Kolkata: It was only after a couple of matches that we really understood what this was all about, says Jamshed Nassiri near the halfway mark of the documentary “Shotoborshe East Bengal,” to commemorate the club turning 100.
The year was 1980 and Nassiri was part of an East Bengal side whose roster had been severely depleted. Yet, like Shyam Thapa who spoke of a hilsa being given to him on the pitch during East Bengal’s historic 5-0 win against Mohun Bagan in the 1975 IFA Shield final, what Nassiri remembered was how fiercely the fans loved the players who wore the red-and-gold shirt. With PK Banerjee as coach, East Bengal, riding mainly on the exploits of Nassiri and Majid Baskar were joint-winners of the Federation Cup and the Rovers Cup that year.
That, in essence, was what the documentary directed by celebrated film maker Gautam Ghose sought to convey. That, for their ability to defy the odds, East Bengal became an emotion, a totem for a displaced people. A temple, says the actor Soumitra Chatterjee in the film. One whose “mashal” became more than a torch after it was lit in protest against the Indian Football Association (IFA) when Bengal’s apex body had tried to stall East Bengal’s promotion to the first division. The “mashal” became a beacon of hope for the marginalised.
It was where those uprooted from their moorings, first by Partition and then by the wars in 1965 and 1971 felt at home, said Kalyan Majumdar, the club’s long-time former secretary. The documentary is dedicated to the “homeless people of the world.”
So, it fit that Jyotish Guha, the general secretary for 28 years spanning the Bengal Famine, World War 2 and mass migration from across the West Bengal border, would take on state chief minister Bidhan Ray and refuse to change the name of the club. A name that, the documentary says, was taken from a defunct indoor sports club in the house of the freedom fighter “Deshbandhu” Chittaranjan Das.
Stories like this fill the early part of the documentary released on Thursday in the presence of chief minister Mamata Banerjee, a number of former players, East Bengal’s Indian Women’s League (IWL) winning team and current men’s team coach Oscar Bruzon. The idea of using footage from Bangla cinema (“Ora Thakey Odhare” 1954) to convey what East Bengal meant to people finding their feet in Kolkata was a good one as was showing Uttam Kumar playing wearing the club’s shirt (“Saptapadi” 1961) apparently on the insistence of his heroine in the film, Suchitra Sen.
It was also good to see and hear many of those who have died – Banerjee, Chatterjee and Chuni Goswami among them.
Incidents of players being kept in safe houses before they signed for the club, a tradition in Kolkata from the 1960 to the 1990s, are recalled through interviews as are the club’s famous wins in India’s blue riband competitions, most of which are now defunct.
Of the interviews though there are too many and the pace slackens with one former player talking after the other. There are also factual inaccuracies such as Emeka Ezuego playing in the 1986 World Cup when he did that eight years later and the 5-0 match being played at Eden Gardens when it was on Mohun Bagan ground. The English subtitles had a number of names spelt wrongly and the club’s rich tradition in hockey is mentioned as an afterthought. And if sport is all about timing, the release nearly five years after East Bengal turned 100 is odd.
But because the documentary archives the storied history of one of the extant clubs in Asia and as a venture is a rare thing in Indian sport, it, warts and all, makes for worthwhile viewing. In a country where archival footage is rare, and even harder to source, Ghose and the club deserve credit. Their effort may not be consistently memorable but monumental it certainly is.
