The Name IS DEEP: Recent Episodes
Biswadeep Banerjee
Biswadeep Banerjee ,a blogger, teacher and writer of eight books on Amazon.com (e-books, including a cook book , a novella ,a book of poems and a detailed and rare travelogues) . He can be contacted on b.biswadeep@ymail.com. He brings to you interesting twists to various facets of the history and culture of various cute countries that you were always interested in but didn't know whom to ask for facts .But his podcast is not just about facts . It takes you on a wonder journey of speculation that might really give you cool ideas in your head...and, they are mercifully short. Cover
A film director who won the Oscar ,and a delightful author ,illustrator and composer ,perhaps the greatest personality of Kolkata on this side of the death of Tagore ,Satyajit Ray's 100th birth anniversary fell in 2021 . Why should we read Ray, or have a look at his movies at all . These thoughts from my blog ,at still38.blogspot.com ,gives the answer : to understand the human experience .
Biswadeep Banerjee expands on a new and remarkable bookshop he visits in the mountainous city of Itanagar in north -east India ,and is taken aback by the set up as he didn't expect such things there. Also, after picking up a particular book there he wonders ,did a 17th century Sufi mystic have a remarkable feeling for a Brahmin boy, as the book says ,and why did he get to read that line on this day, of all days ?
Recording of online classes given by the creator of this podcast , with rare information and clear explanation and entertaining style ,in three different subjects : Biology , Economics and Political science.
Recording of online classes given by the creator of this podcast with unknown ,rare information in three subjects : Biology , Economics and Political science. This is part 1.
Can a simple object of everyday use make a connection with anyone who has passed away ?The story of the 2016 Hollywood Movie 'Interstellar' seems to say that these people have not actually 'passed away' but travelled to another dimension through a wormhole in our Universe, just as the father of a little girl did in this movie, and that we really can communicate with people who are no more in our 'universe'.
Matt Damon in the 2016 Oscar nominated, Mars-located science fiction movie 'The Martian' helped not only science come alive by giving classes in agriculture from the red planet, but he was also our boy-next-door, strumming all the right strings in our hearts : fear, love, regret, joy , anger, longing and the need for appreciation.
I downloaded clips from 'Alexander ' on my first-ever cellphone and showed them to my lover , inspiring him to think of me as both Alexander and Haephastion- who was probably Alexander's lover. I think the film had an equally deep, if not quite the same impact , on everyone who depicted Alexander the Great, or why else are the clips from this movie used everytime a documentary or news feature is made by anyone on Alexander till today? I think Oliver Stone largely got it right , and so did Colin Farell and Jared Leto , who played the roles Alexander and Haephastion.
What lies behind the success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R? Is it just a book or series of films ,or something that stands for a deeper process deep in our brains, and in our subconscious, and so, by extension , to the 'real' Middle Earth in which it is supposed to be set. A reflection.
Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, the writer , has been to two generations of readers in Bengal a Bengali Robert Frost, Stephen King, O.Henry and Edgar Allan Poe rolled into one, and his fascination continues to hold. In this the first part of a new series on writers and films that have inspired our lives , I talk of this octogenarian writer and the influence he has had on me to look at middle age afresh. You too are free to share with me ,at the email address b.biswadeep@ymail.com, who has been your own inspiration in life , and which film or piece of literature has had an influence on your behaviour . Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay's stories continue to bring goosebumps to the old and the young alike, and I hope this small introduction to one of his works (some of which are available in translations )helps you get interested and inspires you to discover this writer who is relatively unknown outside Bengal in India, but whose novellas have inspired numerous Tollywood movies and remain an annual craze inside Bengal, slithering smoothly across the borders of fantasy and science fiction as well as reality , delving as few have ever managed to, into the workings of virtually every kind of mind that either old or young may possess and every experience that they might come across, with a rarity and immediacy, and humour , that few writers in India or beyond may possess.
Rising temperatures across the planet has meant closure of schools, soaring barometers and delay in rains, not to speak of alarm among world leaders and outlandish schemes to 'transport' water from one continent to another.
Hello! to all of you after a long time. This is Deep , calling you all from deep inside a brain activation chamber in India's north east ,after a journey of a thousand miles , and once again , a lot of interesting stories to tell . I am a teacher, blogger (still38.blogspot.in. ) photographer , Instagrammar (handle : Lante) , and am back recording this episode of my podcast after a hundred days which saw me going to such great lengths -literally- to fine tune my life on Earth ,as an English teacher and writer (eight books on Amazon.com under author name 'Biswadeep Banerjee' ) that I almost thought I won't make it- but I did , and here I am.
Have we chosen well? Elections are taking place, governments are being formed, and debates are taking place in parliament, but is only this fit to be called a democracy ?
"Go the extra mile , and some more, if possible ." This is the Second 'Law of Wandering ' that Biswadeep ,our real life traveller, finds out as part of an eerie, harrowing , and horror creating experience in a international school surrounded by orchards , lantern lit villages and blazing peacocks , in the countryside of Uttar Pradesh, India , of all places. The middle of nowhere , you may say. However, he realises something as he finds himself in a spot (pun intended!) and not only the Second Law but three more of his 'Five Laws of Wandering ' come tumbling out of him , in this ,the final part of the seven part 'The Journey That Almost Killed Me', an unparalleled cameo across India, where he has worked in various places as an English trainer and teacher. You can buy the book version of this series as one e-book at Amazon.com . Just go to Amazon.com and type search this series' book version ,'India @The Speed of Thought' by Biswadeep Banerjee under the e-books category ,for the Five Laws of Wandering, and much, much more.
There's a region deep in our brain ,at the back and below ,which has a compulsive need to take risks. Indian teacher Biswadeep , on this sixth episode of the true life series , 'The Journey That Almost Killed Me' ,feels the push of that part as he teeters on the verge of total abandonment and bankruptcy on a station platform in South India , almost over the edge, but not quite. He feels the presence of the unseen 'them' , the group which lives on the success of the human imagination, and somehow feels it's not over. This is his story .
Sir Mark Tully, renowned BBC journalist and Writer, had a deep personal impact on me when I attended an interaction with him recently . Those were not ordinary moments . They touched hundreds of us sitting there . Here are my impressions of Sir Mark.
Sir Mark Tully, writer of 'No Full Stops In India' and doyen of international journalism ,having been BBC's South Asia bureau for a long time and a very public face , recently came to our place and we got to interact with him. These are my heartfelt impressions of him.
What if your smartphone has been recording your thoughts so much that it actually starts seeing patterns in the information you cram into it and suddenly tells you that you are a 'creator'? Well, in this part, the sixth ,of the seven part series, 'The Journey That Almost Killed Me', Biswadeep says (in the voice of his smartphone) that his 'smart'phone ,which was supposed to be 'dumb' , had actually been party to his being a co-creator. Is it true?
This is the yet unknown story of tea . There is nothing like it. From the plant to the factory floor, this episode takes you through virtually every stage of tea production and puts in your mouth the flavour of the amazing leaf that was discovered in ancient China and wafted into our kitchens, tea-houses and cafes to become the most popular -ahem- drug and age stopping anti-oxidant that we have ever seen.
Here I look back on countless experiences I have had in which I have received vital information which guided my life exactly when I have been having food. Is food ,then, something more than just what we eat to survive or nourish ourselves?
This is an excerpt from a previous episode in which I reflect on the fact that not only a few incidents here and there in our lives, but entire landscapes in which we find ourselves may be 'created', so to say, by nothing simpler than our intention.
In the fifth part of The Journey That Almost Killed him , Indian teacher Biswadeep Banerjee discovers, by accident ,what he calls 'the First Law of Wandering'. It happens as he steps out of his pigeon hole of a room and wanders below the dark thunder clouds in a small town in North Bengal. He comes across a sight which changes him forever. What is it? What happened to him just six months previously in Bangalore that had made him undertake this journey in the first place? Was it a chain of events, or was it his destiny? A lot of questions and answers , and ,an important law of wandering, in this fifth part of a series in the podcast 'The Name Is Deep' - 'The Journey That Almost Killed Me'. The account of this amazing journey is also available as a book on Amazon.com : 'India@ The Speed of Thought ' by Biswadeep Banerjee (Amazon.com, e-books). Biswadeep's photographic journey can be viewed on his Instagram handle @Lante (Instagram photos of Ante Leon)
This describes, in his own voice, the fourth leg of the journey that almost killed Indian teacher Biswadeep Banerjee in 2016. Here he leaves a vivid description of the Eastern Coast through which his train passes on the way back from Hyderabad, but, before that he encounters a lonely widow on the Delhi railway station platform who gives a new insight about life. He buys ice-cream for her and listens to her story.
In this, the third part of 'The Journey Which Nearly Killed Me' , Biswadeep Banerjee the adventurer, writer of eight books on Amazon.com , and an English trainer on a 13,000 kilometre journey of India, talks about his foray into a strange and exciting region of the subcontinent , a region made famous by Rudyard Kipling in his Jungle Book- the land of a legendary Wolf Pack.
The earthquake that had occurred in Papua and later in the night in Indonesia's Sulawesi on this day ,28 September 2018, had made me reflect : what if, Earthquakes have been influencing political events throughout history ? After all, there is such a term as ' geopolitical events' . Today's episode looks at the geopolitical changes accompanying a few of the famous natural disasters in the past and asks: are we headed for yet another change in Papua , which owes it's current political freedom to the influence of a tsunami caused by an earthquake ? You decide , as you reflect , on the connection between Earthquakes and Democracy. Nature is certainly more powerful than us!
Did monarchs across the world play a greater part in bringing about democracy than those who actually gave their lives to establish this (relatively) new form of government on Earth? This episode makes a sharp observation on that.
Alexander 1 of Macedonia, the greatest military leader of the ancient world, pharaoh of Egypt, conqueror of Persia and Lord of the Punjab and Afghanistan, ended up spreading a dangerous idea because of his ambitions- dangerous for the ancient world , that is. The idea was that East and West could not only meet, they could co-exist and learn from each other.
In the summer of 2016, a single, travel , photography and food loving English teacher from India was thrown on a journey of almost 13,000 kilometres all across that country in a way that few have perhaps ever been tested, and that too, while he was still very sick. He did survive , with the help of a few friends he had made over the years. While the Journey was on, however, he felt most of the time that he ...might not make it . This is a tale of endurance and tragedy perhaps with very few parallels ,of a journey that gave him experiences of India that you would not come across in a hurry ,worth listening more so for the expressive voice that this English teacher and blogger (still38.blogspot.in), Biswadeep Banerjee, who now has eight books published under his name on Amazon.com (e-books), and has a YouTube channel of the same name, tells his unique story, which gradually turns into a thriller , a cliff-hanger where he never knew what would happen next. This is the first instalment .
In the second part of his 13,000 kilometre journey through India which almost destroyed him in 2016, Biswadeep Banerjee arrives at the very gates of the Himalayas, has strange feelings in a hotel room, but then is sent smashing down to Hyderabad in the South on receiving...a bunch of fake news, which land him in trouble. He doesn't, however, forget to taste the famous Hyderabadi 'Biryani' and tells you in this episode where exactly in Secunderabad , Hyd's new city, you might be able to get the best street food. His life is hanging by a thread at this point and strange clouds rumble above.