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Kolkata used to be a thinking city, by Ashish Avikunthak

Filmmaker Ashish Avikunthak feels Kolkata used to be a thinking city.

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I consider myself a video or film artist more than a filmmaker, because I make films that exist outside the market. To me, a filmmaker is someone who produces a certain body of work to seek out an audience in order to earn his living. This is why it was so important that my film, Rati Chakravyuh, was shown in Kolkata, because the city has always had a history of providing patronage to the arts and artists.

Another reason why I wanted to screen it in Kolkata was because of the language. I made it in Bengali and anywhere else in the world it would be a film that is read instead of being heard. Bengali, and I think all the other Indo Aryan languages are changing; they are becoming more pragmatic and more minimalist.many words are slowly going out of currency. For example renaming Calcutta to Kolkata has totally erased the name Kolikata, the more formal version of the city's name in Bengali. Kolkata was central to my film.

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It was shot in Latu Babu Chatu Babu temple in north Kolkata and revolved around the concept of adda and other Kolkatacentric events, especially the riots. People don't associate riots with Kolkata anymore. They think of a Godhra or Mumbia, but the worst riots in history were the partition riots of 1946. At least 10,000 were killed.far higher than the figures of Godhra and yet there is a generation that does not know about them. Kolkata has a reputation as a thinking city. But now I would have to say that it is no more a thinking city than Mumbai or Delhi.

It's becoming more provincialised, and the more it loses its cosmopolitan edge the more it hurts its intellectual one too. It sounds harsh but I feel Kolkata is a paler version of itself. Intellectually and artistically, It's no more what it was through the 80s and 90s.

The author is a filmmaker. His film Rati Chakravyuh will be screened in Shantiniketan later this month.