Poet Joy Goswami, Rituparo Ghosh, Prosenjit, Jisshu and Pauli grace the occasion at Crossword
Kolkata, August 14, 2009: Poetry is catharsis for the soul and there is no one truth to it. Elucidating more about the hidden truths in poetry was noted poet of Kolkata, Joy Goswami. BIG Pictures, along with the entire cast of Rituparno Ghosh’s upcoming film Shob Charitro Kalponik, also articulated themselves with Goswami and the audience, at a poetry reading session at Crossword, on Friday, August 14, 2009.
Goswami, a prominent name among Kolkata’s literary circles, has penned the poems for Shob Charitro Kalponik, which is scheduled to release on August 28. Directed by the maverick Rituparo Ghosh, the film is replete with poems by Goswami, which interweave between the script, the dialogues, the characters and the situations. Rituparno Ghosh along with the stars from the film- Prosenjit Chatterjee, Jisshu Sengupta and Pauli Dam attended the gripping poetry session.
The poetry is an important element in the film, close to the heels of the three primary characters. With the male protagonist being a prolific poet who eventually bags an award, it was befitting that film had poems to suit the changing rhythm in the film.
Talking about how he came about to compose the poems for Shob Charitro Kalponik, Goswami said that the poems were written as early as 1997-1998. “Rituparno had approached me sometime in 1997-1998 and showed me the script of the film. He told me that he wanted me to compose poems based on the characters and the situations. I wrote about three to four poems then and finally, when the film took shape, the poems were included in the film,” Goswami said.
According Mahesh Ramanathan, Chief Operating Officer, BIG Pictures, the film is a refreshing break as the poems take the narrative forward. “Joy’s poetry shines through and is a crown jewel in Sob Charitro Kalponik.We want to reach out to the poetry connoisseurs in Kolkata through this promotion to burnish the film further prior to release” he said.
Shob Charitro Kalponik, follows the journey of a woman’s recollection of her marriage and her radical steps outside it. Radhika is asked by the publishers to complete the works of her late husband Indraneel. This compels her to study his work and therein begins her journey into the past. She realizes how much he romanticized their mundane everyday life. Yet in reality, he was at times insensitive to her, negligent towards his marital duties and apathetic towards their elderly maid. She then wonders how a poet could be unaware of his day-to-day life but highlight the moments from it in his art.
The narrative of Shob Charitro Kalponik, flows through four poems, two of them being love poems. However, Goswami’s favourite poetry is that which is seen in the film to be inspired by the character of Nandurmaa or the ageing maid. “Nandurmaa was a migrant from East Bengal who had begun to sustain a living by working as a maid in people’s homes. I had watched the maid in my home and in that of my friends to be able to write the poem on Nandurmaa,” Goswami explained.