Jatayu theme at Sukeas Street puja to commemorate birth centenary of Santosh Dutta
Kolkata: On Sukeas Street, a neighbourhood puja working within modest means but competing fiercely in imagination, has turned nostalgia into its strongest material. Its theme this year is Santosh Dutta, the actor whose comic timing, expressive face and unmistakably Bengali mannerisms made him one of the most-loved figures in Bengali cinema. The pandal treats the theme like a walk through Bengali memory. Using sculpture, painted frames, light, shadow and installations, it recreates moments from Dutta’s life and screen presence. Old Kolkata lanes, a theatre stage and the suggestion of a film set appear in layers, allowing visitors to move through spaces that evoke both the city and the cinema that shaped him. Dutta’s association with Satyajit Ray forms the installation’s emotional centre. Ray brought him from theatre to cinema, and the pandal marks that turning point through ‘Parash Pathar’, his debut film. From there, it invokes ‘Teen Kanya’, ‘Mahapurush’, ‘Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne’, ‘Sonar Kella’, ‘Jana Aranya’, ‘Joi Baba Felunath’ and ‘Hirak Rajar Deshe’ through character studies, symbolic props and stylised tableaux. “I have drawn heavily from ‘Joi Baba Felunath’ and the character Lalmohan Babu who uses the ‘chadmanaam’ or pen name of Jatayu. We have tried to recreate the Ghoshal family house thakurdalan showcased in the movie. Since space is limited, we have used the balconies of the Srimani Bari as part of the thakurdalan installation,” explained artist Indrajit Ray, adding that a golden Ganesh has been kept inside the lion’s jaw just like in the film. The