Cross Connection- new Bengali movie

Heard a new song on radio- Tumi Nei, sung by Anjan Dutta, music by his son Neel Dutt. The song is good, but I cant post it here, there is no online version. The music release has happened though and the cd would probably be available in the market.
The song was very sweet, nostalgic, emotional. At first I thought it was composed by Anjan Dutta himself because it sounds just like any of his songs. Neel has taken after his dad in the music chords. :)
Dont miss it when it comes out on you tube.

Crime Rate, Books, Kolkata and Amartya Sen

... not necessarily in that order.

Background- The London Bookfair 2009, where the market focus this year is India. Speakers have included Amartya Sen, Vikram Seth, Sunil Gangyopadhyay, Anita Nair, Dalrymple, Prasoon Joshi, among a host of other Indian writers in English and vernacular languages.






Amartya Sen who took the podium on the first day, 20th April went on to link crime rate and love for books. He commented that Kolkata has "the lowest crime rates in the world due to the civilising effect of books", reported The Telegraph.



Excerpts from his speech:

• “Does the culture of books influence the life of the city in any profound way?”
• “To consider one remarkable feature, Calcutta has, by a long margin, the lowest crime rate in the world, including the incidence of homicide and murder. While the number of murders per hundred thousand people per year varies between 2 and 10 per year in many cities in Europe and America, and between 15 and 50 per year in many cities in Africa and Latin America, the homicide rate in impoverished Calcutta is only 0.3 per cent — a fraction of the rate in any other city in the world.”
• “Indian cities generally have low murder rates, around 2.7 on the average (rather like London but much lower than American cities like New York or Chicago), but Calcutta in particular beats them all — even the famously peaceful towns of Singapore and Hong Kong — in terms of the lowness of homicide rates.”
• “Does the peculiar love of books and culture, and here I would add Calcutta’s fondness for theatre, too (often produced at very low cost), have a role here? I don’t really know, and there is no rigorous work on this that has properly tested any of the possible hypotheses.”
• “It is abundantly clear that the standard explanation of crime in terms only of economic poverty does not tell us much about the incidence and causation of violent crime, including homicide. There is certainly some research to be done here.”

Like all Kolkatans he also has his heart strings tied with College Street and said that these stalls teeming with books have influenced many a brilliant mind including Satyajit Ray and even himself.

• “It was in one of the College Street bookshops, called Dasgupta’s, that my friend Sukhamoy Chakravarty found at the end of 1951 a copy of a recent book by a brilliant economist Kenneth Arrow, which would radically influence my direction of work. I often wondered whether my life would have gone very differently had my friend, Sukhamoy, not been such a book hound.”
  
  

Kolkata is going the New York way

Yeah right...

I only mean with the city wide black out. April 19, Sunday evening will go down in history as the hottest April 19th ever... 41 degrees, was 5 above normal- reported one daily, 13 above- reported another. And just when Kolkatans were snuggling into their comfy air conditioned 24 degree living rooms to watch a bit of IPL on TV, BOOM... yeah, literally, BOOM went the lights, fans, AC-s, TV-s all over the city... and well, the street lights and traffic signals and hospitals and metro railway and airports... you name it.
Pic from The Telegraph of Park Street during the black out.

Of course, Kolkata Knight Riders lost their inaugaral match. But thank god no one was watching TV to see our Hero (seen here in action yesterday) make 1 run. Take his captaincy away, and the Expert Boria Mazumder, (who was my senior in Presidency btw, who knew one day I would be quoting him), knows something about the stinking (pun not intended) atmosphere of the dressing room in lovely South Africa.

Anyway, unable to stay in the house we decided to take to the streets in my comfy ac car, it has a music system also, godbless. Seems like every one had the same bright idea. We were bored sick of South City Mall, that being 5 minutes drive from home, so we decided to make a picnic of it and drove all the way to Mani Square. And God, was that a bad idea. Their parking is not well equipped to hadle a sudden surge of cars, it was mayhem right at the entrance. Inside, the mall kept plunging into darkness every fifteen minutes, which lasted 5 seconds in the shopping area but in the over crowded food court, we were at one time sitting in near pitch darkness for 15 minutes or more.

The food court itself was in the throes of the worst kind of chaos. No one knew the meaning of a queue. Once you manage your coupon, its a mad rush of loudest-shout-first-serve. Or longest-arm-first-serve. Im just five feet two, my arms arent that long, but hell, my voice is pretty darn loud, is what I found out yesterday!!!

One word of caution for people carrying babies or toddlers. Unlike South City, this mall is not todddler friendly. The drops are not totally covered. There is half a foot gap between floor edge an the glass railing, any tiny foot could get stuck there. If you are parking on the upper floors and you want to take a pram through the fourth floor entrance, then its a hassle with a largish step over which you have to carry your baby's pram by hand.

Mani Square- Food Court

As food courts go, this one is worth a visit. Allegdly with 25000 sq ft, situated at the top floor of the mall, the seats are clean and still new. The seating is interesting with individual tables or tables surrounding pillars. The food range is more or less fine, not as extensive as the one in South City mall, but will do. One draw is my personal favs, SubWay, Crepe Station, and the juice bar. There is a yummy cake shop but its so far down the line that diet conscious people will always have second thoughts once you reach there. Bad positioning. Thali-s are good.

Its a good option when you are looking for a quick bite before a movie or a visit to the game zone. The multiplex is right there, on the same floor. Makes things easier. Once you are there and have time and money of course the other restaurants will beckon. But we quite enjoyed ourselves having lunch there.

Pocket Pinch- One plate food with a juice and a pastry/dessert will cost about Rs 150- 180 per head.
Service - Self service of course, but even then, some shops are a little slower than the rest in the preparation.