Reflections & Stray Thoughts by HQ Chowdhury is something of a smorgasbord of nostalgia for the reader -- as at a smorgasbord you sample a tidbit or two and return at your convenience and pleasure as often as you like. Unlike at an American style all-you-can-eat buffet, you do not load up your plate, and the contents of a smorgasbord are light and easily digested.
Reflections & Stray Thoughts is intended to be light reading and yet one is aware of the depth of familiarity the writer has with the topics he writes about. His main interests are movies, music, and sports, in particular cricket. What he writes about these topics for the most part reflects the decades that baby boomers will remember as some sort of golden age.
The title of Chowdhury's book is apt as he feels free to dwell on whatever “stray thoughts” enter his mind. Movies, however, are the focus of several of his reflections. While he occasionally refers to Hollywood films, he writes mostly about the cinematic creations associated with Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangladesh, and former East Pakistan. Among the actors and actresses that he writes about, Dev Anand, Suchitra Sen, and Shabnam stand out.
There are interesting observations on the influence of Film Noir on Indian films, among them Baazi and CID, or Urdu language films like Chanda in former East Pakistan, and on Rituparno Ghosh's contribution to Bengali cinema. Guide is a Bollywood film that he rates very highly and at various points he mentions other classics of Indian cinema. However, he admits that some of the films that he greatly admired in the past have not stood the test of time and in more recent viewings some of the films that had once impressed him like Sangam and Aadmi were disappointments.
It is in writing about the music of films and about music generally that Chowdhury is in his element. He has written a book about SD Burman, and it is not surprising that Sachin Karta is the music composer about whom he has the most to say. One of his articles focuses on the relationship between SD Burman and Manna Dey. He also touches on the relationship between various singers and other music directors, providing insights into reasons why certain directors worked with some singers and why they avoided certain singers.
Chowdhury notes that SD Burman was the catalyst behind the introduction of Bengali singers like Hemant Kumar, Geeta Dutt, Kishore Kumar, and Manna Dey in Mumbai. He also looks at other aspects of music, writing about the fluctuating status of the harmonium and about the role of Radio Ceylon in popularizing film music. At various points, he has interesting observations about the way in which music and songs derive from various sources. He writes about Tagore tapping into Irish and Scottish songs and later into Bengali folk music and in turn about SD Burman and other composers being influenced by Tagore.
A notable aspect of Chowdhury's book is the number of lists he includes. He starts out in fact by listing favourite books, movies, actors and actresses, film songs, film magazines, cricketers, and footballers. Throughout the book there are lists on music-related topics -- all the lyricists that SD Burman collaborated with, raag Bhairavi based film songs as well as Nazrul and Tagore songs based on this raag, Robin Ghosh's hit songs composed for films in Pakistan, songs based on the word “tasveer” (picture), music conferences (sammelan) and the performers who participated in these conferences are some examples of his lists.
Chowdhury also writes about the two sports he grew up playing himself -- cricket and football. He touches on links between cricket and films in the subcontinent. Here as elsewhere in the book he shares items of gossip, including for instance a reference to Garfield Sobers falling in love with Anju Mahendru, an aspiring Bollywood film star. Behind the scenes gossip in another chapter includes details about the drinking habits of certain masters of vocal classical music.
Chowdhury's book was published by Blue Pencil, Delhi in 2021. It is now available through Amazon and in Bangladesh through University Press Limited. Throughout the book there are several photographs, many of the author with the person he is writing about. Of course, most of these would predate the current prevalent practice of taking selfies with celebrities.
In his book, Chowdhury specifically addresses the boomer generation. While technically this term applies to those born after 1946 and before 1964, the names and stories that appear in his book will stir a chord in the memory of many readers.
HQ Chowdhury is a freelance writer with many articles published in daily newspapers in Bangladesh. He is the author of the acclaimed book Incomparable Sachin Dev Burman and a recipient of the S. D. Burman award from the Government of Tripura. Raza Ali lives in Toronto but spent his childhood in Bangladesh which was then East Pakistan. He has written stories, poems, and memoirs that harken back to his days in the land of his birth. He has especially fond recollections of the songs of that period that were popularized by Radio Ceylon. This article first appeared in KITAAB and has been reprinted through special arrangements.
