A rare interview of Harindranath Chattopadhyay, Bawarchi’s grandpa and eccentric poet
Best remembered for his role as Shiv Nath Sharma, the patriarch of the ironically named Shanti Niwas in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Bawarchi (1972), Harindranath Chattopadhyay to me as a kid was a man of mystery. The tall figure, stern face and almost ancient features — even A.K. Hangal calling him babuji seemed natural — belied that part of his which could melt into childish cackles at the slightest provocation. A passport picture of Harinda, as he was fondly called, would have been far removed from the singing-dancing dholakia, Baiju, of Ashirwad.
But acting was a rather small part of his career. Harindranath, the younger brother of Sarojini Naidu, was a famous poet, playwright, singer, songwriter and politician, and a painter later in his life. Once a beloved children’s poet, his popularity might have receded over the years due to the apathy of the general masses, but it must be noted that once in his praise English poet Laurence Binyon had gone as far as saying “He has drunk from the same fount as Shelley and Keats.”
Here in a rare clip from a Doordarshan interview with Zul Vellani, we see Harindranath seamlessly shuffle between selves. He begins by recollecting incidents from his past, his years of growing up in Hyderabad, that was then “like a city from the Arabian Nights”, in an influential and supremely gifted family. He recollects Sarojini Naidu telling their father, “Father, you know, poetry is the highest science.” And being countered with a reply like “Baby, science is the highest poetry.”
To Vellani’s question of how at his old age he still communicates and identifies with the young, he says, “I am a little boy, I am as old as a child with who I play… I am as young as young man who want to meet me and who can’t believe I am as old as I am.” Going on to add that his age of 88 is just a number and that’s why “calendars are angry” with him.
The most interesting part of the interview is where he lets out Mana, the little boy inside him who “thinks out and feels things like a child does.” The poet asserts that he is a copyist who merely transcribes Mana’s words. “Poetry,” he says, “writes itself.”