No, No, He is not the actor. He is the prompter. The problem is, he doesn't want to stay behind the curtain.

Prompting in theatre is now a dying art. Most theatre productions hardly use prompters these days. The actors are expected to memorize their lines before they even think of getting up on stage. But not too long ago, prompters were an essential part of any theatre. Two prompters would sit on two sides of the stage, hiding behind the wings and in a soft voice read the lines for the actors. The level of their voice should be such that it should be audible only to the actors on stage and not to the audience.   This requires special skills. Also, for the actors, they need know how to perform with constant prompting going on from the sides. Hence prompters also need to rehearse with the actors. One of the greatest virtues a prompter should possess is to be selfless and not to look for audience appreciation. The actors collect all the accolades and applause, while the prompter need to stay satisfied with an occasional thank you from the actor. That too if he is lucky.  Most of the time a prompter would have memorized all the lines of all characters and can possibly perform better on stage if given a chance.

But for the prompter, many actors wouldn’t have reached their pinnacle of fame and fortune. I have seen many famous actors who wouldn’t say a single line on stage without the help from prompters.  In USA, when theatre productions come from India with star studded cast, the prompters are left behind to cut costs. Local actors volunteer to prompt  these famous stars of the easter years.  But sometimes, unfortunately, age catches on to these senior actors and their hearing loses its sharpness. And this often results in a tragic situation on stage. The prompter yells at the top of their voice from behind the wings, while the actors echo them. This results in a cacophony that the audience needs to suffer.

But I guess, these days prompters are also demanding their rights to be recognized. Few years ago, we were invited to perform our play by one of the north American organizations.  Before our play, the organizers themselves were scheduled to perform a play. From back stage we noticed that they had elaborate sets on stage. And behind each structure, there was a person with a copy of the script in their hands. On inquiring we were told that the director didn’t want to depend only on two prompters on the sides, but also wanted to place few of them strategically on stage such that his actors have access to the lines from any point on stage.  I didn’t have the opportunity to witness the final result, but one of the actors confessed that the play was cut short by about half an hour due to missed lines. But the director was indeed grateful to his team of prompters. Their names were printed in big bold fonts on their commemorative brochure along with the actors.

1. The Free Dictionary by FARLEX:  This dictionary app not only gives you meanings of

The Free Dictionary

english words that you are looking for but it also includes a Thesaurus. When you open the app, it shows you a “word of the day” and an “article of the day”. So if you are looking to improve your vocabulary, open the app few times a day and keep browsing.

2. TED : TED.com is one of my favorite websites where I get to watch and listen to truly  inspiring lectures. The TED app is an elegant way to enjoy these videos on your iPhone when you have some free time. Try to use this in a WiFi enabled area to reduce your data usage.

3. Dropbox:  One major problem with iPhones is that it does not allow you to store or back up your data (pictures, document, video etc.) in a external storage like an SD card.  The iCloud feature does provide some off line storage facility but there is some limit. Dropbox can help you extend your external cloud storage to save your data. You can get a limited amount (2GB) at start but if you invite your friends to join then you get more bonus free space. So please use the link to get yourself an account and help me get some more free space. Box.net is also another similar app.

TED

4.  Gasbuddy :  In these days when gas prices are shooting through the roof, an app which tells where to find the cheapest gas station is a great boon. Gasbuddy does just that. It uses your current location and gives list of gas stations and their prices. The data is obtained through crowd sourcing and you can also update gas prices if you see a changed price.

5. Genius Scan : This cute app has come in handy several times since I installed it on my phone. If you need to scan a document and send to somebody by email, you no longer need to take the document to a scanner. All you need to do is open this app, shoot a picture of the document, make some adjustments (scaling etc) and send a pdf or jpeg scanned copy via email. It’s that simple.  I can promise you, you’ll love this app.

In future posts, I’ll feature few more apps I like. In the meantime, if you have any free app that you would like to share, drop a note.

Basanta Koomar Roy's Publicity Brochure

Sudipta Bhawmik

In 1910, a young Bengali student from Calcutta arrived at the University of Wisconsin to complete his BA degree. His name was Basanta Koomar Roy.  In those days, coming to America for higher education was a growing trend.  Rabindranath Tagore pioneered the trend by sending his son Rathindranath to USA for studying agriculture for he felt that “It is better to be a farmer from Illinois than to be a gentleman from Oxford!” Basanta Koomar being an ardent fan of Rabindranath, was most likely inspired to come to America for the same reasons. He later mentioned (in his publicity brochure),   “… by receiving an American education he would be able to serve his Motherland more efficiently.”  And although he did not go back to India, he did serve his Motherland handsomely.  Basanta Koomar took up journalism with a mission to bring India closer to America.  During the early part of the twentieth century, information about India came to America filtered by the British media. The nationalist uprisings in India, the literary and cultural renaissance taking place in Bengal was hardly noticed in America. Basanta Koomar took upon the duty to inform the Americans about India. He wrote in almost all major American publications about  British misrule and atrocities in India,  about the art and culture of India, as well other social, political and cultural issues.  However, the pinnacle of his career came when he published the first ever English biography of Tagore, “Rabindranath Tagore – The man and his poetry” in 1915, less than two years after Rabindranath was awarded the Nobel prize. But Basanta was writing about Rabindranath for quite some time then, and the book was essentially a compilation of his earlier articles. His first article on Tagore was published in the July issue of “The Open Court” in 1913, well before the Nobel prize announcement.  According to Sujit Kumar Mukherjee, the noted Tagore researcher, Basanta Koomar Roy was one of the three people primarily responsible in making Rabindranath well known to the West. The other two being W. B. Yeats and Ezra Pound.   Basanta Koomar’s biography of Tagore was a huge success and it was more popular than several other biographies that were published during the post Nobel prize era. The critics liked it mostly because it was written by a fellow Bengali who read Tagore in his mother tongue and not his translations.  His articles and translations  on Tagore were in high demand. He toured around the country lecturing about Rabindranath and his works.

But apparently, Rabindranath  was not at all happy with Basanta Koomar Roy.  It seems some of his admirers in America had informed him that Basanta Koomar was freely translating and publishing Tagore’s works  without his permission and making money.  He was also informed that Basanta Koomar was  spreading all kinds of misinformation and lies about him.    However, till date nobody has been able to find any such article by Basanta Koomar that spoke ill of Rabindranath. Unfortunately, Rabindranath did not make any attempts to verify the allegations. Rather he was so upset that he wanted to return his biography by Basanta Koomar without ever reading it.

But after 1916, Basanta Koomar seems to have stopped writing about Tagore for reasons that we can only speculate about. He became more active with the Indian nationalist movement and was working closely with Taraknath Das, Lala Lajpat Rai and others. During that time, the American immigration authorities (under the influence of British agents) were actively pursuing deportation of  Indian immigrant laborers. Basanta Koomar along with his colleagues (Taraknath Das, Agnes Smedley and others) fought against the Immigration authorities in US courts and freed these Indian immigrants held in detention.   He was an active member of the Friends of Freedom for India, and the editor of the India News service. He kept on writing about the social, political and economic issues in India. But those articles hardly mentioned about Tagore.  He also later translated and published  Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s novel Anandamath. He was also an actor and had acted at the Neighborhood Playhouse in “Salut Au Mond”, a play based on Walt Whitman’s poetry.

Although Basanta Koomar stopped writing and lecturing about Tagore, but from Tagore’s biography (by Prasanta Chandra Paul) and other sources, we know that Basanta Koomar did not sever his relationship with Tagore. Basanta met Rabindranath during his later US trips and even arranged for his lecture.  Rabindranath too seems to have received him quite pleasantly during these meetings. In one letter (during Tagore’s 1916-17 US trip)  Rabindranath’s secretary Pearson wrote to his son  Rathindranath about his meeting with Basanta Koomar, “… your father is always very magnanimous to him.”

Today, Basanta Koomar Roy is a forgotten name. He is only known to a handful of people of this generation. But as an Indian American, I feel that we have been unjust to this man.  Basanta Koomar may not have always  followed the journalistic norms (although that’s a topic for a separate debate), but his contributions were significant. The recognition we have as Indians to the American people, we owe quite a bit of it to people like Basanta Koomar Roy, who was possibly the first Indian American Journalist.

Basanta Koomar Roy died in New York in 1949.

My play “The Last Flames” is an homage to this predecessor of ours, as much as it is to the  great poet Rabindranath Tagore.

“The Last Flames”

April 15, 2012; 3:00pm and 5:30pm

Fahs Theater,
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Princeton
50 Cherry Hill Road, Princeton, NJ 08540
Written and directed by Sudipta Bhawmik
Cast: Sankar Ghoshal, Keka Sirkar, Abhijit Neogy
Music: Akaash Deep;
Sound: Dwaipayan Mukherjee, Lights: Subhodev Das
Admission: $15.00
(The event is free for active ECTA Members )

Synopsis: Basanta Koomar Roy, an expatriate journalist from India, has been credited by Tagore researchers as a key person (besides W. B Yeats and Ezra Pound) responsible for popularizing Rabindranath Tagore in USA. But Roy fell from his idol’s grace for reasons that torment many a biographer and journalist even today. “The Last Flames” attempts to re-examine the relationship between Roy and Tagore through a fictional encounter and gives us a peek at the human side of the great Poet’s personality. Samar, a young trainee journalist, comes to interview Basanta Koomar Roy at his apartment in New York city, sometime in 1948. Basanta is excited to share his experience as an Indian nationalist freedom fighter in USA. But Samar tells him that he is interested in knowing about his experience with Rabindranath Tagore, since he was the first to write Tagore’s biography in English for the American people. Basanta refuses to talk about his Gurudev until Samar uses his ultimate weapon that opens the flood gates of memories and emotions of this old admirer of Tagore.

The following obituary of Basanta Koomar Roy was published in The New York Times on June 8, 1949: Basanta Koomar Roy, Indian author and free-lance journalist, who had lived in this country for many years, died on Sunday in St. Luke’s Hospital after a brief illness. His home was at 116 West Eightieth Sreet. Born in Orissa Province, India, and a member of the Brahmin caste, Mr. Roy came to the United States around 1910 and studied at the University of Wisconsin, from which he was graduated and where he was later an extension lecturer. He was instrumental in arranging a lecture at the university in 1916 by the great Indian poet, the late Rabindranath Tagore. Mr. Roy was long a writer and speaker for Indian freedom and has been active in the Friends of Freedom for India. He was the author of a biography of Mr. Tagore and of “Dawn over India”, a book telling of the Indian underground movement against British rule.

Admission: $15.00

Contact: kaudata@yahoo.com

(The event is free for active ECTA Members )

Recently ECTA presented a one man show, “Banijye Basate Lakshmi”, a play written and performed by Sudipta Bhawmik, and directed by Sankar Ghoshal. Gagan Goswami, a motivational speaker, talks to his audience and inspires them to be successful in business. In a ninety minute long speech, Gagan chronicles his colorful journey as a Bengali entrepreneur seeking the answer to the most important question of one’s life – Why?

Recently I watched this wonderful TED talk by Alain de Botton. He was talking about atheism, but unlike many other more radical atheists, he did not reject religion altogether. His philosophy is that, there is a class of people who do not really believe in the existence of god or gods, but they like the other aspects of religion like the rituals, the music, the literature, the art, the myths. Alain says that these aspects of religion, the more popular aspects which enrich us in many positive ways, we don’t have to reject them. I don’t want to go into the details of his talk, you can watch the video and listen for yourself, but this concept which Alain calls Atheism 2.0 rang a bell in me.
I love to attend our Durga Puja festivals, love to hear the mythological stories associated with Durga and Mahishasur although I don’t believe they really exist. I love to listen to the sonorous chanting of the “Chandi” or listen to the ecstatic Kirtan music and feel elated. I love Shyama Sangeet, I like to watch plays and listen to stories of Hindu mythology and the epics, although I don’t feel compelled to believe them as historical truth. And I believe, I am not alone. Many of us who have been sitting on the fence of religion, wondering which side to land on, now have this third option – Atheism 2.0. We refuse to be indoctrinated by religion, refuse to believe that ours is the best and for that matter any religion to be better than any other. But we gladly accept the goodies that these religions offers us and thus enrich ourselves with those aspects.
I would like to know what others think about this.

Best Student Film: Aadmi Ki Aurat Aur Anya Kahaniya (Directed by Amit Dutta and produced by FTII, Pune)
Best Production by a Woman: Sunanda Shetty for Desire Of a Woman
Best Background Score: Pt. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt (Desire of a Woman)
Best Documentary (feature length): Inshallah Football directed by Ashvin Kumar
Critic’s Choice Award (for a film): Flying Fish directed by Sanjeewa Pushapkumara
Outstanding Debut Feature ( both male & female): Meherjaan directed by Rubaiyat Hossain, produced by Ashique Mustafa
Best Actor (Male): Rajat Kapoor (I am 24) and Adil Hussain (GANGOR)
Best Actor (Female): Priyanka Bose (Gangor) and Humaima Malik (Bol)
Best Directorial Debut By a Woman: Anjali Menon for Lucky Red Seeds
Best Director (feature): Shoaib Mansoor (Bol), Italo Spinelli (Gangor)
Best Director (Female): Rubaiyat Hossain (Meherjaan)
Best Feature: Gangor directed by Italo Spinelli, produced by Niravana Entertainments and Bibi Films (Italy)