Kolkata Diary 2 / Nayantara in a Globalised World

Nayantara, which means the star of one’s eye in Bangla, was the star of her father’s eye. He died in his sleep two days ago. 

Nayantara’s mother Shanti worked as cook in our home for 10 years. A quiet diminutive woman in her forties then, she would come for two hours every weekday. And during the long period, she was absent for a total number of zero days (I mean AWOL). Neither was she late once. Once, a cyclone-hit Kolkata was under knee-deep water and it was still pouring. Shops hadn’t opened; buses weren’t plying. But Shanti arrived at the precise time. Besides her discipline, honesty, and decent culinary skills, Shanti is an unexceptional person.

Her husband Sudhir was an expert machinist who ran a cottage industry, using his own lathe. He fabricated small industrial components for the dying engineering units located around the city. (Shanti, who helped her husband at work, couldn’t describe the product, and I left it there.) Sadly, given the state of the economy in West Bengal, Sudhir’s clients’ factories would be closed more often than not, and consequently, Sudhir was unemployed for most of the year. In fact, that is the reason Shanti took up a cook’s job. Ours happened to be the first house she worked in.

Last evening, we reached Shanti’s house after taking several turns in narrow lanes that weren’t Wider than five feet at any point. But thanks to Kolkata Corporation’s people-friendly work, the alleys, all cemented, were scrupulously clean; there were gutters leading to an underground drain every 100 feet or so. Halogen light bulbs flooded the lanes in bright white.

As four of us sat on the only armless three-sitter sofa in the room, Shanti stood before us and talked. We couldn’t ask her to sit down because there was no other place to sit in the tiny room cluttered with old calendars hanging on unpainted walls. Shanti’s house has two small rooms and a smaller one for visitors, which I’ve just mentioned. However, the walled compound is spacious, with several fruit trees. The mango and jackfruit trees reminded me of the delectable fruits Shanti used to bring for us every summer.

Usually in these circumstances in our part of the world, the house of bereavement is flooded with relatives and friends. But when we were there, there was none beside mother and daughter. Both of them seemed to have taken the sudden, completely unforeseen shock with remarkable calm. Or maybe, the enormity of the loss was yet to sink in. Nayantara, wearing pink trousers and a poncho over her shirt, came and stood beside her mother.

A good student, Nayantara had graduated with Honours in English. Then she found a job at a call centre on the other side of the city. It ended her dream of higher studies, but saved the family. She commuted 30 kilometres by bus every morning, and her company provided transport at night. She would reach home at 12:30 AM with mother waiting to serve her food. I knew all that, but as I was away from Kolkata for three years, I didn’t know she had lost her job during the pandemic. I asked her what she is doing now.

‘I’ve been working for an Australian company for the last six months.’

‘Great, where is your office?’

‘We don’t have an office in India yet. We are a small team of just 21 people. But we meet from time to time at a conference hall. I work from home … from 4 in the morning to 11, with a recess for an hour.’

‘What kind of work do you do?’

‘I work for a telecom company. In Australia, every telecom company has to provide a combined package of telephone and internet services. Our company doesn’t have individual clients, it’s all B-to-B. My job is to call up corporate clients and convince them to shift to our network.’

‘Including cold calls?’

‘Yes, some of them.’

‘What is the talk-time for you in a day?’

‘At least two hours.’

Wow! Sitting in a corner of Kolkata, Nayantara convinces Australian companies to buy her network! Does she find the Australian accent difficult?

‘No, not really. I worked for a British firm for five years. So, I was quite okay with the British accent. Initially, I found the Australian accent difficult. But they trained us for a month. It’s okay now. A bigger problem was that I knew nothing about the telecom sector. I had to work hard to understand the industry.’

‘What kind of work did you do in your previous company?’

‘I sold nuisance-call blocking devices to elderly people in the UK.’

‘Wow! How do you find your present company?’

‘Very good. There are no hassles, my salary comes into the bank on the first of every month. The recess hour is flexible. I can even take off four fifteen-minute chunks any time I like.’

‘You found your earlier job through campus placement. How did you find this one?’

‘Through LinkedIn. I had to go through three rounds of interviews.’

 *

West Bengal is known to the rest of India for its moribund economy, lazy people, and a government seeped in corruption. From outside, it looks like a perfect cesspool. As we walked back, I thought when the Gods are against you, only education can help. I also thought however much the scoundrels who run our country might try, it’s difficult to put down young people. They rise above the ruins around them and chart their own course. Nayantara and her 20 colleagues are an irrefutable proof of that fact.

Live long Nayantara, live well, live independent. Be a beacon to the hundreds of similarly disadvantaged young boys and girls around you.

 [Needless to say, I have changed the names of the protagonists to protect their identity. But the rest of the story is unadulterated truth.]

 

15 Jan 23 / ©Santanu Sinha Chaudhuri