Brian Cox's Jute Journey [DVD]

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He added: "The Scots organised the Empire and organised it very well. But you can still feel the shadow of the Empire in Calcutta all these years later. can be accessed using this link: https://www.churchservices.tv/thorntonheath Committal: 2.15 pm at Croydon It was exhilarating to see Hindus and Muslims working together in such harmony. In fact, jute for me is a metaphor for binding. We even discovered a mosque and a temple standing side by side in the vicinity of one mill,” said Cox. The migrants from both places – equally remote, equally poor, equally foreign to the Scottish lowlands – came to “build the roads, to build the canals, to go into the engineering jobs. But the psychological change was so momentous that there was not the ability to adjust to it.”

Cox’s family history is steeped in tragedy, but also in community. His father died when he was eight. His mother, who worked as a spinner in Dundee’s jute mills, had repeated nervous breakdowns. He said: "When you're born in Dundee, the thing you're very much aware of is the River Tay and the water. Being so close to water you get that sense of journey, of travelling to go somewhere. It is the best way to build bridges,” he said. “I don’t know if there is any better way to do it. Using culture is the best way to engage with any nation. There is an appetite for film and there is a great appetite for cultural exchange. Something is telling me it is ripe for it again. There is so much political crap around, especially between east and west, there is a real need for something else. This can cut through that.” The jute barons made a fortune out of these people. They gave them work, which allowed them to have houses and so on, but Dundee still had the worst child poverty in history at the time - and these people were living half a mile away from some of the richest people in the world." But of course that social power was exclusively within their own milieus. As far as the bosses of the mills, the rich upper-class were concerned, the mill-hands were so much cattle. The mills were incredibly noisy and many workers went deaf; the dust and fibre in the air destroyed their lungs. Still generation followed generation into the mills, entire families occupied in creating wealth for Dundee.I think it translates well,” says Cox, sitting in a tiny room upstairs in the cavernous, winding Wyndham’s. “I think there is a universal quality to this. It is what the Mass used to do for Catholics, the celebration of the Eucharist. The Mass had a kind of mystery about it, and the theatre has a mystery about it. The Scottish Government has highlighted India as one of its key international partners. While educational, financial, heritage and political links are being built between the two nations, Cox said they would be for nothing if culture, like this film festival, was not at the centre of it. They were among hundreds of manual workers who left Scotland to establish what they hoped would be a better life, taking their knowledge of jute weaving to India. During the four-day festival, to be held at Kolkata’s Nandan Film Centre, Cox will introduce every film and give talks at the local film school. The actor, who revealed last week he would star as former House of Commons speaker Michael Martin in a new BBC drama, has been a regular fixture in Scotland this year.

The penultimate day saw the crew leave the hotel early, only to spend half the day crammed in their cars in the intense heat. “We got lost! And when we found our way out, there were endless traffic jams. It was really frustrating,” lamented Cox. Finally the crew proceeded to the banks of the Hooghly for a few hours of filming the barges filled with mounds of jute. “Like the other days, the heat sapped all our energy,” rued Archer. In their prime, though, walking about Chowringhee was like ambling about Dundee High Street, what with all the accents of home they heard at every turn. The Jutewallahs left Dundee for India in search of better lives, a fortune perhaps. They imprinted themselves in Calcutta’s being. Even in the 1980s, long after they had returned home, the jute barges on the Hooghly River still bore marks of Dundee’s great mills – Eagle Works, Baxters…

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It's easy to laugh at that thought but these people had a real go and had interesting lives, and I admire them for that." The Hooghly was the centrepiece of the world of jute, providing berthing for ships bound for Dundee as well points of disembarkation for the Jutewallahs arriving to take up their new jobs and accommodations along the river banks. For many of them, the move to India paved the way for a lavish lifestyle of parties and luxurious living. For others, it was the end of the road. May: Navhind Times. Starting small. Integrative, holistic nutrition and lifestyle medicine expert Luke Coutinho, recently launched his book, “Small Wins Everyday” … I began working on this book in January 2022… Some of our most complicated cases from cancer to diabetes to Alzheimer’s to other diseases have been successful as we teach our patients to make small life style changes on day at a time… Because this has worked for us, we thought we should put it into a book and share it with the world… Despite now enjoying a life of luxury in NewYork, Brian can identify with the mixed fortunes of his city's forebears.

On one hand, jute gave people a whole new life, but at the same time it also reduced life for many people, and gave them a really tough time," he said. This was the day that the crew in general, and Cox in particular, was looking forward to, as they were to shoot at the jute mills on the outskirts of the city. “We went to a number of mills, from one at Chapadanga to the famous mill at Howrah,” said Cox. The budding actor headed to London in the 1960s, and has gone on to forge himself a career that has led to him being regarded as one of the best in the country. Life for the peasants who grew the jute was, inevitably, much much tougher. From planting to maturation was ninety to hundred days, by which time the jute had grown over seven feet high. In intense humid heat, the farmers worked day after day to harvest their golden fibre. When jute prices began to fall, they had to supplement their incomes by growing other crops. Even today, Bengal’s farmers are unable to participate in the rise in demand for the ecologically green crop. They scarcely earn 40 pence a day from it. But still, today, nearly four million families owe their livelihoods to jute.There is that predilection about drink in the Irish, it is a kind of a cliché, but it is also about the nature of celebration and storytelling, and the fact that they do celebrate, the whole spirit of the seanchaí, that is such a powerful spirit.” My family are all Irish. My great-grandfather came from Derry. My great-grandmother came from Donegal – the McCann side of my family. The Coxes all came from Enniskillen. They were forced to move, to wander and be uprooted.” In a revealing documentary from BBC Scotland, Hollywood star Brian Cox, whose films include X-Men 2, The Bourne Identity and Braveheart, traces the history and varied fortunes of the city's jute emigrants.

This will not be Cox’s first encounter with Kolkata and West Bengal. In fact, the area has a very personal pull for the Dundee-born actor. His parents worked in the jute mills by the River Tay, processing tonnes of the yarn shipped from the subcontinent. Cox recently made a BBC documentary, Brian Cox’s Jute Journey, about Dundee’s and his own links with West Bengal. The workers in these mills will find maximum footage in the hour-long documentary. “It was wonderful to see the women working so tirelessly. I was taken in by the amazing grace of Indian women who can take on the most menial tasks and impart such respectability to it,” marvelled Cox.In this fascinating film, Brian journeys into his past and travels to Calcutta, following in the footsteps of the Dundee jute workers who left the city to seek fortunes in India. Brian says: "The 'jute wallahs' left Dundee for what they hoped would be a better life. Dundee (1939, b/w), The city of Dundee, its people and industries: jute, jam, and journalism. Premiered at a meeting of the British Association in Dundee, September 1939, the screening was abandoned midway owing to the declaration of war. Director: Donald Alexander.