Black Chattri
It wasn’t the most convenient day to lose a perfectly new umbrella – that too a beautiful KC Paul classic black Saptarshi – for it was the day the last monsoon showers were lashing thru the already drownded city and, well, Indra was out to prove a point. Nevertheless somebody did pinch it off me from outside the university library – absolutely crazy place to lose a brolly in the first place, meaning who the hell shoplifts umbrellas from libraries…and I did get soaked like a crow on a livewire. …the only people who actually benefited from the entire thing were KC Paul and his erstwhile sons….coz I bought another one of their contraptions a week later…I had too…Meghnad came back for a reprise.
While still on the topic of Umbrellas – did ya know KC paul and his sons have been selling almost a hundred brollies a day every monsoon since 1965???quite whacky eh? and the cool thing is Bengali umbrellas have quite a great reputation in cities outside Bengal as well – like people living in south Mumbai will swear by their tall multistoreys that when the monsoons lash this Filmi city the only umbrellas capable of standing up for themselves against the gales of the Arabian Sea are from the city of Satyajit Ray. No wonder the maestro paid such a rich tribute to the symbol of Bengali Bourgeois in his classic movies. The black brolly shared screen space with almost all his protagonists…from Gangacharan to Amulya; it was perhaps the cheapest and the most active of his gang of regular extras and the most loyal of Soumitra Chatterji’s co-actors.
And it wasn’t just the Bengalis who had a fascination for the black brolly those days. Its thin closed or open curved frame proved to be the point of poetry for film makers across the nation as well as the globe. Remember Gene Kelly dancing away in the Rain in what was to be one of the last musicals to come out of a Hollywood studio, serenading an ode to love and longing which has since become timeless?? Hitchcock used it to accentuate the suspense in his films and Alejandro Jodorowsky to add surrealism to his “first midnight movie”. But I think for me the image that stands out the most was one that came long before all of these. In a country which had just wrenched itself free from 200 years of colonial rule. Its borders still bleeding red from the communal riots that ravaged the newly formed nation – a young clapper who had risen through the ranks in the city of dreams and won his own fight for freedom, released his first movie as a director – Barsaat. And the image of a Muslim Heroine and a Hindu Hero galvanized together in the pouring rain under a black brolly became an image of classic Indian cinema for generations to come both in his homeland and lands beyond.
So it wasn’t surprising that when the Indian government rolled out its first family planning programme in the 1950s (about the same time that the black brolly became such a in-thing in popular culture Left, Right and Centre – I wonder what movie Pdt Nehru and his Gang of boys and under secretaries where watching in the coffee breaks…) this image kinda became synonymous with family planning in India in the minds of the populace. Doordarshan too stuck to it and when the family planning programmes were modified for the coming generations to include the use of artificial contraceptives no wonder some screwed up kid in some alleyway of India’s vast hinterland first used the term chattri as a code for the protective latex. Interestingly that too stuck – for generations to come, as I was to learn as I grew up in the these same hinterlands when I was forbidden to use the term chattri by my more informed friends while looking for my brolly which I invariably left in the most undefinable of places – including on top of incubators and beside UV laminar flows. Eventually I lost that one too…forgotten inside some desk after a particularly boring lecture which put me to sleep. I must have lost like a dozen umbrellas in my short lifetime.
Well – talking about protective covering – I dunno where this particular kind of rubber balloon got its official name from but I do know of a poor little town in France which has suffered much from being its Namesake. (And you thought Kal "Gogol" Penn had a valid reason for frustation.) Its municipality has to deal with lost street signs almost every week but it has put up a brave fight by hosting a museum of famous population control devices. Talk about French sense of humour… Maybe our government can take a few pointers from there as nothing seems to have worked for the nation which gave the world its most comprehensive literature on the art of love making.
And this time around the black brolly can make a comeback in the coffee break entertainment section as well. Be it inbetween the towel dropping acts of Raj Kapoor’s great-grandson or in the hands of Rihanna – the teen wonder queen from the country of opportunities. As its tanks still trample along the gardens of Babylon its young soldiers are probably yearning to run back under her umbrella (or her sexy umbrella cut dresses…) – her dusky voice calling out to them :
“These fancy things,
will never come in between
You're part of my entity
Here for Infinity
When the war has took it's part
When the world has dealt it's cards
If the hand is hard
Together we'll mend your heart
Because ...
When the sun shines
We'll shine together
Told you I'll be here forever
Said I'll always be your friend
Took an oath
I'm gonna stick it out 'till the end
Now that it's raining more than ever
Know that we still have each other
You can stand under my Umbrella”
PS: probably the only liquid pouring down on those young men and women standing sentinels in a foreign desert land is their fellow Jarhead’s blood. Even the umbrellas of the best umbrella manufacturers of Calcutta and Bombay combined – KC Paul and Mohendra Dutta and Ebrahim Currim & and all their Sons can’t stop this rain from wetting their souls. Rihanna’s music and Kelly’s song may be the only protective agent there. Peace.
While still on the topic of Umbrellas – did ya know KC paul and his sons have been selling almost a hundred brollies a day every monsoon since 1965???quite whacky eh? and the cool thing is Bengali umbrellas have quite a great reputation in cities outside Bengal as well – like people living in south Mumbai will swear by their tall multistoreys that when the monsoons lash this Filmi city the only umbrellas capable of standing up for themselves against the gales of the Arabian Sea are from the city of Satyajit Ray. No wonder the maestro paid such a rich tribute to the symbol of Bengali Bourgeois in his classic movies. The black brolly shared screen space with almost all his protagonists…from Gangacharan to Amulya; it was perhaps the cheapest and the most active of his gang of regular extras and the most loyal of Soumitra Chatterji’s co-actors.
And it wasn’t just the Bengalis who had a fascination for the black brolly those days. Its thin closed or open curved frame proved to be the point of poetry for film makers across the nation as well as the globe. Remember Gene Kelly dancing away in the Rain in what was to be one of the last musicals to come out of a Hollywood studio, serenading an ode to love and longing which has since become timeless?? Hitchcock used it to accentuate the suspense in his films and Alejandro Jodorowsky to add surrealism to his “first midnight movie”. But I think for me the image that stands out the most was one that came long before all of these. In a country which had just wrenched itself free from 200 years of colonial rule. Its borders still bleeding red from the communal riots that ravaged the newly formed nation – a young clapper who had risen through the ranks in the city of dreams and won his own fight for freedom, released his first movie as a director – Barsaat. And the image of a Muslim Heroine and a Hindu Hero galvanized together in the pouring rain under a black brolly became an image of classic Indian cinema for generations to come both in his homeland and lands beyond.
So it wasn’t surprising that when the Indian government rolled out its first family planning programme in the 1950s (about the same time that the black brolly became such a in-thing in popular culture Left, Right and Centre – I wonder what movie Pdt Nehru and his Gang of boys and under secretaries where watching in the coffee breaks…) this image kinda became synonymous with family planning in India in the minds of the populace. Doordarshan too stuck to it and when the family planning programmes were modified for the coming generations to include the use of artificial contraceptives no wonder some screwed up kid in some alleyway of India’s vast hinterland first used the term chattri as a code for the protective latex. Interestingly that too stuck – for generations to come, as I was to learn as I grew up in the these same hinterlands when I was forbidden to use the term chattri by my more informed friends while looking for my brolly which I invariably left in the most undefinable of places – including on top of incubators and beside UV laminar flows. Eventually I lost that one too…forgotten inside some desk after a particularly boring lecture which put me to sleep. I must have lost like a dozen umbrellas in my short lifetime.
Well – talking about protective covering – I dunno where this particular kind of rubber balloon got its official name from but I do know of a poor little town in France which has suffered much from being its Namesake. (And you thought Kal "Gogol" Penn had a valid reason for frustation.) Its municipality has to deal with lost street signs almost every week but it has put up a brave fight by hosting a museum of famous population control devices. Talk about French sense of humour… Maybe our government can take a few pointers from there as nothing seems to have worked for the nation which gave the world its most comprehensive literature on the art of love making.
And this time around the black brolly can make a comeback in the coffee break entertainment section as well. Be it inbetween the towel dropping acts of Raj Kapoor’s great-grandson or in the hands of Rihanna – the teen wonder queen from the country of opportunities. As its tanks still trample along the gardens of Babylon its young soldiers are probably yearning to run back under her umbrella (or her sexy umbrella cut dresses…) – her dusky voice calling out to them :
“These fancy things,
will never come in between
You're part of my entity
Here for Infinity
When the war has took it's part
When the world has dealt it's cards
If the hand is hard
Together we'll mend your heart
Because ...
When the sun shines
We'll shine together
Told you I'll be here forever
Said I'll always be your friend
Took an oath
I'm gonna stick it out 'till the end
Now that it's raining more than ever
Know that we still have each other
You can stand under my Umbrella”
PS: probably the only liquid pouring down on those young men and women standing sentinels in a foreign desert land is their fellow Jarhead’s blood. Even the umbrellas of the best umbrella manufacturers of Calcutta and Bombay combined – KC Paul and Mohendra Dutta and Ebrahim Currim & and all their Sons can’t stop this rain from wetting their souls. Rihanna’s music and Kelly’s song may be the only protective agent there. Peace.
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