Let them tell their own story (Lakhon Mein Ek, a web series)

How many of you have heard of Biswa Kalyan Rath? Or watched him perform on stage or on

YouTube?

For the uninitiated, Rath is a stand-up comedian who broke into the scene when he and fellow comedian Kanan Gill presented the ‘viral’ Pretentious Movie Reviews on YouTube. He then hosted his own shows, cracked the audience up at his gigs and so on and so forth.

I, myself, was unknown to this name till yesterday. Because I am not into stand-up comedy and moreover, entertainment for me is much more than what becomes ‘viral’.

But, somewhere, while watching Rath’s video clips just now, I realised I need to stay abreast of these remarkably talented young fellows. Not only was he funny, but that voice, gait, confidence and language play were traits that I haven’t seen in many youngsters of late. His self-deprecating jokes were sharp and sarcastic and I know where they come from. As Bengalis, we almost always passed snide remarks at the Oriya clan, not realising that they can be talented as hell as well. My interactions with local weavers of Odisha changed my perspective completely. And now Rath.

Anyway. I got introduced to Rath through Lakhon Mein Ek, a web-series he produced for Amazon that stars Ritvik Sahore. While ad clips familiarised me with the series a while back, yesterday I finally watched it. At 12 in the night, I pushed myself to complete the series at one go. Because, it was unputdownable. Compelling, realistic and dark to a large extent, the series revealed that sharp and sarcastic side of Rath that he often passes off with a laugh on stage.

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Swami (1977)

As teenagers, we were brought up on a steady dose of classic Bengali literature. While Rabindranath

Tagore was a constant, my mother insisted we tick off a reading list comprising Sarat Chandra Chatterjee, Bibhutibhushan Banerjee and Manik Bandopadhyay. During the interim between my graduation and masters, I voraciously read titles by all these literary greats. While each one bore a fascinating style, I found Sarat Chandra's works very easy to relate to. And understand. He was an everyman's writer portraying the plight of women in the society of the then Bengal. Interesting stories that you we heard about from our grandmas found place in his works as well. Woman were a pivotal point in his stories and often the plot revolved around the female protagonist. The ideals, conflicts and emotional quotient was so easy to relate to.

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