CRIME CENTRAL

Banerjee’s “file” is in direct contrast with Lalbazar’s immaculate reputation during those days when its detective department was considered “second only to Scotland Yard”. A fact Banerjee knew well as he interned as a sketch expert with London Metropolitan Police. “Lalbazar resides in my memory as a seat of power. In my mind,it was a place where taciturn police officers went about their work in a tough,businesslike manner,” he says.

As a child,Banerjee’s world was defined by gothic novels and detective stories. “I always fancied myself as a detective. I would walk the streets of north Kolkata,look at the beautiful gothic structures that line them and imagine myself stalking these streets wearing overalls and a cap. What you see here is a sort of wish fulfillment,” he says.

Banerjee would have made for a cracker of a detective. Check the profiles he has documented for the exhibit: Manik Roomali (a contract killer who strangled his victims with scarves),Horen Contractor (a construction proprietor who secretly made money through disposal of illegal corpses by cementing them in under-construction buildings),Pocket Cleaner Nirpen (a maimed picket who would leave change for bus fare for his victims) and Bishakha ‘rattlesnake’ Roy (a socialite who would administer poisonous cocktails to her rich husbands).

Banerjee is unwilling to disclose the source of his seemingly authentic dossier. “That will go against the very grain of the exhibition,” he says. And the “grain” is the narrative—the underlying theme of Telltale. Says its curator,Paula Sengupta,“The idea is to narrate stories through artworks. I have always been fascinated by the fine,blurred line between fact and fiction. Blur is the point where imagination takes flight and a story is born.”

Artist Anupam Chakraborty (or “storyteller” as Sengupta calls him) probably celebrates that flight of imagination with his piece,Northwester,also up at the exhibit. A wall is pasted with pages of books which are animated through gusts of air. Little cut-outs of children seem to be running in and out of the “book covers”. “I wanted to celebrate the liberating feeling that a Nor’wester induces,” says Chakraborty.

Amritah Sen,however,doesn’t reside in blurred lines. Her series of paintings and sketches,titled In Search of Drihang-chu is a mock-epic of sorts. It centres around the search of a mythical bird with magical abilities. The artist represents herself as the seeker who travels far and wide in this “odyssey”. Writings of renowned Bengal satirists,Sukumar Ray and Parashuram,find their way to the paintings too. “They’ve been my inspiration and thus I’ve tried to bring humour in my work,which is also a salute to pseudo-intellectualism.,” says Sen.

Rajesh Deb’s Political Box too uses Ray’s works as a reference point. The installation—a wooden skeleton of a dinosaur popping out of a box—comments on today’s dubious political practices. “The dinosaur is a metaphor for an extinct political ideal,” says Deb.
In Sujay Mukerjee’s Inflated Balloon,the story of globalisation finds a voice. The installation shows a mass-produced plastic Spiderman riding a toy horse. “It talks about newer power structures,modes of production and distribution that define our reality today,” he says.

So,do these exhibits portray the realities of our world? “The narratives of the works on display are sometimes based on fact and at times fiction. It’s the receptacle that defines the narrative. Sarnath’s Lalbazar file,for instance,may or may not be authentic. But it throws light on the realities of those times,” sums up Sengupta.