History comes alive at Victoria Memorial with a spectacular light and sound show

It is not a documentary, per se. But the brand new light-and-sound show at

Victoria Memorial

has managed to enthral the audiences with a captivating account of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s life and times.

With cutting-edge projection-mapping technology and content created by artistes from National School of Drama, in association with Victoria memorial authorities, the 25-minute-long show kick-started on November 20. The new show has been running in three languages, English,

Bengali

and Hindi and is open to people thrice a week — Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday.

If one remembers, there used to be an old light-and-sound show that started in the early ’90s and ran until 2016. Elaborating on this, the curator of Victoria Memorial, Jayanta Sengupta, said, “The primary difference has been the shift from analog technology to digital. Earlier, there used to be an erected screen. With some manual light projection on the building, the history of Calcutta used to be projected. Now, the entire building of Victoria Memorial, with its intricate works and ornamentations, and uneven surface, becomes a giant screen. To avoid any distortion due to the dimension, the projection mapping technology takes the uneven surface into account and helps provide a seamless screen.”

Earlier, the light-and-sound show saw master narrators such as Soumitra Chatterjee and Victor Banerjee sharing stories on Kolkata in Bengali and English respectively. The script was penned by Sunil Ganguly. “Now, besides the technology, there has been a change in the content too. This time, there is no narrator. The show involves a lot of ambient sound, archival materials, original songs from that period with copyrights. We’ve used the original rendition of Dhana Dhanyo Pushpo Bhora by Dilip Kumar Roy, son of DL Roy and one of his closest friends. Since the show is on Netaji, his old speeches, which were once broadcast on Azad Hind Radio, play a pivotal role. The voiceovers have been done by Sabyasachi Chakrabarty and

Debshankar Halder

in Bengali while the English presentation has been done by Kabir Bedi. The soundscape used here is also pretty evolved,” said the curator.

Besides the show on Netaji, Victoria Memorial will host another show on the history of Kolkata that is scheduled to begin in December.


Show pointers

• The show is hosted thrice a week and in three languages. There are two shows every day.
• On Wednesday, you can watch the show in English and Hindi. On Saturday, in Hindi and Bengali and on Sunday, in Bengali and English.
• The first show of the day starts at 6:30 pm.