Finch Mama.

Compared to Finchu Mama, I was a damn bad actor. Yet, I tried my hand in it. My attempt was during a Rabindra Jayanti festival. I was then a student of class VII or class VIII. Gora planned to stage Rabindranath's Dakghar and Badal Da wrote a drama on the early life of Rabindranath when he was mostly kept in charge of the servants in the Tagore House. My sister Bulu played Rabindranath in Badal Da's play and Amal in Dakghar. Finchumama was Amal's Pishomashay and I was doing the role of "Dada Thakur or Kavi" in Dakghar. Gora arranged my dresses with white hair, beard and mustache made with white cotton. The beard and mustache was attached to my chin with some kind of sticky gum. Badal Da's play was very good and all the actors did very well and Bulu was really superb. Dakghar was also going on very well. Then my entrance came. I was wearing a silken cloth in the fashion of a lungi over my half-pant and a punjabi belonging to Gora's father. I looked like a big handi placed on the head of bamboo stick with my beards and all. I was not at all feeling comfortable with my lungi and the beard and mustache. Then the climax happened. It was the scene where I was sitting on a chair beside a cot where Amal was lying. Pishomoshai (Finchmama) and Kaviraj Mashai was attending to Amal. My first dialogue was "Chup karo abishwasi. Some cotton from the mustache was trying to enter my mouth and I was trying to blow it out. I did not use my hand because Gora, our Director, repeatedly told me not to move my limbs too much unnecessarily. So, I was trying to blow it out. My mother, who was sitting on the second row, was trying to draw my attention and ask me not to do what I was doing. After she failed to persuade me to desist from it, she lost her cool, stood up and shouted out " Ei Minu, Hochche ta ki. Sei tokhon theke bosey bosey phu phu korey jachchis?" I thought it discourteous of me not to explain my predicament to my mother's querry. So, I started to get up to reply. In those days it was not considered a good behaviour to give reply to elders while sitting when the elder is on her feet. My lungi fell to the ground and I stood there with a very big punjabi on a half-pant with cotton-white hair, beard, mustache et al on the stage. Everybody including the audience was mesmerised for a moment or two and then burst out laughing. It was a roar. Gora, somehow, managed to draw the drop scene down.

Finchu Mama

Finchu Mama was just three months my senior. He was very simple at heart and relied on my judgement in many matters. He was an average student like us but had the unique talent in acting in school days. He was also very good at recitation of poems and every year participated at the "Kala Protiyogita" held at Arya Natya Samaj and earned prizes. I still remember his acting in the role of villain in a drama on the life of Maharaj Nanda Kumar enacted by the students at Zilla School. He was possibly a student of class V or Vi at that time. It was so good that everybody appreciated it. Our friend Gora (brother of Left Front minister and Forward Bloc leader Late Nirmal Bose, our beloved Badal Da.) was Nanda Kumar and another boy did Warren Hastings. Finch Mama's role was comparatively very small as a witness in the case against Nanda Kumar. But he did a wonderful job. In later years, however, he did not persue this line. In fact he never persued those points where he had a talent. There was a time when he started wrting short stories and those were really something wonderful. He became very popular as a story writer, particularly among the girls and ladies. I do not know whether any of his stories have been preserved. Those were mostly published in the magazine published by Danpiteder Ashar and edited by Dr. Sarajit Bagchi. (More on Finch Mama...to follow).

Busy.

I was otherwise busy and could not post anything for quite sometime. I will now try to come back again.