The first relief
in the film Bow Barracks Forever comes
nearly forty-five minutes into the film . This
is when a little angelic looking Anglo-Indian
boy called Jason ( K Medhora) closes his eyes
and counts till hundred in a game of hide-and-seek
on the dilapidated terrace of the shabby tenement.
This is where Bradley Lobo, one of the characters
in the film, in an inter-cut, practices for the
Christmas show and delivers a neat little dance
based on the Anjan Dutt remix of the Beatles number
When I saw her standing there. Till then the film
is a roller coaster ride with brutal aggression
and sex-in-your-face, when not giving us clichéd
images representing the lives of a few Christian
families marginalized in every sense of the term.
They want out – the equally shabby staircase
of Bow Barracks acts as a metaphor but in realty,
they are very much trapped within the confines
of hand pulled rickshaws and the floral bedroom
sheets of their overcrowded tenement lives.
 The
Anglo-Indians form a minority of people who have
always been caught between two worlds through
history and circumstances. Not really accepted
by the English, they never felt at home in India
after the country gained its independence, in
a way sharing the same fate as many other Eurasians
spread across the country. If Bombay has seen
more of a Christian Goan concentration, thanks
to Portuguese rule in nearby Goa, Calcutta was
once the toast of the Anglo-Indians. They enriched
the city's cosmopolitan landscape with pretty
secretaries , well-known sportspersons and talented
musicians. The Goans (who had migrated to the
city to work at its many restaurants) and the
Anglo-Indian became synonymous with each other
through their proximity but considered themselves
quite separate to each other. Though not visible
in the surface, both the communities harbour a
love-hate relationship with each other, distinguishable
through their surnames. Technically Emily Lobo,
the main protagonist who makes wines for a living,
is a Goan and not an Anglo-Indian , the high point
in her life being that telephone call to her son
in faraway London as her younger son makes out
with the married but battered Ann next door. She
could well be Sandra from Bandra but in this case
the story is more about a group of hapless people
(all minorities included) whose tenement is about
to be taken over by a realtor – the wicked
Mr Mukherjee and if they do not get a lakh of
rupees to repair the building, they would soon
be evicted. And how they stop it in spite of all
their shortcoming and eccentricities is what the
script is all about.
Bow Barracks on Bow Street stands a mute witness
to all this. The quaint red-brick block of flats,
once the garrison of the American GIs posted in
the city, which is stashed behind the posh Central
Avenue. And you might feel Violet Stoneham, the
gentle Anglo-Indian English teacher of 36
Chowringhee Lane resurfaces in Bow Barracks
Forever as Emily Lobo do not, however, look
here for the refined world of Shakespeare and
a certain pet cat called Sir Toby in here. Do
not look for brave men; what you get instead is
a brutal world where the F-word is bandied about
like sparklers in a firecracker store. The young
girl bunks classes to hang out with the chokra
boys – pidgin English for the roadside rowdies
belonging to the ' Indian ' communities; the young
man dreams of playing good music and cannot hold
on to his regular job in a record store; the older
men are either smugglers or cheaters. The ageing
women, in their printed frocks, their cute little
cross pendants neatly in place, are as foul mouthed
as the " bustee lok" they love to abhor
. The lingo is Anglo Indian – yeah men –
never man – mudder and fudder – need
I add the rest. Trapped within confined places
makes a case for closed minds but even if the
Anglo-Indians are a garrulous lot, I have never
seen them bark at each other in what is conversation
as in the film during my own growing up years
within the proximity of Bow Barracks. The fun
is definitely missing from this once fun loving
community, the residuals of which continue to
fight a losing battle in their daily bid for survival.
The film carries forward the message so disastrously
handled by the director in his first film, Bada
Din (1998). It had failed despite a star
cast in Shabana Azmi and Tara Deshpande while
in Bow Barracks Forever, the director
has just about got his act together but sadly
amateurishly so.
All the main characters have a problem living
with each other – be it mother and son,
daughter and step father, husband and wife and
the mohalla. They want to escape – anywhere
– even if it is to the coal mine town of
Asansol which is but a couple of hours away from
the city. Young Sally, the would- be-school drop-out
is in love with Bradley who, in turn, wants to
rescue Ann from her violent cruel husband, Tom.
Mrs Lobo waits for that letter from Ken, her son
in England while Rosa D'Costa wants to migrate
to Sydney like the Dawsons . Simple wants apparently
yet unattainable for the people are caught in
a time warp situation from were there is actually
no escape. The one good moment in the film is
when Bradley tells his mother that she should
forget about that letter from Kenny promising
to take her to London which will never come and
that failure is something one has to accept. The
bitter disappointment in Emily's eyes due to this
realization holds the audiences for a brief moment.
Otherwise, the film totally lacks any pauses or
reflective moments that could help us undertand
the characters better and whenever, Victor Bannerjee's
saxophone soulfully rents the air, someone yells
at him to shut up. The ghost of Bada Din's
underdog comes to haunt the director again and
again, and just like in his previous film The
Bong Connection, the whole film has been
tarred by a very thick brush.
 Pritish
Nandy Communications which has released the film
almost after two years of its completion, reiterates
the catch line of ' triumph of the human spirit.
' The community realizes finally that whatever
change should come, should be from within, but
when that translates into entertainment, the multiplex
audiences that have been created for such cinema
long consigned to vague film festivals, have the
right to chose considering they have to spend
over hundred rupees for a ticket. If triumph over
the human spirit is the raison d'etre of the film,
give me the free television live cast of a little
boy being saved from being buried forever under
a well.
What are the choices, therefore, in the film?
The camera work by Indranil Mukherjee captures
the interiors - the suffocating bedrooms scenes
bringing out the suffocting live of its characters
extremely well but the exterior location of the
tenement and the area around it within the bigger
bustling metro could have been better established.
Though everyone is talking about the music in
Bow Barracks Forever, Neel Dutt's music
lacks the purity of the bitter sweet jazz blues
sound; there is a mite of Beatles rock and roll
sound, songs by Kenny Rogers but too much of techno
to nudge the other sounds out. The appearance
of a singer like Usha Uthup as a real character
comes across as forced and playing to the gallery
rather than fitting naturally into the film .
There are a number of bands that are very professional
in the city and if Dutt comes out of this home
talent production, he would go a longer way in
furnishing a far more professional look to his
films.
What finally triumphs in the film is the talented
pool of good actors. Lillete Dubey as Emily Lobo
does deliver a convincing performance (when she
is allowed to) and so does her daughter Neha as
the matter-of-fact Ann. Moon Moon Sen, the over
sexed Rosa is a little over the top in her sexual
appetite but when she ultimately returns to Bow
Barracks with suitcase in one hand and a vanity
bag on the other, after running away with Bipin
for a short while, she does captures a vulnerable
side to her. Melville is well played by Avijit
Dutt whereas Clayton Rogers as Bradley and Sohini
Pal (daughter of Bengali mainstream actor Tapas
Pal) as Sally respectively are very good as well
but there is no remarkable histrionics you can
carry back in your mind. Sabysachi Chakraborty
as the Armenian Tom, sporting blue-grey contact
lenses, is the odd man out as far as physical
appearances go, but somehow making up with his
tough dude role. If anyone really diasappoints,
surprisingly it is Victor Bannerjee who plays
Peter the cheater who cons folks to buy worthless
antiques. He is the guy who plays the loney sax
with his heart (of gold) but appears over the
top at times being Fagin-like from Oliver Twist
in his mannersisms.
The trouble with fictionalizing accounts of a
minority community is that it does fall into the
same stereotypical trap that one tries to avoid
in a bid to be more sympathetic. With Bow
Barracks Forever, the director traps the
community in the same clichés that it often
tries to escape from.
Manjira Majumdar is a consulting editor
and writer based in Kolkata.
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