ChinmayC Blog

The movie aptly titled ‘83’ is really worth reliving Team India’s glorious World Cup victory at Lord’s in 1983 defeating the mighty West Indies , thus stopping the latter’s hat-trick moments after victories in 1975 and 1979 ; and in fact, the West Indies team is yet to win their third World Cup since then. I missed watching the movie on the big screen as moviegoing has been effectively stopped since the last two years, particularly for the elderly people like me. I grabbed the opportunity as soon as the great cricket movie was premiered on television yesterday. The movie too has suffered due to the pandemic: first it was slated for release in 2019 which, unfortunately, was postponed due to post-production reasons and after that the COVID-19 recurring bans and restrictions never allowed to make the movie reach millions of cricket fans. Finally, though it could be released in December 2021 its shows were again affected by the Omicron wave. Therefore, as it were, the movie could not re...

  We literally chase the sun for the warmth of its sunlight during the winter season, particularly in the northern, eastern and north eastern regions of India. In most places of the western and southern regions real winter has always been rare. Of course, in some years there are days in the months of December and January when we get the chill, and the question of considering this as real winter depends from which region you come from: for the people of the wintry regions we just mentioned don’t consider such weather as winter, but only as pleasant; however, the local people welcome the ‘winter’ heartily, drying up their woolens and wearing their sweaters, jackets, mufflers and shawls outside even if after some time the sweat forms inside. On such days we realize the importance of having flats that allow a lot of sunlight. This season in Mumbai we are having such pleasant or cold days following the cold waves in the north and we loving the morning sunlight filtering through the wind...

While reading the latest book by the Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen , Home in the World—A Memoir , I found one incident or rather an experience of this great economist-researcher-scholar-writer-Nobel Prize winner in 1998- Bharat Ratna winner in 1999, concerning a book-stall owner that he frequented in the fifties in the famed college street area of Kolkata , then Calcutta . I was enthralled to find that experience having a strong similarity with my experience of a book-stall owner in the seventies. Well, two mandatory clarifications here: first, I’ve titled my piece not after Sen’s great book which means that this is not going to be a review, but just a story, and I’m still going through the book which, in my view, is of epic proportions, particularly in relation to the history, culture, economics and heritage of Bengal from the pre-partition days; and second, there can absolutely be no imaginable comparison between the living legend and this nonentity, as I said this is just a story of a...

It was many years ago, we were not exactly little ones then, we were about high school leaving age: myself and my younger brother. Thanks to our father’s ways we used to be sent to our native village absolutely alone since our primary school age; he used to request the government transport service bus conductor to look after us and to put us in a bus going to our village after arriving at the major preceding bus stations. All the time nothing adverse had happened, and therefore, we were quite used to travel alone or the both of us brothers. It is not at all necessary to identify the state, towns or localities; suffice it’d be that it was somewhere in India a long time back.   We boarded the bus at around eight o’clock in the morning after taking a light breakfast at home, from the then home city we were living in, heading for our native village to spend our summer holidays. Our journey was to take at least 8/9 hours which was to deposit us first in the preceding major station fro...

Movie watching has always been a passion with us, particularly anywhere in India, ever since the discovery of motion pictures. This passion has always been independent of the conditions of the movie theaters or the environment of viewing. All of the cinema halls in India were single screen till about two decades back when multiplexes and malls came up in the major cities. In the small towns cinema halls or movie theaters were abysmal—people smoked and spat inside; they talked and roared with laughter anytime; seats were congested and there was an acute problem of craning necks; there was no air-conditioning and the wall or ceiling fans made it all the more noisier; no lounges outside, only holes around and most of the theaters looked like warehouses. However, we never complained about the lack of such amenities, mostly because we had no access to better environment to compare with. Of course, in the metros or in the major cities the theaters were much better, and once in a while we enj...

The late sixties to the late eighties—the golden period for us as far as the habit of reading book is concerned. For my father the period started from around the early forties. Rightfully, my father and we children were termed as ‘book worms’ by family and friends. We used to coil up wherever and whenever possible with books—books of various nature ranging from detective novels to heavy non-fiction in mostly English, Assamese and Bengali. We can hardly forget those golden moments of reading—on a fresh morning in the veranda armchair or reclining on the sofa in the drawing room or half inclined on the pillow in the bedroom or on winter nights after supper inside the warm quilt with the table lamp burning. On Sundays my mother had a hard time getting us on to the table after serving lunch. My father had the usual habit of trying to finish a book on a single sitting and we also tried to imitate him on various occasions. Thanks to my father’s childhood we favoured English classics a lot an...

Today I just happened to read a news item regarding a Mumbai railway canteen which is serving only biscuits and samosas due to policy decisions. And, suddenly all the nostalgia came surging back to me! Call it fate or coincidence, in the late eighties and early nineties I used to miss the connecting trains on my journeys from Mumbai to Guwahati almost always getting stranded at Howrah. But during my nights at the second class waiting room floors I used to have sound sleep, Because, I always had the sumptuous thali (rice plate) at the Howrah railway cafeteria. All the varieties were there--vegetarian, fish curry plate, egg curry plate or the chicken thali . The food was homely, innocent and always tasty. To make matters ecstatic, I was ravenously hungry on all the occasions! Not only at Howrah, all of the railway canteens anywhere in India appealed to my gastronomic mind hugely. They looked so welcoming and appetizing. It was a comfort zone, almost a home where you can barge in with all...

Some of the songs you heard in different phases of your life remain embedded in your heart. The moment you hum or hear it playing memories of that particular period rush in. Fond or sad nostalgia moist your eyes or makes goose pimples all over your body. I think nostalgia acts very powerfully in songs or music beats and tunes. They enact pictures, peoples and fashions vividly in your inner mind screen. Movies do too, but songs in some of them act as the catalyst. You idle at your home and feel extremely bored at times hating to be there, questioning yourself on wasting valuable time. But when you go away you desperately want to be there. Things you hated you start remembering fondly and want them to happen again. Nostalgia is a potent moving force and one of our most cherished assets. When you meet your dear ones after a long long time just sit down with them and go on chatting. That will be an unforgettable moment. We need nostalgia to love and appreciate life.