Our son, who is taking a course in film direction in Chennai, says he plays a little game when he is asked a common question by batch mates: Where are you from? In reply he tells them a long tale which goes something like this:
‘My parents trace their roots to two districts in what was then East Bengal. They grew up in Kolkata and shifted to Delhi when I was a year old. That’s where I remained till I was 16. Then they shifted to Bangalore where I finished my last two years of schooling. And I have been in Chennai for the last four years through college and film school.’
This usually provokes some laughter and often a second question: So where are you really from? His response depends on his mood. If he is a trifle irritated, he replies: ‘I just told you’. If he is in a better frame of mind he says: ‘You see, I am from all those places.’
Not wanting to let him off so easily, I ask: ‘So would you say your first language is Hindi?’ He replies: ‘The spoken Punjabi Hindi of Delhi is what I grew up with. But the Hindi I wish to work with in my films is the Hindi I came across at the National School of Drama (he took a couple of short courses there), the Hindi of Naseeruddin Shah and Amitabh Bachchan.’
He then draws an analogy with the Bengali he has grown up with at home: ‘I can speak enough of it to get by on the streets of Kolkata, but it is not the Bengali in the plays of Shombhu Mitra’. His working knowledge of Tamil is far more rudimentary. The point is, not only are there many languages in India, there are many languages within a language.
My own life has been similar. I grew up in Kolkata but have spent the majority of my working life outside West Bengal. The cities that I have got to know in the process have been the most enriching part of the long journey.
The impact of a place is not strictly measured by the time spent in it. Brief but hugely pleasant postings in Bhubaneshwar and Shillong have added layers of consciousness. I bore people quite a bit by going on about the antiquity of Orissa and its outdoors. My friends know better than to let me get started on the north east. ‘Asia in a microcosm’ is a cliché but you have to go around the north east to know how true it is and how fascinating and unending the process of discovering it.
The two years spent working in the City in London remain unforgettable. The two fortnight long visits to Tokyo have convinced me that you can happily spend a lifetime discovering it and still not get the full hang of the Japanese who are so westernised but still remain so culturally distinctive.
The two other members of the family, daughter and wife, have been spared most of the confusion or complexity embedded in the minds of our son and myself. Our daughter was born in Delhi, spent the first 14 years of her life there and is now back again there for college. She has no doubts on where she comes from — Delhi. This has made her the butt of some of the family banter directed at the Delhiwali among us. Being so to the core, she remains totally unruffled by such talk.
Similarly the wife, despite her travels with me, is clear that she comes from Kolkata and that is where she would like to go back. A part of the family banter is directed at her total unqualified support for Kolkata. And the rest of the banter is accounted for by our mock concern that our son will likely end up marrying a Tamilian.
The last few weeks’ happenings in Mumbai have been bewildering. The one unfulfilled ambition that I have carried from my working life is to have worked in Mumbai. I have always marvelled at the professionalism of the city, exemplified not the least by the gruff no-nonsense demeanour of its Marathi-speaking cops. And now our son will certainly want to seek his filmi fortunes in, where else but Bollywood.
In writing this column over the years, I have found a deep well of resources in my roots which are clearly embedded in Kolkata. But about the best part of plumbing those depths has been to compare what I have brought up with what makes life tick in the other cities. In recent times I have engaged in an endless exchange with the wife on where we should ‘settle down’. I feel so much at home in Bangalore but for her Kolkata is where home is.
Legend has it that the Adi Shankaracharya travelled the length and breadth of the country in remote antiquity and set up four maths — Joshimath (north), Sringeri (south), Puri (east) and Dwarka (west) — to bind it together. Relatedly, the Pashupatinath temple in Kathmandu always has a Namboodri brahmin as head priest.
Where do people like our son and I come from? India yes, but that’s not saying much today. More critically, where do we go?
