Off the Beighton track

When my friend George Themplangad showed me that printed articles could be converted into computer text on Chat GPT, the idea arose of putting up my older pieces.

I selected this article, primarily for the brilliant headline given by Sportsworld's Associate Editor David McMahon.

And secondly, it might have withstood the passage of time.

These type of moments can happen at a match even today.

Asked to cover the Beighton Cup hockey final, I also focused on what was happening outside the field.

The article was published in the Sportsworld Magazine of May 15-21, 1985.

I am hoping to upload once a week.

COLUMN: The Tunnel Of Time

Shevlin Sebastian watched the final and monitored the crowd reaction to the match

Occasional clouds scudded across the Calcutta sky but there was no hint of rain. Standing outside the Mohun Bagan ground on the Saturday of the Beighton Cup final between Indian Airlines and EME, Jalandhar, one saw people in ones and twos, in small groups, walking purposefully across the Maidan towards the gates of the club.

Paaban Bhumia is a teacher in a primary school. A stockily built 27-year-old, he had come all the way from Burdwan to watch the Beighton Cup final.

‘Well,’ he replied, on being asked the reason for coming from so far away, to witness this hockey match. ‘At least, I can see some top players.’

Sailen Majumdar, 50, is a government employee who worked in Writers’ Buildings. A short man, he wore thick spectacles perched on his nose and was dressed in a white shirt and faded black pants.

Why had he come to watch the game? He paused thoughtfully and replied: ‘This final features two important national teams and I want to watch them play’.

Did he, by any chance, watch the matches of the Calcutta Hockey League?

Sailen smiled and said, ‘The standard is so poor, that there is no use in watching.’

However, unlike the hockey league, Calcuttans did not exactly ignore the Beighton Cup and the presence of star-studded teams.

People began to drift in and at whistle time, there was a fairly decent crowd. The crowd was cosmopolitan, showing so effectively the diversity of the city.

So, you saw the sight of a sophisticated man in a safari suit, with a helmet in his hand. Then there was the less affluent youth, wearing a cotton shirt and trousers, with mud-crusted chappals on his feet. You had the sight of a paan-chewer in a white kurta-dhoti, sitting with his palms on his thighs. Then there was the ubiquitous know-all supporter, slim and thin, who passed expert comments for the benefit of the people around him.

The teams ran on to the playing field which was lustrous and green although there were a few bald patches here and there. The players began to flex their muscles and some of them took a few shots.

‘Who is Number 14?’ asked a middle aged Sardarji.

‘Zafar Iqbal!’ was the slightly sardonic reply.

A fat man with an enormous paunch and an unkempt beard, said very loudly: ‘Ashok Kumar is in great form. Once, in Calcutta, we had good players like Inam-ur-Rahman, Joginder Singh, and even Ashok Kumar played here once.’

The bully-off took place and the game started.

The pace was fast and quick.

Both teams mounted a series of attacks.

Merwyn Fernandes of Indian Airlines received a pass in front of the goal and, with only the goalkeeper to beat, shot wide.

A spectator commented, with a trace of bitterness, ‘There is no finish’.

As the game continued, a different form of activity was noticed in the stands.

A man who was selling groundnuts was roundly criticised for blocking the view.

‘Why can’t you sell your stuff during the interval?’ asked a spectator who looked fierce and angry.

‘Sorry Sahib!’ said the groundnut seller, his face showing a lifetime of compromise and endless exploitation.

In a middle tier, separate and distinct, sat a young, broad-shouldered Punjabi with his new wife. She wore a purple salwar-kameez and her face looked radiant and healthy in the afternoon sun. But it was obvious that she had come to the ground for the sake of her husband because, soon after the match started, she was avidly reading a Hindi film magazine.

As the match progressed, there was the occasional cheer for the good move, and heartfelt applause for a superb show of dribbling by a particular player. Sometimes, in the silence, a plaintive ‘Oh Zafar Bhai’ would be heard.

Zafar Iqbal, on the left flank, roamed the area like a hungry panther. Slim and lithe, holding the stick tightly in his hands, in front of his body, he would break into a swift, furious run, the ball perfectly under his control as he flicked the ball towards the centre of the ‘D’. Sometimes, it was collected but nothing was ever converted into a goal. Sometimes, the ball went abegging.

At 4 p.m, the whistle blew and it was half time, the teams still locked in a goalless draw.

Spectators got up and went down the steps to the latrines.

‘Not a bad match,’ a man said, ‘at least, so far.’

Suddenly, as if seeing the crowd in perspective for the first time, a bald man in a T-shirt said, ‘What do you say? This is the best crowd of the season?’

On the ground, drinks were offered to the players who slaked their thirst in obvious satisfaction. Free drinks were offered to journalists, officials and important guests. Seeing this, a spectator who sat on a bench with his friends near the corner flag decided to try his luck, but had to return, disappointed.

Meanwhile, the second half started on a brisk note. Up in the sky, grey clouds ran riot completely obscuring the sun and now, the breeze that was blowing in from the Hooghly river, was cool and soothing.

Indian Airline’s full-back, Veerendra Bahadur Singh, took a stinging 16-yard shot and it was collected by Merwyn Fernandes and he began a solo effort. His back was bent, his eyes on the white ball, his wrists flicking the stick this way and that, he moved down, going past one opponent and then the other. But just when it seemed that he was getting dangerous, Merwyn was suddenly

dispossessed.

The crowd groaned in frustration, as another attack was blunted at the right time. But, in the seventh minute, the Airlines outfit struck home. A penalty corner was collected by Vineet Kumar, who passed it on to Zafar Iqbal, and he took a shot which was deflected into the EME net through Merwyn’s stick. Airlines 1, EME 0.

The latter, stung to the quick by the reverse, went furiously on the attack and they managed a penalty corner.

‘Jai Bajrang Bali’ a spectator shouted from the sidelines, ‘let there be a goal’.

But the call proved abortive and as the minutes ticked away, the game began to slow down and lose direction.

Very near the sidelines, a young child in a pink skirt and ponytails, barely three feet in height, ran to and fro, enjoying herself. Sometimes, when the crowd cheered or clapped loudly, she would stop, stare at the crowd with wide, curious eyes, and clap in imitation. Her father, clad in khaki, who stood a few feet away from her, smiled occasionally at her.

The match drifted on and on.

At 5 p.m., the whistle was blown. The players came off with tired faces. Meanwhile a few spectators swarmed on to the ground and encircled the wooden table which contained the glittering trophies and the individual awards.

The announcers implored the other spectators to stay and witness the prize-giving ceremony. There was a crush of people and young players formed a barricade with their sticks.

A police sergeant, with wide, bulging eyes, shouted at a constable to ‘maintain discipline’. The photographers crowded around, trying to get a vantage point.

Meanwhile, the Minister for Sports, Subhas Chakravarty, was invited to speak and he said the usual stuff about the state government’s willingness to offer full support, to bring the Beighton Cup back to its former glory... etc...etc...

The trophy was presented to the Airlines captain and the crowd strained to push and see.

‘Those photographers!’ a spectator said in disgust. ‘Can’t see a thing.’

The sergeant, sensing the crowd pushing forward, turned around and shouted, ‘Why can’t you all stop pushing?’

The crowd fell back for a moment and as soon as he looked away, there was again a forward thrust. And, at last, all the prizes were presented and thus, the 1985 Beighton Cup came to an end.

The Beighton Cup is a tournament that is still twitching, still struggling to live on, and perhaps the coverage by the radio, press and television might just about give it a new lease of life.

(Published in Sportsworld, May 1985)

Awakening The Soul

 

In his book, ‘The Practice of Immortality’, spiritual leader Ishan Shivanand talks about the need to go in inwards and link up with the divine energy for mental peace and happiness  

By Shevlin Sebastian 

In spiritual leader Ishan Shivanand’s book, ‘The Practice of Immortality’, opposite the contents page is a quote from the Bhagwad Gita: 

‘The Spirit is neither born nor does it die at any time. It does not come into being or cease to exist. It is unborn, eternal, permanent and primeval. The Spirit is not destroyed when the body is destroyed.’ 

And this quote sets the tone of the book. In the introduction, Ishan tells a story: ‘Two birds perch on the same tree, inseparable companions. One bird eats the fruit, while the other looks on. The first bird is our finite self, feeding on the pleasures and pains of its deeds, consuming all the anxiety, the stress, the overwhelm of this life. The second bird is our immortal, infinite self, silently and serenely watching it all.’ 

Ishan added, ‘The universe within us. All people already possess immortality within themselves — most are just unaware of it. I am setting out to wake them from their slumber.’ 

Ishan belonged to a long line of yogis. He spent the first 20 years of his life in an ashram. One day, his guru told him a parable: 

Glass can either be a mirror or a window. ‘When you look in a mirror, you see only a reflection of yourself; when you look at a window, you see through it to the beauty and infinity of the universe around you. A mirror is painted black on one side; a window is pure, unobscured. To change a mirror into glass, you must purify it, removing the paint.’ 

Ishan was initiated into the spiritual life as a child by his father, Dr. Avdhoot Shivanand, the noted yogic guru in a monastery in the deserts of Rajasthan, near the Aravalli mountains. 

Interestingly, and with a sense of humour, Ishan said that when people come to know he was a monk, they regarded him either as a healer or an oddity. Some people asked bizarre questions: Can you fly? Do you fart rainbows? 

As he grew older, Ishan came to a realisation. ‘There are only two kinds of people,’ he wrote. “The ones who have already realised the god within, and the ones who have the potential to realise the god within.

One of the pivotal moments of his childhood occurred when a flood destroyed their ashram. Father and son moved to the suburb of Dwarka in New Delhi. Dr. Avdhoot was building an ashram in a swamp. In this swamp, the locals threw their garbage and defecated into it. It was near the airport. So, the roar of planes flying in and out was incessant. And because of railway tracks nearby, trains thundered past all the time. Apart from all this, car horns blared constantly. Children shouted. Couples fought and screamed at each other. Ishan found it difficult to adjust after the tranquility of the ashram in Rajasthan.  

This is how he described it: ‘Humans are a little like sponges. We assimilate the energies that are around us. I would witness people who were angry, and, somehow, I would feel their anger, too.’   

So, how to reclaim mental calmness? Ishan’s way was to recite mantras. He said that is the surest way to connect with divine energy. ‘Mantras are the gateway to the supreme power,’ he wrote. 

Incidentally, after every chapter, Ishan offered a meditation practice: 

Here are a couple: 

No. 1 

Sit comfortably, relax your body, and focus on a memory of gratitude.

 Feel the positive thoughts and emotions of that memory. 

 Gently embrace and accept its energy, allowing it to flow into the past from the present. 

No. 2

Sit comfortably, relax your body, and meditate on the sun. 

Imagine the sun as a friend, embodying all the positivity, divinity, and strength you need.

Inhale for a count of three, feeling the sun’s light flow into your head and through your entire body. 

Exhale for a count of three, releasing everything from your body through your head and into the sun. 

One, two, three — inhale deeply, three-two-one — exhale fully. 

Repeat this cycle for ten minutes, keeping your breath as deep as possible. 

Ishan confirmed the problem with humanity is ego. 

He wrote: ‘Ego does not allow us to see what is obvious. In his book, The Gift Of Fear, American security specialist Gavin de Becker wrote: “Your intuition exists, in part, to help you stay safe — to recognise when something isn’t right and to guide you away from danger.” But the avidya, the ego, has a trick up its sleeve: it speaks so loudly that it drowns out the inner voice of your intuition.’    

And because of the constant strictures from society, people ignore their inner voice and follow the dictates of others. 

Ishan learned to activate the prana, the life-force energy that animates all human beings, with the help of a teacher, Mashe, who was a master of kalaripayattu.    

As he grew up, Ishan came to a realisation about his life journey. He would help people to go from avidya to vidya, to move from lack of knowledge to knowledge. ‘My job was to clean people’s minds,’ he wrote. ‘Once the mind was habitable, a person’s higher self could take over.’ 

Yet Ishan’s path has been unconventional. He has engaged deeply with the world even while he nurtured a rich inner life of meditation. He has deftly maintained a link between outer action and inner stillness.  

So, he is married with a boy and a girl. In Washington, you can see Ishan in a tuxedo; in Mauritius, he conducts his ‘Yoga for Immortals’ mental wellness programme for athletes; In the Himalayas, you can see Ishan swimming in a lake; he prays at the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya; he travels the Atlantic Ocean by ship; and he meditates on a frozen lake near the Arctic Circle. 

In one photo on Instagram, Ishan is on his knees with folded palms seeking blessings from enlightened master Mahant Swami Maharaj of the Swaminarayan Sanstha, the proponent of Sanathan Dharma, which has its headquarters in Ahmedabad. 

Over his maroon monk dress, Ishan had put on a sleeveless waist jacket, which showed his bulging biceps. The Mahant Swami Maharaj looked at his muscles and said, “Ladka Balwan Che (the boy is strong).” All the swamis present along with Ishan started laughing. Then a very senior swami said, “A strong body and mind are needed for the work Ishan has chosen to do.”

The Mahant Swami Maharajji gazed at Ishan with compassion in his eyes and said, “You will succeed. I bless you.”

One can see Ishan doing weightlifting, practicing target shooting, hitting the bull’s-eye, and enjoying video games in a mall. With a thick salt and pepper beard, and a ready smile, he gives the impression of being in this world and not being in it as well. Apart from being a spiritual leader, he is an international public speaker and a performance enhancement coach. 

The yogi has earned a Doctorate of Philosophy in Humanities from the United Graduate College and Seminary International in Kampala, Uganda. 

This book is a reminder of the spiritual life that many of us are missing at this point. From early morning until late at night, we constantly distract ourselves with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube videos. And in this empty activity, we have forgotten there is a divine energy within us. 

This has also resulted in a grave psychological breakdown all over the world. People turn to drugs, alcohol, sex, power, fame, and fleeting relationships to fill the void within. But Ishan says, the simple answer but very difficult to implement is the path of meditation and inner awakening. 

He says the only way is the way inward. As Lord Buddha and Jesus Christ said thousands of years ago, ‘Know Thy Self.’ Through the book, you can get an idea of how to travel into the soul, and connect with the Divine. 

It is a timeless path to reclaiming your life!

(Published in kitaab.org, Singapore)

A Shining Star

 

Captions: Published by Penguin India; Author Sanghamitra Chakraborty; Soumitra Chatterjee as Apu; the memory card scene in Aranyer Din Ratri

In this absorbing biography, Sanghamitra Chakraborty traces the life and career of Soumitra Chatterjee, one of Bengal’s greatest actors

By Shevlin Sebastian

Early in the book, ‘Soumitra Chatterjee and His World’, author Sanghamitra Chakraborty recounts a memory of the actor when he was six years old.

One day, because he was sick, Soumitra could not go to school. His elder brother Sambit returned from school earlier than scheduled. Their mother, Ashalata, asked Sambit the reason why.

Here is how Soumitra remembered that moment:

“Rabindranath Tagore is dead, so our headmaster announced a holiday,” Dada said flatly.

‘When I heard this, I knew Tagore must be a great man. Why else would they announce a holiday? That was my only response then — I hadn’t matured enough to react to the tragedy, but I noticed that my mother’s world was shaken. Ma couldn’t keep standing — she held onto the railing and sat down slowly.’

Ashalata was an ardent admirer of Tagore. Like his mother, later in life, Soumitra worshipped Tagore as a sage, prophet, great artist and social reformer.

An ardent bibliophile, Soumitra read Pather Panchali by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay when he was a teenager. Later, he wrote, ‘I had no idea then that playing the role of the grown-up Apu [protagonist of Pather Panchali] would be the birth of my acting career.’

During his studies at the CMS St. John’s School in Krishnanagar, Soumitra took part in plays and elocution contests. In Class Five, he played the prince in Sleeping Beauty.

‘People in the audience gave away awards to young actors then,’ he wrote. ‘I was thrilled to receive medals at that age. Perhaps an obsession with acting later took hold of me thanks to those medals. Who knows?’

But it was not always an idyllic life. He saw some tragedies first-hand. During the Bengal Famine of 1943, in which 30 lakh people died, Soumitra recalled the unbearable stench of dead bodies piling up on the streets in Krishnanagar.

One day, a starving man took shelter in a courtyard next door. Soumitra used to take rotis from his dinner and give it to him. One night, he could not do so. He wrote, ‘Next morning, I found the man dead — a bag of bones covered in skin heaped in one corner. His misshapen metal bowl had a few morsels of food left in it.’

It would leave a permanent scar on his heart.

As he grew up and got a job at All India Radio, he was always keen to embark on an acting career. His life changed when, one day, while recuperating at home from chicken pox, Satyajit Ray’s assistant Subir Hazra told him the maestro wanted to meet him.

When Soumitra stepped into Ray’s house, the latter said, ‘There you are, please come in. But everything seems fine. I don’t see any marks on your face! Someone was saying you had developed pockmarks. This is nothing. It should be fine.’

The result: Soumitra was cast as the lead in Apur Sansar. Soumitra began preparing and remembered the advice given by theatre guru Sisir Bhaduri. As author Sanghamitra writes, as an actor he had to interrogate the script ‘like a detective’, read carefully between the lines, look for clues to recreate in his mind the unexpressed bits of the story or character and peel away the top layers to unearth what was beneath.

Apur Sansar became a hit and launched the career of Soumitra.

The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote, ‘In the role of Apu, Soumitra Chatterjee is timid, tender, sad, serene, superb. He is the perfect extension of Apu as a man.’

Sanghamitra delves at length into the relationship between Soumitra and Satyajit Ray, which changed the young actor’s life completely.

Ray’s son Sandip spoke about the ‘instant chemistry’ between his father and Soumitra. ‘Even before Baba spoke, Soumitra Kaku knew what he wanted,’ said Sandip. ‘You rarely see this kind of understanding between a director and an actor.’

Sanghamitra dwells at length on one of Ray’s greatest films, Charulata (1964) and the roles played by Soumitra and Madhabi Mukherjee.

In the end, Soumitra and Ray worked in many films together, including Kapurush, Aranyer Din Ratri, and Asani Sanket. ‘The fun in working with him [Ray] was that he gave you immense freedom,’ said Soumitra. ‘And when you took the initiative, he would come up with a suggestion that would take it to the next level.’

The praise was mutual. Once Ray said, ‘Out of my 27 [28] films, he has acted the lead role in 14. This makes it obvious how much I trust him and how highly I regard him as an actor. I know I will depend on him until the last day of my life as an artist.’

Interestingly, in the famous memory card game scene in Aranyer Din Ratri, Ray placed the camera in the middle of the group that sat in a circle on a sheet on a ground in Palamau. The actors included Soumitra Chatterjee, Sharmila Tagore, Kaberi Bose, Subhendu Chatterjee, Samit Bhanja, and Robi Ghosh.

As Sanghamitra writes, ‘Though his close-ups, with the roving camera, paused on each face, Ray superbly captured their mental landscape and the emerging group dynamics.’ Later, Sharmila said that it was so hot the shooting had to be completed within an hour.

This tie-up of Soumitra with Ray lasted from 1959 to 1992, when Ray passed away on April 23, at the age of 70.

What impressed Ray and the crew members was how meticulously Soumitra prepared for each shot.

‘He always arrived on time and came well prepared,’ said Sandip. ‘For example, he would make a note of the number of shirt buttons he had left unbuttoned from the last time [for continuity]. His discipline was remarkable.’ In the end, Chatterjee acted in over 300 films in a 60-year career.

Sanghamitra also focuses on other films. It was interesting to note that in Teen Bhubaner Pare (1969), there was a song called Jibone Ki Pabona in which Soumitra did the twist in an elegant style.

The YouTube video was a pleasure to watch and the catchy tune and the lively singing by Manna Dey felt dynamic and uplifting. It is a song that still sounds good. And there have been many covers of it over the years.

This is an absorbing book. Undoubtedly, a lot of research has been done. Sanghamitra interviewed around 75 people, apart from family members.

What was a blow to the author was the star’s unexpected death because of lung complications from Covid on November 15, 2020, at the age of 85. So Sanghamitra could not talk to the star, but his copious autobiographical writings provided a lot of information.

This book is a valuable addition to the literature of film. For fans of Soumitra, this is a must-read.

Actor Sharmila Tagore wrote in the foreword, ‘Soumitra had his reasons to avoid Bombay, of course, but Indian audiences are the poorer for it.’ So, for film lovers in other parts of India and the world who are not aware of this titan, this book will be a revelation.

A shorter version was published in The Sunday Magazine, New Indian Express, South India and Delhi)