Sankar's Calcutta, still alive in city's people, their promise, and pain

Mani Sankar Mukhopadhay, aka Sankar, a leading Bengali writer whose stories reflected the hopes and moral dilemmas of urban India, passed away on February 20. As Charles Dickens did in 19th-century London, or as in James Joyce’s Ulysses, which provided a detailed insight into Dublin, Sankar brought Kolkata (then Calcutta) to life from the corridors of the Calcutta High Court to the bustling streets of Chowringhee.

 

A July 2024 paper in the International Journal of Advanced Research showed that, apart from recording the changes in the physical and socioeconomic landscape of Kolkata, Sankar also wrote about colonial heritage, modernisation, social and economic disparities, and human relationships. The city was not only a setting but also a major character in his stories, providing the readers insight into the ever-changing and complex nature of Calcutta.

 

Noel Barwell, the last English barrister practising in the Calcutta High Court, employed young Sankar in the 1950s. After Barwell’s death, Sankar wanted to commemorate the man who “thought so well of me.” The tribute, originally serialised in the prestigious Desh magazine, was titled “Kato Ajanare”. Brilliant but erratic filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak reportedly attempted to adapt it but failed due to lack of finances.

 

One afternoon, during an unexpected downpour, Sankar stood watching the Grand Hotel’s neon sign flashing against the colonial buildings of Chowringhee Street. Having witnessed the parade of humanity at the Spencer’s Hotel, where Barwell had stayed, he realised that he was acquainted with the inner workings of large hotels, their intrigues, and the hidden scandals. Three years before Arthur Hailey’s Hotel, the novel Chowringhee was published. A hotel in Chowringhee became a microcosm of the city. Uttam Kumar acted in the role of protagonist “Sata” Bose in  Pinaki Mukhopadhyay’s 1968 adaptation of Chowringhee.

 

Shah Jahan Regency (2019) by Srijit Mukherji is the modern adaptation of Chowringhee. Rather than a remake, it explores the dark, changed, and materialistic world of 2018 Kolkata by reworking the classic tale in a modern-day hotel. “Reading ‘Chowringhee’ made me fall in love with the city in an odd way. I rediscovered Kolkata. To me, Kolkata is like the book ‘Chowringhee’,” Mr Mukherji said.

 

Mrinal Sen’s Calcutta Trilogy consists of three politically charged Bengali films. In contrast, along with Pratidwandi, based on a story by Sunil Gangopadhyay, two of Sankar’s novels, Seemabaddha (Company Limited) and Jana Aranya (The Middleman), were adapted into iconic films by Satyajit Ray in 1971 and 1975, respectively, as part of his Calcutta Trilogy, which portrayed the struggles, compromises, and endless rat races of city life.

 

“Looking at the wonders in Kolkata, I have come to a conclusion that God may have made beautiful villages but to witness that man can make, one has to visit the cities,” Sankar said in July 2019. “I was told by an English barrister, Noel Barwell... that the best way to write about Kolkata was to learn — ‘How they live, how they love, how they lie and how they die’.”

 

Srijit Mukherji believes that the hero of Chowringhee is not Sata Bose but Kolkata itself. Kolkata is presented in Seemabaddha through the spotless interiors of elite clubs and offices. Sankar portrays Kolkata in Jana Aranya (translated by Arunava Sinha) as: “The traffic was an alarming snarl of rickshaws, handcarts, buses, trucks, taxis and private cars. The ageing driver of the ancient tram caught in the middle rang the bell loudly in his desperation to get from Lalbazar to Bagbazar... it looked like an enormous yet frail dinosaur from a prehistoric era, banished from its safe haven to the human jungle of Calcutta, emitting howls of helplessness.” The Naxalite movement in the 1970s provided a historical background too.

 

Sankar has portrayed universal archetypes of urban life, long before the term “urban studies” came into vogue. But what is so special about Kolkata in Sankar’s Kolkata? The names of the streets are known, and so is the nature of unemployment. Except for what is portrayed in Jana Aranya, aren’t the other characteristics revealed through Sankar’s looking glass also present in London, Paris, New York, or any other metropolis? But this is not a limitation of Sankar, only an indication of his wider appeal.

 

The author is professor of statistics, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata