Apeejay Bangla Literary Utsav hosted Samik Bandopadhyay and Anjan Dutt at the Oxford Bookstore for a session of storytelling on the legendary theatre artist, dramatist, civil engineer, and actor Badal Sirkar. 2025 has been a year of utmost significance. Many of the stalwarts of Bengal, art, songs, and theatres have turned 100 this year. The session thus promised introspection and deep conversations between two people who had been closely associated with the man himself. Samik Bandopadhyay, theatre critic, scholar, started with, “Badal Sirkar has been dead for over two decades now.
Thus, criticism, thought, and discussion on his life have progressed a lot. So, 45 minutes on this man is nearly not enough. Anjan and I have seen Sirkar in two very different ways. So, I will start as I have seen him. I can spot five versions of Sirkar when I see the life of this man. They are almost very different characters.” Bandopadhyay explained how Sirkar had no attraction to theatre or plays in his student life. Having taken five very long and deep interviews of the man, Bandopadhyay has been a keen observer of Sirkar’s life. Bandopadhyay took the first interview in 1984 and the last one in the middle of the 90s. “Sirkar had become tired, his theatre spark dried up, and he had become weak and frail. This is when he started writing his autobiography.
The four-part autobiography included his travelogue, his foreign tour and the letters he sent to his closest friend. He is somewhat measuring his life, as if life has ended, and he is now recalling it through a glass window.” The session progressed with Anjan Dutt narrating one of the most fascinating stories about Sirkar. Dutt started, “I had got to know that a certain Badal Sirkar gave acting classes. Being an aspiring actor, I went to his house and asked him to teach me acting. Seeing my then figure, he was understandably unimpressed. Progressing the conversation and wanting to shake me off, he asked me to bring Rs. 4000 the next day. He would teach me acting.”
Now, Rs.4000 during the 1970s was a lot of money. Yet Dutt managed to get 1000 rupees from his mother. Dutt continues, “He was going out for the day. Dressed and in a hurry, Sirkar asked me to accompany him. He took the Rs. 1000, gave me Rs. 10 and told me to find him in the city before 6:00 pm that same day.” With this bizarre task at hand, Sirkar left a young Anjan Dutt in the city of Kolkata. Dutt narrates, “I was left speechless. How was I to find a man in such a big city? I went on to ask the tram conductors, esplanade shop owners, and even vendors where I could find Badal Sirkar. People thought I was crazy, or probably intoxicated. Yet I was not leaving my only chance to find Sirkar.
That day was so surreal that it is hard for me to describe it. I got to know that Badal Sirkar was an actor, a theatre playwright, a director, and he had also learned town planning in London.” Tired and desperate, Dutt went to College Street and asked the bookkeepers where he could find Badal Sirkar. Finally, he was pointed to the Indian Coffee House. Dutt concluded by saying, “The shopkeeper asked me if I knew where the coffee houses were. I had no idea there was more than one coffeehouse. Very kindly, the shopkeeper told me to go to the college street one, and have some food. I went into the building but did not enter. I sat on those steps waiting for Sirkar to arrive. It was 7:30pm then, and I had lost all hope of acting, when I finally entered the coffeehouse.
To my joy and amazement, I saw the man sitting at the last row of tables. I was on the verge of tears, and Sirkar was unfazed. He just told me to sit and have some coffee with him.” Thus began the journey of Dutt with the man. They would roam the city, meet new people, and discuss theatre. Dutt said, “Everything I know about acting was taught to me by Sirkar. There were no traditional acting classes; he taught me how to know who I am without my social parameters. That has kept me going after all these years.” Bandopadhyay concluded the session with, “The last years of Sirkar were a little delusional.
He had severe memory loss problems, and he might have wanted to come back to the proscenium theatre, leaving behind the third form. He had told me he wanted to perform Shararattir again.” The conversation between the two speakers brought on exactly how dynamic, critical, and intellectually sharp Sirkar had been. There are multiple lives this single man has led during a single lifetime, from theatre in the city to theatre in villages, to city planning. It is an error in judgment to justify Sirkar just by his third theatre invention in India. It is impossible to discuss the personality in a single session, yet more foolish to try and encapsulate the man in a single article. Sirkar remains pertinent, important, and mostly strengthening; from Ballavpurer Roopkotha, to Pagla Ghora to Micchil, he is undoubtedly one of the greatest authors of India.