Anglo-Indians’ Contributions to Indian Railways by V Anand, GM Southern Railway, 2003

This article was published in several media outlets such as newspapers and also in brochures and other material (in somewhat different forms, abridged or edited) brought out on the occasion of the National Anglo Indian Railway Convention in late 2002 / early 2003. It is reproduced here by courtesy of Rakesh Misra, Indian Railways.

Preface from original post to IRFCA: Here is an article by Mr. V. ANAND, these days GM/Southern Railway, written on the occasion of National Anglo Indian Railway Convention some time back. Makes very interesting reading for the nostalgia buffs. Regards, Rakesh Misra.

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The Anglo Indians undoubtedly made the Indian Railways what it is now. Their contribution to the development of the Indian Railways was immense. They dominated the Supervisory and higher management echelons particularly in pre Independence days.

Their most visible presence was in train operations and particularly the locomotive foot plate. Their least visible — almost invisible — but extremely important presence was in the telephone exchanges as Telephone Operators and in the Cipher Department.

The skills of Anglo Indian Locomotive Drivers were legendary. Their pride in workmanship and their devotion to duty was unparalleled.

As I complete 40 years of association with Indian Railways, I recollect the fond memories of my foot plate training. While I can recall a few names who were veritable heroes on the foot plate, there were hundreds of such unsung heroes toiling 365 days in the year and 24 hours a day to make railway travel safe and punctual.

Every small boy of my generation has dreamt of being an Engine Driver. I was no exception. During my school days in Simla, I would run off to the railway station and peer through the boiler tube fencing which separated the road from the railway tracks and watch the arrival and departure of the trains and the shunting movements. Occasionally, I was emboldened to run down from the booking office to the platform where I would land with a thump on the huge ‘Avery’ platform scale. My friends and I would take turns to jump on the platform scale to see who could register the maximum weight on the dial. We were, of course, chased away promptly by the station staff but we were undeterred till one day an engine driver stepped out and threatened to shove us into the firebox of the locomotive.

I used to gaze into the foot plate and admire the gleaming brass fittings and polished gauges. The Engine Driver in his immaculate navy blue woollen jacket would look down disdainfully. I resolved that one day I would enter the locomotive as a matter of right.

My first encounter with the Anglo Indian running staff was at Asansol in Eastern Railway. In its heyday, Asansol Steam Shed rivalled Bhusaval in Central Railway as the biggest Steam Shed. However, by the time we joined for training, the trunk routes had been electrified and our training was primarily on Diesel and Electric locomotives. Our Instructor was one Mr. Beale who used to play the saxophone at a local restaurant — an example of the versatility of the Anglo Indian community. Mr. Rose was a Driving Instructor and he taught us the rudiments of electric locomotive running and maintenance. Though officially we were not allowed to drive, we were encouraged to do so by the Instructors under their watchful eye. It was only then we learnt how much of skill is required to maintain punctual running.

The legendary drivers of Eastern Railway were, no doubt, M/s. Craker and Toker who used to work the diesel hauled Mail trains. When Rajdhani Express was introduced in 1969, I understand Mr. Craker took out the first train. Their knowledge of the route was profound. Mr. Craker could literally drive blindfolded, as he knew every feature of the track. I still remember telling him while on the footplate of 5 Up Howrah — Amristar Mail.

Self: Mr. Craker, you have just run through an ash pit at 100 kmph. Did you not know there is a speed restriction of 30 kmph! It says so right here in the Working Time Table!

Craker: Sir, the ash pit has been closed recently but the time table will be corrected only in the next issue. Till then, why should I slow down my train!

Every Shed had its own unofficial ’speed king’ — a Driver who could be relied upon to coax that little extra out of locomotive and run the trains punctually using every trick of the trade. Coincidentally they also had the best safety record and could judge the speed of the train without looking at speedometer. (In any case, very few locomotives had speedometers in those days!).

After my training in Eastern Railway, I was sent for training to Southern Railway. However, it would not be out of place to mention St. Dennis of South Eastern Railway who used to work the diesel locomotives of Waltair Shed attached to the 3 Up/4 Down Howrah — Chennai Mails. The first thing St. Dennis would do on entering the footplate was to cross himself, take out the little crucifix which he had round his neck and hang it on the engine brake handle. It is said that when St. Dennis was the driver, 3 Up/4 Down Mail would never lose time.

The Erode Loco Shed, whether in its heyday of steam or in its present reincarnation as Diesel/Electric Loco Shed, is amongst the best on the Indian Railways. The quality of workmanship of the maintenance and the driving skills of the crew are unsurpassed. The steam engines particularly those which went into Madras Railway were treated with loving care. There was, however, a practical monetary aspect as the South Indian Railway (SIR) was liable to bear a heavy fine, if their loco failed on the Madras and Southern Maratha Railways (MSM).

The speed king of Arakkonam Shed was Mr. Tennant. There was another famous driver by name Mr. De Cruz, who taught me the rudiments of steam loco driving and firemanship.

Our MG Steam Loco Shed training was at Villupuram, where Mr. Andrew Batty used to take the 137 Down Trivandrum Express from Villupuram towards Madurai. The 180 kms. of Villupuram — Tiruchchirappalli section would be covered in 3 Hours flat with one halt for watering at Vriddhachalam. By the time the train reached Lalgudi, the tender used to be almost empty. The drivers of Villupuram considered it infra dig to take water at Lalgudi. They would leave the village women disappointed as the water columns used to be made operative for 137 Down, but it would zoom pass without stopping. Mr. Andrew Batty’s knowledge of the road was also immense and he considered that restricting the speed of the YP locomotives to 75 kmph was an insult to the excellent track and would, therefore, sometimes touch speeds up to 85 kmph with perfect safety.

Mr. Andrew Batty had a border line case of cataract but such was the confidence of the Divisional Mechanical Engineer in Mr. Andrew Batty’s safe driving that he was allowed to continue as an ‘A’ Grade driver till his retirement and did not have to face the indignity of being medically decategorised.

Then there was Besterwich family of which the driver from Madurai is remembered with admiration. When the firemen went on strike in 1968, Besterwich used to bring the train up to Tiruchchirappalli with only one Yard Khalasi who had been given a crash course in Firemanship. No train in his charge would lose time during firemens’ strike or otherwise.

My interaction with drivers of Central Railway was at New Katni in Central Railway where the Dick brothers and Bent held sway. Stewart apart from being a good driver had great skills in Diesel Locomotive trouble shooting.

On one occasion an Anglo Indian driver (I forget his name) had written on the Engine Repair Book, “Engine failed due to thick black smoke white in colour coming out of exhaust …”. As we could not make anything of the remark, we called the driver to the Shed and cranked the engine in his presence. When we asked him what he meant by “thick black smoke white in colour”, he replied, “Sir, it is like Indira Gandhi’s hair!” When the engine was cranked, we indeed found thick black smoke coming out of the exhausts with white plumes of steam. The turbo super charger casing had a crack with the result that it was not able to send enough air to the engine. This led to the “thick black smoke”. The water was leaking out of the crack and getting converted into steam and indeed resembled Ms. Indira Gandhi’s hair! With his choice of vocabulary, this driver had saved us hours of investigation.

From Katni, it was on to Bhusaval where the huge Steam Loco Shed was on the verge of closure. The Anglo Indian drivers had progressed from Steam to Diesel and from Diesel to Electric locomotives. The most famous driver was Mr. Misquitta who could be relied upon to bring the train on time and was the inevitable choice for ceremonial special trains such as GM’s Inspection. M/s. Mascarenhas and Domingo were other names I can remember. The senior drivers had gone on to become supervisors and power controllers. De Cunha of Headquarters Office and M/s. De Mello and Noel Dickson of Bhusaval have retired.

The two incidents I narrate now sum up the essence of Anglo Indian engine drivers.

In those days, the Brindavan Express was perhaps the fastest rain on the Indian Railways and I remember driver Mc Gee (there was a write up about him in the popular Tamil Weekly ‘Ananda Vikadan’) once covered the distance of 140 Kms. from Jolarpettai to Bangalore Cantonment in 1 hour and 40 minutes. The Brindavan Express was known for its punctuality and the travellers waiting at Madras Central could set their watch at 19:45 Hrs. by the arrival of 40 Up Brindavan Express. One day the train was 5 minutes late. The Chief Operating Superintendent (COPS) Mr. Godferry Saldhana and Mr. E.S. Muthukrishnan, Chief Mechanical Engineer happened to be on the platform. When the train came to a halt, the COPS walked up to the engine and the following conversation ensued:

COPS: Mc Gee! you are late!

Mc Gee: So would you be, Sir, if you had to pass loop lines at five stations between Arakkonam and Madras.

Suffice it to say that the COPS called for the control charts and other records next day and ensured that the Brindavan Express would be given a line clear right through the main line. Such was his faith in Express drivers of the calibre of Mc Gee.

De Monte was a legend of Erode Loco Shed. On one occasion, when was driving 6 Up Nilgiri Express which was running a few minutes late, he received a message from the Section Controller.

“Driver of 6 Up to run at maximum permissible speed and make up the time.”

Mr. De Monte, however, did not make up a single minute. When he was called up by the Assistant Mechanical Engineer, Olavakkod to explain, he replied:

“Sir, does De Monte have to be told to make up time?”

It is understood that the Assistant Mechanical Engineer issued orders that Section Controllers should not issue such messages which would hurt the pride of our mail engine drivers.

For De Monte safety and punctuality were articles of faith. The same De Monte while driving 1 Down Mangalore Express which started late nearly an hour late from Madras, actually overtook Cochin Mail which had gone ahead.

One day a message was received that De Monte was feeling unwell and complaining of chest pain, and that a Doctor and ambulance should be ready at Erode. De Monte ended his last trip with the hand still on the brake lever, by sheer will power. The moment he stepped out of the foot plate he collapsed and was declared dead on arrival at the hospital. He was a true railwaymen till his last breath.

On the occasion of the National Anglo Indian Railway Convention let us bow our heads to unsung heroes like De Monte and send a prayer for their souls. Let us not forget our sacred duty to the travelling public. If we do so, the sacrifices made by railwaymen like De Monte would have been in vain.

Anglo Indian Heritage Collection – YouTube interview with Nigel Foote

I thank Nigel Foote for this wonderful contribution:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUr-vTQENHE

The Smiths of Agra and Delhi – Contribution by Mark Pinto

” No one will dispute that when it comes to writing on monuments of Delhi, known or unknown, no one does a better job than RV Smith. He not only tell you their history but also legends attached to them. So do Akhilesh Mittal and Rakhshanda Jalil. RV Smith is more prolific; his articles appear in just about every English papr in the country. I often wondered from where he gets all the information and inspiration. Now I know the answer: it is in his blood; he inherited it from his father Thomas Smith (1910-1995) of Agra.

The Smiths were soldiers of fortune serving in armies of warlords willing to pay them well. Thomas Smith’s father, Colonel Salvador Smith (1784-1871) was a Commander in the army of Daulat Rao Scindia. Thomas also started life as a soldier but was persuaded by a family friend Nawab Faiyaz Khan Sherwani to take over as a local correspondent for “The Statesman” of Calcutta. Thomas readily agreed to replace his musket for the pen. Among the celebrated cases he reported was of his English predecessor Fred Ellis who was involved in a brawl with one BD Gupta at a meeting of the Agra Cantonment Board. Gupta lost his temper and hit the Englishman three times with his chappal. The case was heard bu a subordinate Magistrate popularly known as Ghanta Babu: he used to have a gong struck whenever a case was called before him. Ghanta Babu convicted Gupta for the offence of hitting a man of the ruling race not once or twice but three times. Gupta went in appeal to the Allahabad High Court. The Hon’ble Judge passed strictures on Ghanta Babu saying that he was not fit to be a magistrate but the syce of a British Officer.

Thomas Smith was aversatile man. besides his mother tongue English, (he was Anglo-ndian) he knew Urdu, Persian and Hindi. During his leisure hours he cycled round the Agra ruins in his short-sleeved shirt, Khaki shorts and solar topee on his head picking up information on the monuments he visited. In the evening he dressed in Kurta-pyjama to attend mushairas and kavi sammelans. He often visited Delhi. During World War II he interviewed Pandit Nehru, M A Jinnah and the Mufti of Jerusalem. In sixty years of journalism, besides representing ‘The Statesman’, Thomas Smith edited ‘Globe Magazine’, ‘The Agra Citizen’ and ‘Agra Times’ as well as reported for ‘Reuters’. He also worked for    ‘The Times of India’,'ThePioneer’ and ‘The Hindustan Times’. His son RV published his ‘Rambles and Recollections of Thomas Smith’.

Thomas Smith married an Armenian lady Ruby Irene, who gave him seven children—four sons and three daughters. She died in 1989; her husband followed her six years later. Both are buried in Agra.”

The above article was written by Khushwant Singh,  and appeared in the Navhind Times Panorama dated August 26th, 2007.

Bow Barracks will be Forever

There is hope in sight for residents living in the century-old Bow Barracks in central Kolkata, now in the limelight for the eponymous film by Anjan Dutta running in theatres in India.

The barracks, constructed to house American soldiers in Kolkata after World War II, has inspired the film and swivelled the spotlight on its crumbling edifice, declared unsafe by the Kolkata Improvement Trust (KIT).

West Bengal Urban Development and Municipal Affairs Minister Ashok Bhattacharya said Wednesday that the state government would demolish the barracks and develop an enclave in the same place.

After a meeting with representatives of the Anglo-Indian community in the state secretariat Writers’ Building, the minister said the new Bow Barracks Enclave would comprise three residential towers – each six-storeys high, a community hall and an open space used as playground and for hosting social programmes.

Located in a lane off Chittaranjan Avenue in central Kolkata, the barracks is home to 133 families – Anglo-Indians, Chinese, Goans, Gujaratis, Biharis and Bengalis.

Bhattacharya said all the residents would be provided temporary shelter till the new buildings were ready.

‘The present renovation plan has already been endorsed by 111 of 131 families living in Bow Barracks. We will soon float an expression of interest to select a developer for the project,’ the minister said, adding that the government wants to hand over the land to a private developer who will develop the new estate.

Of the total 83 cottahs of land, the new buildings will come up on 43 cottahs. The rest would be handed over to the developer to build a commercial complex, a local report said.

Barry O’Brien, nominated Anglo-Indian member in the West Bengal assembly, said: ‘We are planning a children’s park on the premises and a permanent stage where festivities like Christmas can take place.’

Utmost care would be taken to conserve the traditional structure of the barracks so that its typical ambience was retained, he added.

Anglo Indians Defy Stereotypes by Soutik Biswas BBC News, Calcutta

Calcutta has a large Anglo-Indian community

Tumbledown Bow Barracks, a near century-old red brick housing block in a back alley in the eastern Indian city of Calcutta, has not changed much for its third generation resident Kimberley Gomes.

Many of its Anglo-Indian residents still feast on pork vindaloo, listen to Engelbert Humperdinck on the few remaining turntables, and swap tales on lazy afternoons sitting on their slatted verandas.

But for younger community members like Ms Gomes, college-going daughter of a travel manager father and a secretary mother, there is little time for such leisure.

After finishing college, she plans to become a stewardess in India’s flourishing airline industry.

So these days mum is pushing her daughter to join the local gym to lose the extra pounds to be shipshape in time for the job interview.

“A couple of girls in our housing complex have become hostesses with leading airlines. They are very happy,” says Ms Gomes, 22.

The flight attendants of Bow Barracks have defied a stereotype about Anglo-Indian women – who are generally teachers, secretaries or telephone operators.

‘No discrimination’

Across the narrow street of the colonial barracks turned Anglo-Indian ghetto, 24-year Leon Nathaniel, son of warehouse manager father and a telephone operator mother, is also demolishing a stereotype.

He works in a 24/7 call centre at the info-tech hub of Salt Lake on the city’s eastern outskirts.

In another time, Leon Nathaniel, archetypal Anglo-Indian young man, would have been working for the Indian railways, or a well-known local energy utility company. Other standard occupations were working as musicians or as waiters in city restaurants.

Ms Gomes wants to become an air-hostess

“I haven’t faced any discrimination. And there are more opportunities for us than ever before,” he says, taking a break from a Bow Barracks street cricket game where soft-drink crates double up as wickets.

On India’s 60th anniversary of independence, Anglo-Indians, a dwindling community of mixed Indian and English ancestry who speak in English, are redefining themselves.

They are taking advantage of the country’s economic boom in services, moving to jobs where proficiency in English is a bonus and out of ghettos into mixed neighbourhoods. They are gyrating to Bollywood pop, celebrating Hindu festivals, and dating outside the community.

Today, in Calcutta, Anglo-Indians own restaurants, beauty salons and property firms. They work for call centres, newspapers, airline companies, and hotels.

Cultural crossover

“We are imbibing local cultures, and local cultures are imbibing ours. The Anglo-Indian is happy to be a part of the new India,” says Barry O’Brien, a lawmaker in the West Bengal assembly and social activist.

He belongs to a well-known Anglo-Indian family which, in many ways, mirrors the community in India – making good of opportunities at home and abroad, and becoming a part of the mainstream.

His father Neil taught English, published books, and single-handedly made quiz shows popular in Calcutta. Barry’s elder brother Derek worked as a journalist before making knowledge shows a sizzling little industry. Today, Derek is also a voluble member of a regional anti-Communist political party where speaking in English can actually be a liability.

Leon Nathaniel works in the city’s info-tech sector

Barry has been a journalist, run a school, and is now an educator and activist. He, like Derek, has also joined politics, as an Anglo-Indian legislator in the West Bengal assembly nominated by the Communist-run government. (Most state governments in India nominate one member of the community to the local legislature.) The other brother, Andy, a well-known sports journalist, has migrated and lives in Australia.

“In the 1940s and 1950s, a lot of Anglo-Indians were asking themselves, ‘Do we belong here?’ Let us go home.’ Wherever they thought home was,” says Barry O’Brien.

‘Asserting identity’

So there were waves of community migration mainly to imaginary homelands like Australia, New Zealand, UK and Canada. There are even about 1,000 Anglo-Indian families working in the Gulf countries, according to one estimate.

Today, the considerably diminished community, mainly concentrated in eastern and southern cities like Calcutta and Chennai, doesn’t have a clue about how many of them have stayed back home.

There are a little over 100,000 of them left in India, reckons Harry MacLure, who lives in Chennai and publishes a community magazine. Others don’t want to hazard any guess in absence of a community census.

But small numbers haven’t stopped the community from asserting its identity – the 132 families of Bow Barracks, upset by plans to demolish the derelict housing block, recently negotiated with the authorities to move into a new building for the families in the neighbourhood.

Some of them were also incensed about their “stereotypical” depiction in a new feature film by local director Anjan Dutt, and even called for a ban on the film.

This leads many community members to wonder whether they could do more to mingle with the mainstream.

“For one, we could easily be more inclusive,” says Derek O’Brien.

“My dream of Anglo-Indian inclusiveness,” he says, “will be the day a member of the community enters the parliament on his own by winning votes rather than being nominated.”

That could be a difficult task on India’s increasingly fragmented political scene where caste and community groups root for their “own” parties, whereas, as Barry O’Brien quips, “I don’t even know how many people I represent!”

Bow Barracks Forever – Demands that the film be banned

Kolkata, Aug 1 (IANS) ‘Bow Barracks Forever’, a film on Anglo-Indians, has run into controversy for alleged portrayal of the community in a poor light even as a nominated Anglo-Indian legislator has demanded a ban on it.

The film, directed by Anjan Dutta and produced by Pritish Nandy Communications, portrays the joys and angst of Anglo-Indians living in Bow Barracks in central Kolkata, which had been constructed to house American soldiers in the city after World War II.

Barry O’Brien, the nominated Anglo-Indian MLA in the West Bengal assembly, has demanded that the film be banned unless it carries a statement that the story is a work of fiction.

‘The Anglo-Indian community has been shown in a poor light. The storyline about land sharks trying to grab Bow Barracks is far from truth,’ O’Brien told reporters here Tuesday.

He said the Christians and the Anglo-Indians have been portrayed as an idle community, but many of them work in the IT and corporate sectors.

Dutta, whose affinity towards the community is well known, tried to play down the controversy. ‘The story of ‘Bow Barracks’ is fictional. I have celebrated the love and affection for the Anglo-Indians in the film,’ he said.

Producer Pritish Nandy, however, sounded a tad belligerent. ‘There is nothing wrong in the representation of facts in the film. If there is an issue regarding insertion of a line (that it is a work of fiction), I will fight my case but will do nothing under pressure from a politician,’ a local report quoted him as saying.

The barracks, located in a lane off Chittaranjan Avenue in central Kolkata, is home to 132 families – Anglo-Indians, Chinese, Goans, Gujaratis, Biharis and Bengalis.

The state government is planning to reconstruct the barracks – which had been declared unsafe by the Kolkata Improvement Trust – under public private partnership with nominal contribution from the present occupants.

Bow Barracks Forever – Another Review

India’s shrinking Anglo-Indian community and its members’ changing lifestyles in Kolkata are the subject of a film shot over the past year that has just made it for its premier at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI).

Bow Barracks Forever, a 118-minute English-language film is the “story of survival of people in Kolkata and particularly of the Anglo-Indian community”, says director Anjan Dutt.

Dutt, who combines roles of actor, singer, musician, songwriter and filmmaker, has set his film in a century-old building that once served as the barracks for the US army.

When it left after World War II, the building was handed over to people connected with the Army, primarily Anglo-Indians as the mixed offspring of British and Indian stock are referred to in this part of the world.

“This was a community that gave Kolkata its police officers, its musicians and its hockey players. Over time, the place has disintegrated and it’s now seen as a dangerous area. It’s half Chinese, very much Goan and a very strange place,” says Dutt.

Dutt says he was motivated by architect Manish Chakrabarty, who was trying to convert Kolkata’s old buildings into heritage structures, so that they could not be demolished for new skyscrapers that spell big money in a bustling city.

“Calcutta Improvement Trust (CIT) has done nothing, and the (state) government has been ambivalent. It’s a huge red building that reminds you of Bow Street. It’s a huge place, where a large shopping complex could come up. Everyone seems waiting for it to collapse,” said Dutt.

“All characters are based on real people. They live very violently. Beat each other up violently. Make love violently. The (140 families) staying in the area believe that something good will come of the film,” said the director who has directed numerous telefilms for the ETV Bangali channel.

“Kolkata has never been just a Hindu Bengali city. It is multicultural, with an Armenian community, the Parsees, Chinese, Anglo Indians, and the Muslims,” Dutt says.

Dutt said that funds apparently sought to be sent to restore Bow Barracks, from an MP nominated to represent the Anglo-Indian community, had got caught in the channels and were not used.

During the shooting, which began on Christmas eve 2003, the director said he faced a problem with the local residents expecting to be paid more for their participation.

“I think they had a point. They were misinformed about our film, but to them making a cinema means making a lot of money,” said the director, whose film features in the Indian Panorama section of this year’s IFFI, currently on here.

Initially the film was to be called Aunty Lobo’s Wine, about the middle-aged Anglo Indian Emily Lobo, who lives by baking cakes and brewing red wine.

Dutt, when asked, stressed that attempts had been made to avoid stereotyping of cultural minorities, as often done by Bollywood.

“Bollywood has done damage. Always, the Nepali comes across as a joker, the Anglo-Indian is very brutal. It’s only Raj Kapoor whose ‘aunties’  (elderly Christian ladies) are very sweet and nice. Otherwise it’s only north Indians, specially Punjabis, who seem to be shown in good light,” he said.

Neel Dutt, who happens to be the director’s son and is music director for this movie, said doing the film was a “very enjoyable process”. This film’s cast includes noted actor Victor Banerjee, Lilette Dubey, Clayton Rodgers and Neha Dubey.

‘Bow Barracks Forever is a story of survival against all odds, a story that mirrors the spirit of the old and undying city, Kolkata,” says the director.

Bow Barracks Forever

Cast: Lilette Dubey, Victor Bannerjee, Moon Moon Sen, Sabyasachi Chakbraborty, Neha Dubey, Clayton Rodgers
Directed by: Anjan Dutt

Trust Pritish Nandy’s production house to give that crucial thrust to deserving cinema. Sure, Writer-director Anjan Dutt’s second release in two weeks (after the tepidly –received Bong Connection) is not as powerful and poignant a portrait of the rapidly-disintegrating Anglo-Indian community in Kolkata as Aparna Sen’s 36 Chowringee Lane.

The earlier film had a hauntingly intimate quality to its tragic theme of a woman’s solitude and emotional exploitation. Bow Barracks Forever is more rumbustious raunchy and scathing. The spoken word is constantly harsh and the songs (composed partly by the director) cheer up only for a few seconds.

Largely the narrative scans the dilapidated tenement with ruthless directness. A lack of romantic yearning is also the presence of a captivating candour in the narration. The more the director looks into these desperate lives for anguished statements, the less representational they seem in their communalized seclusion.

What the saucy screenplay lacks is a kind of subtlety. The characters are as broadly bravura as they are uninhibited in their expressions of geo-political indignance. Perhaps the ‘ideas’ tend to swamp the emotions at times. The one tenement in Anjan Dutt’s plot seems to encompass characters of every shape and size, from the over-sexed rebellious housewife(Moon Moon Sen, in full-blown form) to the battered wife(Neha Dubey, more hysterical than required)….from the footloose moorless boy(Clayton Rodgers) who sneaks into the battered wife’s bed to his strong-and-dignified mother(Lilette Dubey) who continues to believe that her elder son will summon her to Australia although he hasn’t spoken to her for four years.

These are ‘real’ people given that cinematic tweak which separates the mannequins from the flesh-and-blood types. The cinematography by Indranil Mukherjee invests these derelicts with a life beyond the womb of the screenplay. The editing, though, could have been crisper. Some of the situations tend to get aggressively monotonous. And you wonder, is the monotony a symptom of the characters’ lives, or is that simply an imagined virtue?

And what pray tell, was the planted pre-interval murder in loo, if not a ploy to get the audience back in their seats quickly from the loo? Somewhere towards the end the gifted Roopa Ganguly shows up as an abandoned wife seeking solace from the abandoned husband. Such geometrical gyrations do not take away from the distinctly cutting edge in the plot.

The skyline of the screem-play is ceaselessly scattered with salacious tidbits. Love-making scenes come on with energetic emphasis to remind us derelict lives needn’t be dull. The juices and aromas from the kitchen and bedroom hit your senses in perpetual motions.

Standing tall and statately at the center of this awry universe of disoriented fringe- people is Lilette Dubey. What an actor! No Violet Stonehem from 36 Chowringhee Lane, Lilette plays her character with delicious abandon. And yet there’s a restrain and dignity in her gait and language, quite like what Shabana Azmi had created in her lonely Anglo-Indian character in Anjan Dutt’s Bada Din.

The other imposing performance comes from the irrepressible Victor Banerjee. After seeing him do his ho-hum two-bit in two Hindi films Tara Rum Pum and Apne it’s a joy to watch Victor emerge victorious as the twinkle-eyed sodden trumpet player who chuckles loudly in the face of adversity and asks the Lilette character for a li’l kiss (“No real smooch or anything”) just to remind you that life goes on….come what may. Another tale of inspirational deprivation? Not quite. Bow Barracks Forever takes the marginal stereotypes by the b…lls and turns them into something distinctly glorious, if not grand.

A must-see for those who love stories about tribulation and redemption. They don’t make films about such characters with such ironical integrity any more.