SOWMEN MITTER | সৌমেন মিটার

🟥  Feroze Gandhi was born Feroze Jehangir Ghandy on September 12, 1912, at Tehmulji Hospital in Bombay (now Mumbai). He belonged to a Gujarati Parsi family. His father, Jehangir Faredoon Ghandy, was a marine engineer, and his mother was Rattimai. Following his father’s death, Feroze moved to Allahabad to live with his maternal aunt, Dr. Cooverbai Commissariat. Contrary to persistent rumors, he was not born a Muslim, nor was his father named "Feroze Khan." He was born into Zoroastrianism, the faith of the Parsi community. The political controversy surrounding his religion is a product of modern misinformation, largely circulated by right-wing political factions aimed at delegitimizing the political lineage of the Nehru-Gandhi family. Feroze changed the spelling of his surname from "Ghandy" to "Gandhi" during his early political awakening, driven by his deep admiration for Mahatma Gandhi and his active participation in the freedom movement during th...

This frame goes back a few years, to that rather unusual phase of the Corona pandemic when, as perceived by many of us, the immediate threat no longer seemed quite as menacing as it had been during its earlier, more frightening days. Life was gradually limping back to something resembling normalcy. People were beginning to venture out with greater confidence, educational activities were slowly gathering momentum, and the government, too, seemed to have become somewhat more lenient in enforcing restrictions. Of course, the virus hadn't quite disappeared, and caution was still the order of the day, but the atmosphere was certainly less apprehensive than before. Looking at this photograph now, I am reminded of those days, the students, the books, the lessons and the rather peculiar circumstances under which we were trying to keep the wheels of education moving. But there is one thing I simply cannot figure out. Why on earth was I looking so terribly serious, almost as though I had jus...

🟥  The death of Jogen Chowdhury on 25 October 2026, at the age of 87, marks the passing of one of the most distinctive and influential artists of modern India. For more than six decades, he developed a visual language that was unmistakably his own: a language of sinuous lines, distorted bodies, intricate cross-hatching, expressive faces and figures that seemed to carry within themselves the anxieties, contradictions and quiet tragedies of human existence. Yet to describe Chowdhury merely as a celebrated painter would be to underestimate the breadth of his achievement. He was an artist who transformed the ordinary human body into an extraordinary instrument of social observation; a Bengali cultural figure whose personal memories were inseparable from the historical experiences of Partition and displacement; a teacher who helped shape subsequent generations of artists; an institution-builder who believed in preserving and nurturing artistic traditions; and a public intellectual who,...

🟥 Indian theoretical physicist Professor Ashoke Sen has been named the recipient of the prestigious 2026 Oskar Klein Medal, becoming the first Indian to earn this distinguished recognition. Instituted in honour of the eminent Swedish theoretical physicist Oskar Klein, the medal has been awarded annually since 1988 by Stockholm University in association with the Nobel Committee for Physics of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Its illustrious list of previous recipients includes some of the most influential figures in modern physics, among them Stephen Hawking, Peter Higgs, Chen-Ning Yang, Steven Weinberg and Hans Bethe. As part of this honour, Professor Sen delivered the Oskar Klein Memorial Lecture on October 22 at the AlbaNova Centre of Stockholm University. His lecture, titled “Gravity from Strings and Strings from Gravity,” explored ideas at the frontier of contemporary theoretical physics. The award acknowledges Sen’s groundbreaking work in string theory, an appro...

🟥 খুব স্বাভাবিক কারণেই আইডেনটিটির বা পরিচিতিসত্তার রাজনীতিতে আমি কখনো বিশ্বাস করিনি। কোনরকম কোনো আইডেনটিটির রাজনীতিতেই না। কিন্তু, সাম্প্রতিক বেশ কিছু ঘটনায় আমার মধ্যেকার সেই সুপ্ত প্রাদেশিক আইডেনটিটির বোধ ক্রমশ তীব্র হচ্ছে। চোরবাগানের পুজোর গুরুত্বপূর্ণ কর্মকর্তাকে এবিপি আনন্দের সাংবাদিক হিন্দীতে প্রশ্ন করছে। সে বাংলা বলতে পারে না? না পারলে, কেনো পারে না? বাংলায় থাকে না? বাঙালীর পুজোয় দাদাগিরি করবে, গায়ের জোর দেখিয়ে পুজোর মাসখানেক আগে কমিটি দখল করবে; অথচ বাংলা বলবে না? পুজোর আগে দেখছিলাম, কোনো এক প্রমোদ দুবে তার রাজনৈতিক প্রতিপক্ষের উদ্দেশে রণহুঙ্কার দিচ্ছে। সেও কোনো এক পুজো কমিটির নেতা, এবং অবশ্যই শাসক দলের অন্তর্বাসের ভেতরে লুকোনো কেশরাশির কোনো একটি। আনন্দবাজার পত্রিকা অফিসে যারা তাদের পছন্দের রাজনৈতিক রঙ করতে গিয়েছিলো - কারা তারা? একজনও বাঙালী। একজনও ঠিকঠাক করে বাংলা উচ্চারণ করতে পারে?  পুজোর এই দু'তিন দিনে, নাগেরবাজার, হাওড়া সহ বেশ কয়েকটি যায়গায় যারা বইয়ের স্টল ভ্যান্ডালাইজ করলো, তাদের অনেকের জিভ তো এখনো বাংলা বলার জন্য তৈরীই হয়নি। বংশপরম্পরায় বাংলায় থাকবে, অথচ ...

🟥 Smita Patil left us far too soon, at just 31. Yet, in that tragically brief life and career, she accomplished what many actors fail to achieve in decades: she transformed the very idea of what a woman could represent on the Indian screen. Born on this day in 1955, Smita Patil was much more than an exceptionally gifted actress. She was an artist with a remarkable instinct for inhabiting the lives of women whose stories mainstream cinema often chose to ignore. Her performances carried the weight of social realities—class oppression, gender discrimination, economic exploitation, sexual politics and the quiet, persistent struggle for dignity. She did not merely portray characters; she seemed to understand the historical and social circumstances that had shaped them. Consider Manthan, where the collective struggle of rural dairy farmers becomes a story of empowerment and social transformation. In Bhumika, she explored the emotional complexities of a woman attempting to negotiate her iden...