“What is ludicrous, what is strange, what is impossible – this is about them. This is about where imagination can take you, and if you cannot go there, this book isn’t for you.” So said Sukumar Ray, as an introduction to his book of nonsensical poetry Abol Tabol.
Perhaps it was this very ability to take nonsensical verse and characters seriously, that led the Nabin Palli Durga Puja Committee in Hatibagan (North Kolkata) to re-create scenes, rhymes, and nonsense verse from the pages of Abol Tabol on the streets of Hatibagan.
As a text Ray’s Abol Tabol celebrates a hundred years, an apt time perhaps to re-imagine this flight of fantasy, and let it spill over as a breathing piece of art onto the streets of Kolkata. It wouldn’t be presumptuous to say that what artist Anirban Das has done here with the text (many of which are also taken from Ray’s unpublished poems) and the art is part re-imagining and part giving the old text a new life by putting it out there on the streets for people to interact with it, while they go about their daily business.
The pandal replicates the facade of the house where Sukumar Ray lived. As I walked into the lane leading…
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