Calcutta before Kolkata
It all started with a search for sandwiches. IT consultant and part-time filmmaker Vineet Arora was looking for a bite when he heard a busker playing the guitar on Kolkata’s Southern Avenue. The busker was a student from Jadavpur University. He was also selling sandwiches off the back of his bicycle.
Also standing and listening was marketing manager Jaimin Rajani, out on his daily walk. As Arora recorded the performance on his camera, he and Rajani got chatting and discovered a shared love for Kolkata, for films and for music. Later that year, when Arora was planning a tribute to Bob Dylan, he asked if Rajani wanted to collaborate. The 2019 documentary If Not for You (available on Vimeo) is the tale of Kolkata’s long love affair with the rock-‘n’-roll icon, told through interviews with Indian musicians inspired by the bard.
The two men had a good time working on that film and decided to keep going, celebrating their love for Kolkata in a series of short films, 10 to 30 minutes long, on heritage gems tucked away in the city.
There’s one on Hemen & Co, a musical instruments store that makes its own instruments, and once sold a sitar to George Harrison of The Beatles. There’s a short film on the little-known, 110-year-old Manackjee Rustomjee Parsi Dharamshala, which offers subsidised lodging for Parsis and delicious authentic Parsi fare for all. The third film is on the iconic idol makers and sculptors G Paul & Sons.
Two more are in the works, one on the city’s vinyl enthusiasts and the other on the small family-run Chinese mess Ah Leung, which serves authentic fare such as handmade noodles and pork wontons. You can get a meal here for Rs 100, in the Hakka cuisine of Guangdong, but no concessions are made to the Indian palate. The food, it is said, tastes just as it would in the original coastal province of southern China.
The first three films were released on YouTube in 2020; the fourth and fifth are due out later this year. Funded and shot by Arora, 47, Rajani handles scripting, logistics and research.
Making the films has been a way of learning more about the city they love. “I enjoy exploring the streets on foot. Those long aimless walks have led me to discover some of these interesting landmarks,” Rajani says. The response has been heartening too, especially from the Indian diaspora. The documentary on the dharamshala touched a chord, drawing comments on Facebook from Parsis around the world.
There are now plans to expand the series to other cities. Rajani, who was born in Mumbai and lived and worked there from 2013 to 2018, wants to feature the island city next. He’d focus, he says, on lesser-known institutions such as the over-100-year-old Kalbadevi textile market and the long-surviving community lunch homes known as khanawals, which were started to cater to migrant workers, mainly those employed in the growing number of mills in Byculla, Parel, Kalbadevi and Dadar. Some still survive, the food remains hearty, and a thali even today costs as little as Rs 70.