This is a tribute by a fanboy who would memorise and recite many poems of Pritish Nandy (Da) since the 1970s. Dada, travel well on your ‘Lonesong Street’.
“When you’ve crossed the bustling mainstreets of everever land
You reach a lonesome sandstrip called the nevernever strand
Then you take the turning left
And you take the turning right
And where the twilight breaks you turn your ragged sight…
Round the duskfall where it’s blue
Lonesong Street waits for you…”
When He Attended My Father’s Funeral
As a teenager in high school in Calcutta, I always carried a ruled exercise book (khata) in my school bag. Poems had to be composed. This is what dreams were made of. The inspiration was never TS Eliott, or WH Auden, or Robert Frost. Our folk hero, Pritish Nandy, was in his twenties. He wrote poems about the city he lived in and loved. It is unbelievable that five decades ago, he released an audio album of his poems read by Mallika Sarabhai and himself, with music composed by Ananda Shankar. Today’s iTunes and Spotify fans who can upload a song with just a few clicks will find it difficult to even understand or comprehend the level of commitment and passion that was required to produce an audio LP (vinyl) 50 years ago.
Pritish da was a smorgasbord of knowledge, erudite, incisive, and always entertaining. The funny thing was, he was too old to be my buddy and too young to be my father’s buddy. Yet, Pritish da always had time for the O’Briens of Kolkata. I was overwhelmed when he landed up, unannounced, for my father’s funeral in 2016. In the middle of summer, he attended the service in Church and was at the burial: “I just had to be here to say farewell to your father, Neil”. And as the sun set on that balmy summer afternoon at the Lower Circular Road Cemetery, in central Kolkata, there stood Pritish da near three of my uncles who were English professors. We weren’t surprised that the beat poet of our generation was still quoting lines of immortal verse. How perfectly appropriate. Thomas Grey’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.
“The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.”
Poet, painter, publisher, producer, parliamentarian, Padma Shri, he was a maverick in the truest sense of the word.
We had a long chat a few months ago during the pujo of 2024. I was trying to convince him to write his autobiography. There were so many stories that had to be told:
- A plane ride from Mumbai where he was seated next to a media baron. The chance meeting changed his life
- The story behind Balasaheb Thackeray sending him to the Rajya Sabha on a Shiv Sena ticket in 1998
- His favourite anecdotes from his days as editor of The Illustrated Weekly of India. Also, Filmfare, The Independent
- The creation and growth of Pritish Nandy Communications
- His love for stray dogs
- The wonderful women in his life (chuckle)
During the call, I remember asking him what he would most like to be remembered as—poet, publisher, editor, movie mogul, pet lover, or media personality. He was very clear: being a poet topped them all.
Let’s leave you with a poem Pritish Nandy wrote about a city he deeply loved, despite all its imperfections.
“Calcutta if you must exile me wound my lips before I go
Only words remain and the gentle touch of your finger on my lips Calcutta burn my eyes before I go into the night
The headless corpse in a Dhakuria bylane the battered youth his brains blown out and the silent vigil that takes you to Pataldanga Lane where they will gun you down without vengeance or hate
Calcutta if you must exile me burn my eyes before I go
They will pull you down from the Ochterlony monument and torture each broken rib beneath your upthrust breasts they will tear the anguish from your sullen eyes and thrust the bayonet between your thighs
Calcutta they will tear you apart Jarasandha-like
They will tie your hands on either side and hang you from a wordless cross and when
your silence protests they will execute all the words that you met and synchronised
Calcutta they will burn you at the stake
Calcutta flex the vengeance in your thighs and burn silently in the despair of flesh
If you feel like suicide take a rickshaw to Sonagachhi and share the sullen pride in the eyes of women who have wilfully died
Wait for me outside the Ujjala theatre and I will bring you the blood of that armless leper who went mad before hunger and death met in his wounds
I will show you the fatigue of that woman who died near Chitpur out of sheer boredom and the cages of Burrabazar where passion hides in the wrinkles of virgins who have aged waiting for a sexless war that never came
Only obscene lust remains in their eyes after time has wintered their exacting thighs
And I will show you the hawker who died with Calcutta in his eyes
Calcutta if you must exile me destroy my sanity before I go”
(Derek O’Brien, MP, leads the Trinamool Congress in the Rajya Sabha)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
