Return of the Random

While we were being brought up in a carefully cultivated English wilderness picking daffodils and chasing the rain away,Grandma tried to ensure that Ramgorurer Chhana did not pale in the British glamour of Humpty Dumpty. Decades on,things haven’t changed much. Children are still fed a colonial diet of egg-heads,mice romping on clocks or Jack and Jill’s misadventures. It’s just that Grandma and her army of Abol Tabol heroes are lost on this generation’s tech-happy child. Nonsense Mahul,a compilation of animations of Sukumar Ray’s poems might just change that. Conceptualised by Mahul,a city based group of poetry performers,the album comprises animated videos of six Sukumar Ray poems – Danre Danre Droom,Huko Muko Hyangla,Shabda Kalpa Droom,Ram Gorurer Chhana,Ekhushe Ain and Chor Dhora. The CDs and DVDs come with English subtitles and the poems have been strung to tune by the band. “We perform all kinds of poems on stage. But we had always wanted to revive people’s interest in Sukumar Ray’s poems. Also this generation’s children have so many distractions that they need to be initiated to Ray’s works properly,” says Palash of the six-member Mahul.

It was difficult to choose just six poems from the nearly inexhaustible cache of Ray’s works. “We finally decided to work on the ones that we perform most on stage,” says Palash. Post-selection,the music for the poems were ‘arranged’ the way it is done in case of songs. “We don’t exactly sing the poems out. One or two lines in the poems are recited in a sing song way,” says Palash. Nonetheless,the music for the animation was scored after a lot of brainstorming. “Like we have used a lot of drums for Shabda Kalpa Droom. The piece has a very rock-feel to it,” points out Palash.

While most of Ray’s poems are works of multiple metaphors and interesting narratives,Mahul tried to give the poems their own little touch while animating them. “It’s blasphemous to play around with Sukumar Ray’s poems. But we tried to incorporate our interpretation of his poems in the videos too,” says Palash. So,the Ram Gorurer Chhana video comprises two visual narratives that progress simultaneously. “We have used a split screen for the purpose. While one half of the screen shows the literal transcreation of Ray’s poem,the other half explores how our city is abound in characters that are clones of Ram Gorurer Chhana— judges,policemen,even children who seem to be strangers to true happiness for various reasons,” explains Palash.

Most of Ray’s compositions are accompanied by his own illustrations that have usually stayed on with Ray fans. “But to initiate children we have given the characters a slight contemporary touch though the basic outline of the characters remain the same. Because we have noticed that children who like Spiderman are not too fond of the Bantul-like graphics. We tried to make the characters appealing to everyone,” says Niloy Biswas of Animatzion,who has helped animate the poems.