlej, Phillaur is the site of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s historic fort when Lahore used to be the capital of undivided Punjab. On account of its strategic location, it was first developed as a serai for trading and military purposes by Sher Shah Suri around 1540. Mughal Emperor Shahjahan later revived it, using it as a Dak ghar (Postal Center) and Military camp. After the Amritsar treaty of 1809 with the British East India Company, Phillaur became a border post of the Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s Lahore Empire. With help from an Italian architect, the serai was converted into a fort. Presently called Maharaja Ranjit Singh Fort, it houses a Police Training Academy (PTA). The Fingerprint Bureau set up in 1892 is one of the oldest of its kind. The Museum retraces India’s freedom struggle in Punjab and the history of Punjab Police with panels on the Anglo-Sikh Wars, 1928 Lahore Conspiracy case and major battles. Vintage guns, artillery, swords, tools of burglary and theft are also displayed! The highlights include the sword of Lord Lytton, the pen used in Lahore Court to sign the death warrant of Bhagat Singh and the finger imprints of Udham Singh, who shot and killed Michael O’Dwyer in 1940 at Caxton Hall in London. O’Dwyer was the British Lieutenant-Governor of Punjab during the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Interestingly, the popular hymn ‘Om Jai Jagdish Hare’ was composed in Phillaur in the 1870s by local litterateur Shardha Ram Phillauri. 

Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar
On the evening of April 13, 1919, the people of Amritsar gathered for a peaceful protest against the Rowlatt Act in Jallianwala Bagh, a public garden near Harmandir Sahib. It was Baisakhi festival and a Sunday, so nearly 15,000 to 20,000 people had assembled (including Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, women, senior citizens and children). When news of the protest reached Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, he arrived with 65 Gurkha and 25 Baluchi soldiers, an hour after the meeting began. The British were already paranoid after the Lahore conspiracy trials, the possible influence of the Russian revolution on India and the Third Anglo-Afghan War, so Dyer was convinced that a major insurrection was on. Dyer ordered fifty riflemen to open fire on the gathering. For the next ten minutes they kept firing till the ammunition ran dry. Nearly 1,650 rounds were fired and 1,302 men, women and children were killed. The narrow lane had a single entry and exit that was blocked by huge armoured vehicles, forcing many to jump into a well in the compound and perish. The site was acquired by the nation through public subscription on 1^st August, 1920 at the cost of Rs.5.65 lakh and a Flame of Liberty Memorial erected. The Martyr’s Well from where 120 bodies were recovered and the wall riddled with 36 bullet marks serve as a chilling reminder of this heinous incident.

Khonoma, Nagaland
The British first came into contact with the fierce Nagas in 1832, when Capt. Jenkins and Pemberton ventured into Angami territory for a strategic road survey between Assam and Manipur. In the years to follow the British met with stiff resistance from the Nagas everywhere. After the British adopted a policy of non-intervention in 1851, the Nagas launched 22 raids against the British, who finally attacked the Angami stronghold of Khonoma. Captain John Butler described Semoma Fort, a stone bastion, as ‘the strongest in the North East’. Each time the fort was destroyed; it rose phoenix-like, defiantly rebuilt to endure the next attack. In 1879, the killing of British political agent GH Damant resulted in the Battle of Khonoma, the last organized Naga resistance against the British. After booby-trapping the area the Nagas escaped to the mountains. The British eventually settled for a peace treaty, ending half a century of fighting and acknowledged their autonomy. The Nagas earned profound respect from the British and their evolution from a ‘savage race of head-hunters’ to the ‘cradle of civilization’ was swift.

Moplah Rebellion, Malabar
Malabar, the northern tract of Kerala, was the site of a bloody rebellion by the Muslim Mapila community against the British and oppressive Hindu landlords. Perinthalmanna, 3 km from Angadipuram in Malappuram, was the nerve center of the Moplah revolts of 1896 and 1921. The 1921 rebellion began as a reaction against a heavy-handed crackdown on the Khilafat Movement by the British authorities in the Eranad and Valluvanad taluks of Malabar. Even the sacred shrine of Angadipuram was not left untouched and was used as a protective abode by rioters. Open fights broke out in the courtyard during which the temple suffered extensive damages, which were duly repaired. Adjoining the Valiya (Big) Juma Masjid in Ponnani is a mausoleum of the Malappuram martyrs whose deeds have been immortalized in Moplah ballads.

Sidho Kanhu Smarak, Jharkhand
The Sidho Kanhu Santhali Sanskritik Kendra at Massanjore perform an old Santhal ballad about their folk heroes. As the Mayurakshi flows silently behind, girls sway in their green saris, the mandhar (tribal drum) taps a primal beat and Santhal boys dance with ghungroos tied to their feet. The song recounts the tale of  the brave Sidho Kanhu, who had been imprisoned by the British for rebelling against the unjust tax imposed on tribal forest land. As their brothers Chand and Bhairon wistfully watched from afar, astride their horses, Sidho and Kanhu were hanged from a banyan tree at Bhognadih near Baghdaha More. The song goes on to say that there was so much sadness, even the horse had cried… Another enigmatic folk figure was the brave Birsa Munda, who fought for tribal rights against the British. He was captured through treachery on 3 February 1900 and died mysteriously in Ranchi Jail on 9 June 1900. He was only 25 years old. Ranchi airport is named after him while his birth anniversary, 15 November, is celebrated every year at Samadhi Sthal, Kokar in Ranchi.

The Ridge, Delhi
The last outcrop of the Aravalli Hills rising 60 ft. above the city of Delhi, the Ridge was where the British pitched camp just 1200 yards from the city walls during the siege of Delhi from June to September 1857. Flagstaff Tower was the first rallying point for the Europeans when the mutiny reached Delhi. The Mutiny Memorial, an ornate 110 feet Gothic edifice, was erected in 1863 after the mutiny at the site of Hodgson’s battery. The red sandstone octagonal structure was built in memory of the soldiers of the Delhi Field Force, who were killed in action or died of wounds between 30th May and 20th September, 1857. The names of the British soldiers can be found etched on marble slabs around its base, which also bear a passing mention of the native soldiers who fought on behalf of the British.

Delhi is littered with sites linked to the 1857 Mutiny. At the Red Fort, mutineers had crowned Bahadur Shah Zafar as the Emperor of India. Humayun’s tomb was where Captain Hodgson arrested Bahadur Shah who was hiding with his three sons and a grandson, and they were subsequently beheaded. Badli-ki-Serai on G.T. Road was the site of a battle fought on 8th June 1857 between the sepoys and the Gordon Highlanders, to whom a memorial exists in Azadpur Sabzi Mandi. Kashmiri Gate was where the British made a final assault on Delhi on 14th September 1857. Brigadier General John Nicholson’s grave lies in the Kashmiri Gate cemetery. St James Church nearby was built by the legendary James Skinner in 1836 who once lay wounded on the battlefield and vowed that he’d build a church for the British, if he survived. The church was badly damaged during the 1857 Mutiny, its dome was pitted with holes as it served as targets for firing practice by sepoys. The structure was later repaired by the British and restored to its former glory.

Barrackpore, West Bengal
Located on the eastern bank of the Ganges about 15 miles from Calcutta, Barrackpore was the site of a military barrack set up in 1772, making it the first cantonment of the British East India Company. However, not one, but two rebellions took place against the British at Barrackpore. The 1824 rebellion was led by Sepoy Binda Tiwary of the 47th Bengal Native Infantry. Being upper caste Hindus, they refused to board boats for Burma in the First Anglo-Burmese War as crossing the seas would pollute their religious beliefs. The British decimated the rebels with an artillery barrage. Later, rumours that the British had greased the Enfield cartridges with lard (which had to be bitten off) ignited the first spark during the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny. Muslims suspected the grease to be pork fat while Hindus assumed it originated from beef. Mangal Pandey attacked his British commander and was subsequently court-martialled and executed, while punitive measures were taken against other rebel sepoys.