I was an Indian with zero sense of caste till I was 20. That's an unusual privilege but it came out of the fact that I was a middle-class Bengali.
Abhijit Banerjee
I am half Bengali and half Marathi.
Even in India the Hindi film industry might be the best known but there are movies made in other regional languages in India, be it Tamil or Bengali. Those experiences too are different from the ones in Bombay.
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan
I am half Bengali and half Irish by birth.
Amala Akkineni
Yes, I am a Bengali but I am sorry I can't converse in Bengali.
I speak Tamil and Telugu better than Bengali.
Not many people know that I am a Bengali actually.
How can BJP be anti-Bangla when BJP founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee himself was a Bengali?
Amit Shah
I like watching Bengali film DVDs with sub-titles.
Amrita Rao
I ate Bengali food after my parents married and Dad started living with us, in both Willesden and in Delhi for three years, and then we all moved to California. Dad said he could make a really good dal, but I never saw him cook during the whole time we lived together.
Anoushka Shankar
My mother is half Malayali and half Tamilian. I can speak Bengali and Tamil, but can't read or write.
In Bengali films, since I also write the lyrics, there are certain songs, which I get emotionally and personally attached to.
Anupam Roy
I like to read Bengali novels and short stories. I am not that fond of reading English books, as I don't have a connect with it.
Arijit Singh
I am songwriter. I do compose the music of songs that I write in Bengali. But I've never thought of composing for a film. That's a different art altogether.
I love to cook, and both Pancham and Gulzarbhai loved to eat. Gulzarbhai loves my karela ghosht and my Bengali kheer.
Asha Bhosle
My father is a Malayalee, my mother is a Bengali.
Ashish Vidyarthi
The first film I gave music for was a Bengali film called 'Dadu.'
Bappi Lahiri
What I like about Calcutta is the food. I like simple Bengali food like dal, shukto, fish, and mutton.
Barun Sobti
In traditional Hindu families like ours, men provided and women were provided for. My father was a patriarch and I a pliant daughter. The neighborhood I'd grown up in was homogeneously Hindu, Bengali-speaking, and middle-class. I didn't expect myself to ever disobey or disappoint my father by setting my own goals and taking charge of my future.
Bharati Mukherjee
Growing up in an old-fashioned Bengali Hindu family and going to a convent school run by stern Irish nuns, I was brought up to revere rules. Without rules, there was only anarchy.
Bengalis love to celebrate their language, their culture, their politics, their fierce attachment to a city that has been famously dying for more than a century. They resent with equal ferocity the reflex stereotyping that labels any civic dysfunction anywhere in the world 'another Calcutta.'
Whenever I get married, it will be a Bengali wedding. If I won't have a Bengali wedding, my mother won't come. She has warned me. So, I am going to have a Bengali wedding for sure.
Monica Besra, a Bengali woman from a remote Indian village, was reportedly suffering from a malignant ovarian tumor when she went, in 1998, to a hospice founded by Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity. Nuns at the mission reportedly placed a medallion with Teresa's image on Besra's abdomen, and the tumor disappeared.
I was about 12 when I first encountered 'The Moonstone' - or a Classics Illustrated version of it - digging through an old trunk in my grandfather's house on a rainy Bengali afternoon.
We even had a different word for Christmas in my language, Bengali: Baradin, which literally meant 'big day.'
I feel I can express the nuances of the Bengali lifestyle and ways of thinking better than other cultures.
I interviewed a lot of people in India, and I asked my mother to send me a lot of Bengali books on the tradition of dream interpretation. It's a real way for me to remember how people think about things in my culture.
I'm obsessed with all things Bengali, man. I love fish, my maid is Bengali, I acted in Bengali and Bangladeshi films.
I have regional films, Bengali and Telugu, but always wanted to do a Marathi film especially because I think this industry makes the best comedy films.
I would even love to do a Bengali film if a good offer is made to me.
I never thought I would sing professionally, but it so happened that I made Babul hear a Bengali song I had sung many years ago. He thought I should sing and bring out an album. I readily agreed.
The worst... was what the Pakistani soldiers did to the Bengali women after their failed rebellion.
I do speak a bit of Bengali.
After doing the Bengali 'Antar Mahal,' I felt I should work with all Indian languages.
I've done a host of Tamil and Telugu films, a Bengali one, too.
I enjoy singing in different languages, be it Telugu or Bengali. I would like to sing in Malayalam too.
I don't know Bengali perfectly. I don't know how to write it or even read it. I have an accent, I speak without authority, and so I've always perceived a disjunction between it and me. As a result, I consider my mother tongue, paradoxically, a foreign language.
I speak English. I grew up speaking Bengali. This is the normal, the known, the obvious composition of who I am. Then there's Italian, this strange, other component of me that I've just created. It was a creative process just to learn the language, never mind to start expressing myself in it.
The top Bengali directors in Bollywood know about me and the work that I have done. I have worked with everyone, from Anurag Basu, Pradeep Sarkar to Shoojit Sircar.
I had learnt horse riding while shooting for a Bengali film earlier and was trained in sword fighting on the set of 'Manikarnika'.
I was born in Bangalore but grew up in Kolkata and I read, write and speak Bengali.
When I was selected as a Labour council candidate in 2009, people publicly challenged how I could possibly represent anyone from the Bengali community because of my faith and since my selection and election as the member of parliament for Liverpool, Wavertree, I have received a torrent of anti-Semitic abuse.
Culturally, I remember listening to Salil Chowdhury's music for Malayalam films. Many Bengali actors have worked in our films, too.
I think Bengali women have the most eclectic sense of dressing.
I am ready to work in any industry whether its Bollywood, Hollywood, the digital platforms, South Indian film, or Bengali films. Wherever I get a good opportunity, I'll be there.
West Bengal belongs to Bengalis. We should live here like a king and not as servants.
People are often shy to acknowledge that they are Bengalis. They somehow take pride in saying that they cannot speak or read the language.
I would say the film world has stopped operating as one. We have divided it into Hindi movies, Bengali movies, Tamil movies and so on. Earlier, there was only one channel and we all knew what was going on. Today, it is hard to keep track of programmes due to the advent of regional channels.
I had a lot of Bengali friends in Delhi. The bands there had Bengali musicians: for example, Indian Ocean. We use to have a good amount of adda and sing songs through the night.
My father always taught me to never be quiet. That's the good thing about a Bengali household.
