When Lord Curzon inaugurated a Durga Puja and gifted his pen

Kolkata, October 18

A Bengali fantasy film themed on Durga Puja during the tumultuous time of partition of Bengal is due to be released early next month.

The film—‘Curzoner Kalom’ (Curzon’s Pen)—is a fictional account of Lord Curzon, the then viceroy of India, leaving behind his gold pen after inaugurating a Durga Puja at an affluent household of North Kolkata in 1905 and the events unfolding thereafter, director Souvik Mitra said during the trailer launch of the film.

“In the year 1905, Lord Curzon came to inaugurate a Durga Puja in Mitra Bari of north Calcutta and gifted a golden pen to the family. It was the pen Lord Curzon had used to sign the papers of partition. The pen was lost in the midst of a chaos that prevailed when local people started agitating outside the house,” he told PTI.

Newcomer Poulami Das enacted the role of Pupu--the present-generation member of Mitra household--who fished out the missing pen with the help of her childhood friend Tatu, enacted by young, popular actor Saheb Bhattacharya.

“Pupu decodes the last few words spoken by Panchubrata, the veteran Mitra household member who was present during Lord Curzon’s visit to the household,” the director said, adding the film was a fantasy-thriller.

“We tried to combine two important features that intrigued Bengalis across ages--the pain of partition, when people speaking the same dialect were suddenly separated by a wall, and Bengali’s sentimental attachment to Durga Puja,” Souvik said.

An Englishman in the city enacted the role of Lord Curzon in the film which also cast several well-known faces of the Tollygunge film industry.

‘Curzoner Kalom’ belongs to the adventure genre and had resonance with Ray’s ‘Sonar Kella’ and Bengali science fiction ‘Patalghar’ by Abhijit Chowdhury, the director said.

The music of the film, to be released on November 3, was composed by Debojyoti Mishra. PTI