Bobindra Sangeet – Leisure News
A Kolkata’s intellectualism can sometimes feel invented, but when it loves someone or something, it almost always does so effusively. Watching the documentary If Not for You, one is struck by how deeply the city loves Bob Dylan, its affection bordering on obsession. Dylan posters line the room of musician Susmit Bose, whom filmmakers Jaimin Rajani and Vineet Arora interview.
He speaks of how a lover in Kolkata broke up with his girlfriend by leaving her with the lyrics of Dylan’s ‘To Ramona’. Rahul Guha Roy, who plays with alternative rock band Cassini’s Division, says if it weren’t for Dylan, Calcuttans might not play the guitar. Filmmaker-songwriter Anjan Dutt even compares him to Rabindranath Tagore.
When asked why Dylan’s music resonated so strongly with all his interviewees, Arora, 45, spoke like a fan. “His body of work is so timeless, it can be applied to any situation.” In 2018, Arora visited Shillong to attend the Bob Dylan Festival, organised by renowned performer Lou Majaw. The Kolkata-bred director was familiar with Dylan mania, so when he finally met Rajani, “a Dylan acolyte”, in March last year, the question came naturally: “Why don’t we do something for Dylan in Calcutta?”
Rajani, now 28, says he discovered Dylan “late”, at 18. Though he was initiated into Dylan’s discography with ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, it was his ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ that changed his perspective on both life and music. “It felt like with everything he was saying, he was articulating on my behalf,” he says. “I feel his songs belong to every person who hears them. He allows you to relate to a song just as much as he did.”
Predictably, Rajani plays the guitar and harmonica. When Arora mentioned the prospect of a Dylan documentary-a tribute to him from Kolkata on his birthday (May 24)-it took Rajani 20 minutes to type the film’s flow and narration. Having heard of Rajani and Arora’s plans, drummer Nondon Bagchi, a Kolkata music icon, wasn’t just happy to share his contacts, he also worked the phone for them. In the late 1960s, Bagchi remembers, his first band, Chequered Tricycle, decided to ignore the pop demands of Park Street’s Trincas and, instead, play Dylan’s radical ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’.
In the midst of a pandemic, Dylan has announced the release of a new album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, and in If Not for You, Bagchi claims that it’s the musician’s unflappable profligacy that makes him want to believe in God. Speaking to us, he says, “He is such a dedicated performer. He has such self-belief, so much concern for humanity, he makes me want to believe.”
At venues like Someplace Else, where Bagchi played for 20 years, several local bands cover Dylan’s songs. In Kolkata, however, tunes like ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ and ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ aren’t just played, they are taught, too. Ananda Lal, the professor who introduced Dylan in Jadavpur University’s English curriculum almost two decades ago, says, “If someone eventually goes on to win the Nobel Prize, one feels assured there are at least some people who think that there’s something about what this man says that’s important.”
On camera, Lal draws a parallel between Tagore and Dylan-“the only songwriters to have won the Nobel”-but Dylan’s real connection to Kolkata, he says, is Purna Das Baul. Legend has it that Dylan travelled incognito to Kolkata in 1990 to attend the wedding of Das’s son, and even though Arora says his research shows this to be true, his film offers no concrete proof. That said, there is something altogether warm about its interview with Das, a giant of Bengali folk music. He talks about how he and Dylan exchanged instruments in Bearsville, how Dylan would fill his fridge with rice, share his khichuri, and how he’d say, “You’re India’s baul, I am America’s.”
For a documentary that’s only 29-minutes long, If Not for You packs in several moments that all Dylan fans will find moving. Rajani is happy that its few screenings in Kolkata were successful, but hopes the film will reach viewers across India. “We can’t pay top dollar for the copyright of the tracks, but we hope a gratis licence will let us freely stream online,” says Arora. As Dylan once hoped for himself, it’s perhaps time this love letter of a documentary got that release, too.
