WHY KOLKATA?

Although I am an authentic mache-bhate Bengali, more than half my friends are from South India. Incidentally, many of them have lived in what was then Calcutta for at least a few years; three among them were born there and studied up to primary school to university in the city. One among them, Ramachandran, is the worst Calcutta fanatic I’ve come across. He says Flury’s makes the tastiest pastries in the world, Nahum’s, the richest plum cakes (of course, in the world), and you get the juiciest beef rolls ITW at Nizam’s behind New Market. I have at times wondered why every one of them is such a passionate lover of the dying city where you sweat 24X7 for eight months, a city that routinely goes under water at least three times between July and October, a city that is perennially dirty and overcrowded. … How on earth can you fall in love with her?

I reckoned they are in love with the metropolis because most of them lived there in the 1960’s or before, when Calcutta was actually one of the finest cities in the world. In the late 1950s, and even in the ’60s, every morning when I waited for school bus around five-thirty,  the roads used to be washed with water jets. There was a separate network of pipelines all over the city for drawing water from the Ganga for this purpose! (On our terrace, there was a topless tank to store the untreated river water that was used for cleaning etc.) There were hardly any taller-than-three-storey buildings; the sky was much bigger. Roads were well maintained. Buses were crowded; trams were spanking clean. It was unthinkable to get cheated by a Calcutta taxi driver, particularly if he was a Sardarji.  Hawkers hadn’t taken over the pavements along every major throughfare. The cinemas in upmarket Chowringhee were a treat. Even in the late seventies, you could enjoy a relaxed drink at the uncrowded, beautifully furnished pubs in Globe, Light House, and Metro after watching a John Ford or Clint Eastwood Western. In Metro, we would walk unsteadily (even without a drink) as our ankles sunk in the soft carpet. Usha Uthup used to sing at the Trincas. The television hadn’t arrived.

But all those were merely on the surface. I believe those who knew the city intimately also experienced non-transactional, much warmer one-to-one relationships with the people around, something that might not have existed elsewhere. Also, Calcutta didn’t look down upon the poor. Rather, she had space for everyone. That tradition continues. Presently, in my three weeks stay here, I’ve had a few glimpses of that egalitarian warmth.

In the much better organized city and the tech capital of the country where I spend half my time these days, changing a watch battery costs ₹800+ at the nearest watch shop which happens to be in a swanky shopping mall. Therefore, I was delighted when my Casio watch stopped during our flight to Kolkata.

Next morning, I went to our local watch-man Aseem, who has been running a road-side kiosk for 20 years near my home. Aseem showed me a Maxell battery and put it in the watch for a hefty sum of ₹200. (Before writing this, I checked online. Aseem Banerjee matched the price offered by Jeff Bezos.) Then I sheepishly fished out an Allwyn watch that had been dead for over 10 years. I hadn’t thrown it away only because it was a gift from my beloved (and only) wife. (Those days, the price of a quartz wrist watch was half my monthly salary and more than what she earned as a school teacher in a month.) Aseem opened the case and fished out a black mass. He said he would replace it with a new movement which would cost ₹550 including the battery! … I am sure you will find people like Aseem in less prosperous areas of Bengaluru or Hyderabad, but the difference here is, it’s the norm in Kolkata. But there is a flip-side to the story.

Aseem has been selling his expertise for 20 years. Nothing has changed for him in these two decades except that he has become older.

The next story was narrated by a friend, S. S’s Man Friday Dilip (name changed), who is about 60, suffered a massive heart attack not long ago. After a few hits and misses at different hospitals, S managed to get Dilip admitted to RG Kar Medical College, one of the oldest, largest, and filthiest government hospitals in Kolkata. (As you would know, RG Kar has been in news recently because a trainee doctor was raped and murdered in its premises and the powers that be have been largely successful in burying the case.) My friend said it was past midnight when they reached the hospital which was unbelievably overcrowded and unclean. Stray dogs seemed to have 24-hour passes at the hospital. Lots of patients were in the Emergency ward and outside it. Sitting, lying down, on benches, on the floor. Through the chaos, a group of men and women (more women than men) in white coats ran around, not walked, and treated patients. My friend was amazed to see that the doctors actually treated patients in such an environment. Dilip was admitted and brought back from the brink. (He would have died if medical help was delayed by a few more hours.) Later, a stent was implanted in his heart; he was discharged in a week’s time. The cost of treatment? Zero rupees, as Dilip had been wise enough to acquire a free Sastha-Sathi insurance card from the Government of West Bengal.

The third anecdote too is about sickness, but on a much smaller scale. the main protagonist in this story is a fiftyish woman whose name I do not know. We call her Neera’s ma (name changed). Neera’s family irons our clothes and her mom comes to collect and deliver clothes. She is not a particularly busy person; whenever she comes, she sits down for a chat, which is pretty long when my wife Arundhati (name unchanged) is present. We too love to track the career paths of her three daughters. The first one is a trained nurse, the second, a commerce graduate, packs materials at an Amazon godown for 12 hours every day. The third, Neera, is studying nursing and midwifery. A competent mom has seen to it that her daughters stood on their own feet in a country where millions of graduates are unemployed.

Over time, Neera’s mom has become a family friend. She came in the evening one day and sat down. Arundhati was limping a bit; Neera’s ma quickly diagnosed the problem and before leaving, prescribed what to do.

Minutes later, she came back with a pain spray and said it had reduced her  ankle pain. But, ‘You must take paracetamol along with this.’

Besides reducing Arundhati’s pain, Neera’s mom demonstrated why Kolkata even now is the most charming place ITW.

Kolkata / 21 May 2025

Santiniketan, a famous author, and two bright kids

 

Rabindranath Tagore had set up his ashram-school in the turn of the nineteenth century. Despite perpetual paucity of funds, he managed to recruit a galaxy of eminent teachers (including some from abroad). Or maybe, it was the other way round. A galaxy of brilliant people gravitated towards the greatest thinker and visionary Bengal has ever produced. Rabindranath’s idea was to recreate the past Indian tradition of educating children in the midst of nature, where teachers and students lived in close contact. Where facilities were basic, but children grew up unfettered by regimentation, where they could expand their inner world. The experiment worked. The eminent Indians who evolved in Santiniketan included Ramkinkar Baij, KG Subramanian, Mahashwheta Devi, Satyajit Ray, Amartya Sen, and many more.

The glory days of Visva-Bharati was gone long ago, but if a tradition of excellence is built up over decades, it takes time to destroy it. Here is an anecdote written by Palki, who grew up in Santiniketan in the 1980s. It is about her meeting with Annada Shankar Ray.

Annada Shankar was a curious combination of an ICS officer, an essayist, and a writer of children’s rhymes. (He left ICS midway to become a fulltime writer.) His twenty-five-line poem “Teler shishi bhanglo bole khukur pore rag karo” has been a landmark in Bangla literature.

Moving back to Palki, she was a precocious child of 10 who had read everything Annada Shankar had written for children and a little of what he hadn’t written for children. At that time, she was seriously considering a career in writing and naturally, she had decided to leave an everlasting mark in Bangla literature, like Annada Shankar, who she had anointed as her literary idol.

Therefore, when she heard that her idol would visit Santiniketan to receive Deshikottam, the highest award conferred by the university, she was quick to hatch a plan along with her bosom buddy Susmita. A day before the award function, when Annada Shankar had arrived in Santiniketan, the two little girls barged into the university guest house where important visitors stayed. In Palki’s words, Santiniketan hadn’t become Securityniketan then, and nobody bothered that two girls—who had no business to be there—were there. Palki and Susmita covered the long treelined driveway to the circular guest house with much excitement. When they got off their cycles in front of a covered balcony and looked up, they saw Annada Shankar in a cane chair, drinking tea. Palki had no difficulty in recognising him as she had seen his pictures.

The girls had grown up in freedom, they were not to be cowed down by the proximity of great men. They breezed up the stairs leading to the balcony and bent down to touch Annada Shankar’s feet before he knew what was happening. But he would have discerned the purpose of his little visitors in a moment and got talking with them. When he asked them their names, they furnished not only names, but also which school and grade they studied in. By then, Annada Shankar’s wife Lila Ray joined the party. Incidentally, she was an American who had spent years in Santiniketan. Another round of feet touching. Asking them to sit down, Lila Ray gave them biscuits. But the girls were becoming impatient. When they brought out their autograph books, Lila Ray asked, ‘Why do you want autographs?’

You might think it would be a difficult question for ten-year-olds to handle, but no! The children of Santiniketan explained in detail why they thought getting autographs was a good idea. Lila Ray then asked them to recite a poem. The girls quickly finished their biscuits, wiped their faces and stood up. And flailing their arms and possibly their plaits too, recited

For breaking a bottle of oil, you take the child to task,

But you grown-up kids break nations. Why, may I ask?

After such a performance, they naturally got what they came for. Mission accomplished.

* 

I do not know Susmita, but Palki’s mother, who left at an early age and her father, both have been senior friends. Palki hasn’t become a literary sensation (yet). She has just done a PhD from Oxford and teaches at the finest university of liberal arts in India. She is young and I do hope she will achieve her childhood dream someday! All the best, Palki.Picture of the open-air classroom from Mallarika Sinha Roy’s Facebook page

Kolkata Diary 1 / A mother is born

If you have a sweater under your jacket, a woollen flat cap to cover your head, and if your feet are in comfortable shoes, a January morning in Kolkata can be enchanting. 

After many months, we returned home last night. Although I am not an early riser, this morning I ventured out at six to get milk for our coffee and a Bangla newspaper. The sun was yet to be up, the lake in front of our home and the trees around it were under the blanket of a mysterious fog that never fails to bewitch me. A few die-hard early-morning walkers around the lake looked like health-conscious ghosts in the semidarkness. If there was heaven on earth, it could only be in Kolkata during the winter. 

As I approached the newspaper vendor standing behind his bicycle on which piles of newspapers carrying terrible stories were neatly arranged, a man standing nearby casually threw his empty paper tea cup on the road. Chalta hai! 

The newspaper man asked me with a smile, ‘When did you come back?’ Face recognition ... a pleasant homecoming. A woman sitting with vegetables on the other side of the road called me, ‘E dike eso baba, tomay diyei bounita kori. Come here son; let me begin my day’s business with you!’ 

I was happy to be called son. My mother had passed away 40 years before. Besides, no one can say No to such an endearing request. Her merchandise wasn’t much, some coconuts, bananas, and banana flowers. The last product, which we call mocha, is a delicacy. But removing the sap between the petals of a mocha is a painstaking, time-consuming job. When she held out a mocha for me, I said, ‘You want me to get an earful from my wife so early in the morning? Who would remove the petals?’ 

She said, ‘Don’t worry son, I came here at five o’ clock so that your wife doesn’t have to bother.' And she proffered neatly packed mocha petals in a plastic bag. 

She had come from Amtala, a place 20 kilometres away, which means she would have started latest by 4 in the morning. When I asked her if I could take her picture, she quickly covered her head and broke into a beaming smile. 

One doesn’t have to go to Paris to see a smiling woman! 

 9 January 2023 / ©Santanu Sinha Chaudhuri

History however, is ruthless

 West Bengal is at the cusp of a change. Ms Mamata Banerjee and her party have failed the people who pinned their hope on her as opposed to the brutal rule of the aging Left on the one side and the hatemongering BJP on the other. If the news and social media show us the writings on the wall, in 2026, a new government will come to power in Bengal. At least should!

We must try to understand what has been happening in Bengal. Here is an article by a leading public intellectual who has held his head high through the murky currents of Bengal politics, Kaushik Sen. The original was published in Ananda Bazar Patrika on 3 August 2022.

Translated into English by Kaushik Chatterjee

*

A convention was held on the 2^nd floor of Calcutta Information Centre in 1990. It was organised by the Left Front Government. All the intellectuals of the times had converged there. The then Information Minister, Shri Buddhadev Bhattacharya, was also present. It was necessary to convene such a meeting at a time, when, thanks to a few serial events that rocked West Bengal, the credibility of the Left Front Govt had been considerably shaken in the perception of the people at large.  It is now on records, that, quite surprisingly, all the intellectuals present on that day, barring a few exceptions, strongly and concertedly denied any sense of frustration or misgivings majorly troubling the society; rather, they felt, it was after all, the product of an orchestrated anti-left propaganda, of the vanquished crying hoarse or even that of a bourgeois mentality gone paranoid. We come to know that, among others, even Utpal Dutta, with a clear voice and firm conviction, held on to the ground of the majority.

The poet Sankha Ghose was also present in that meeting. He read out from a small chit of paper. Everyone must have listened to him carefully but didn’t quite feel the urge to dwell upon the deeper anxieties voiced by the poet seriously enough.

The enthusiastic readers can easily retrieve the exact contents of the page from where the poet had read aloud in that intellectual-studded convention, organised by the Left Front Government on 11^th September, 1990. All I can say is that all those grim forewarnings which the poet had prophesied in his pithy but insightful write, were the subject of intense discourse and deliberation, following the electoral eclipse of the Left Front Government in 2011—disconnect with the masses, induction within the party of persons of dubious credentials, corruption, criminalisation, etc. The seeds of decay were all there for the people to take note of. But a large majority of them couldn’t or didn’t quite like to.

I am pretty sure if one goes through its contents today, there wouldn’t be any line of distinction between the parties that have been in governance in Bengal. You could easily swap the label of ‘Left Front Government’ with that of ‘TMC Government’ in that piece of paper. The issues of ‘dangerous laxity or irresponsiveness’, which the poet highlighted then, to have led to a series of ignominious incidents thereafter, were no accidents or conspiracies. They were not then and are not now either.

It would be impossible for the reigning TMC government of West Bengal to write off the instance of naked corruption and embezzlement of funds which has recently come to light, as a non-event or even treat it as conspiratorial. It is not possible for one Partha Chatterjee to commit such a ghastly crime single-handedly. The tentacles of the evil are enmeshed within the nooks and corners of the organisation itself.

The month of July of 2022 will either be remembered or consigned to one of the most inglorious episodes of the socio-political-economic history of West Bengal. The relentless agitation of those aspiring for the teaching posts of Classes IX to XII  for more than 500 odd days now, shall too be etched in the pages of history. A whole new set of questions and agitational dynamics would be scripted on the tales of dogged defiance they showed amidst sufferance of so much deprivation and misery. It is time we understood how this heinous crime had affected us all, beyond those who have been directly harmed by it. While complementing the perfectly professional and thoroughbred role performed by the Officers of Enforcement Directorate (ED) in unearthing crores of rupees from the different flats of the accused, it may be a sobering reminder at this stage, that barring, of course, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), none of the mainstream political parties of India are currently breathing free, thanks to the extraordinary clout and sweeping powers commanded by ED. The recent Supreme Court rulings may also add on the anxieties of the principal opposition parties in this regard, for everyone   knows how BJP can effectively weaponise the ED in bringing the entire Opposition to an uneasy standstill. And it is in this context, that the TMC, through this murky Partha Chatterjee episode, had significantly blunted the anti-BJP, ultra-Hindutwa campaign being taken up at the national stage. The recent events have only helped the party in power to get a firmer political foothold in the map of India; the same party, which operating through the smokescreen of whataboutery and subterfuge, has no qualms in defying the constitutional norms, openly threatening to decimate the minority community with bulldozing of their home and property, through a process of selective  targeting.

‘No Vote to BJP’ was the key slogan rallying which most of us openly mobilised ourselves in the last Assembly Elections. Without casting any disrespect on the TMC leadership or their foot soldiers who made a robust electoral show in the last Assembly elections, it may be averred that this inglorious event in the Bengal political chapter is a frontal betrayal of whatever bit of resistance that the apolitical segment of the societal space was trying to organise, in its own way, against the destructive and totalitarian regime of the BJP.

It is to be noted that TMC had cast their chessboard very astutely and expediently, both within the realm of the Parliamentary politics and outside of it, after a thorough calculation of their political payoffs. They had welcomed with open arms all of those discredited and defeated BJP leaders who had spewed communal venom. It is true that the issue of admittance or otherwise of any persons within a political formation is well within the prerogative of concerned political entity; and yet the 2021 Assembly elections in Bengal assumed a different dimension altogether. Most of us didn’t quite perceive it as a mere allocation of seats among different political dispensations. A large section of the citizenry, casting off the colours of political partisanship, had come out in the open and had in their own way, scripted verses, play-acted, composed songs, made intense parleys in both urban and rural locales, unitedly against a dominant political ideology which loved spewing communal hatred. The corruption that has come to the fore is a frontal assault on the generous faith that inspired such a great endeavour. Mere expulsion of Partha  Chatterjee cannot absolve the party of its moral responsibility.

People in this country now flaunt their masculinity in openly valorising Nathuram Godse. In the current year, in the ‘International Press Freedom index’, India is placed among the trailing 30 countries among the 180 contesting nations. The Modi Government had appropriated every means possible to curtail media and press freedom. Even more than its political contenders, the Bharatiya Janata Party seems to be deeply wary of the enlightened citizenry. Most of the alternate political dispensations are in a pitiable shape at this stage... some are suffering from organisational weaknesses, others are rudderless in absence of a decisive leadership, some have turned maniacal in the rush for political power and the rest of them, which raised a semblance of hope in the initial days, are so deeply mired in corruption, that unless some ground-breaking, far-reaching changes are made, it would indeed be difficult to believe that that they would be able to sustain a formidable and credible challenge against the communal forces.

In the realms of parliamentary democracy, it is the underlying urge of every political order worth its name to cling to power as long as possible. The TMC had scripted massive triumphs in the last three Assembly elections. And yet, in the last few elections, be they the assembly/parliamentary by-elections, Panchayat or the municipal, its relentless efforts to keep its political adversaries in check through an open display of muscle power, had raised serious misgivings and sent shivers down the line. And we have the well entrenched memories of how, thanks to the courageous and formidable resistance shown by the current Chief Minister, the entire political architecture of the Left Front and the CPI(M) came crashing from the height of its political brazenness to a nadir of nothingness. No political dispensation has been able to sustain itself in the long run merely scoring on its numerical strength. If the people lose faith, no material or muscular power can ever redeem a political party. TMC too is no exception. History always has a tough call to take. <>

*

You can read the original Bangla article here:

https://mepaper.anandabazar.com/imageview_64859_5412792_4_71_03-08-2022_4_i_1_sf.html

A carnival of music

Dhriti, who enrolled in a master’s degree programme at our university, had been an air-hostess in her previous birth. And she did look like an ex-air-hostess—tall, slim, and gorgeous. As far as dress sense went, Dhriti was roughly two generations ahead of her time. She was often seen in economical shorts and spaghetti tops, not to mention faded jeans and see-through white shirts.  

Soon, she formed an apparently deep friendship with her classmate Keshav, who we called Keshav Da because he was a married man in his late-thirties. The liaison disappointed many, needless to say. Keshav, was short, dark, and fat, but had an intelligent face with piercing eyes and bushy beards. The last object, along with his circular  metal-rimmed glasses made him look like a nineteenth century Bengali intellectual who had just materialised form a Rabindranath Tagore novel. He wore parachute pyjamas and white kurtas. When Keshav and Dhriti were together, aesthetically and sartorially, they were a study in contrasts. The odd pair was always seen together, on the campus and outside. Actually, they were a threesome, they had a sidekick too, a thin guy of vague features. But lackeys are not remembered by history, not even as footnotes. I’ve forgotten his name. 

Keshav was a touch snooty; normally, he wouldn’t deign to talk to lesser mortals like yours truly. The first time when I had the good fortune was an evening when both of us happened to be customers at Raju’s hooch shop in Goalpara. In winter, Raju sold excellent tadi made of date palm sap at his dimly lit open-air tavern. When we both were sufficiently tipsy, Keshav spoke to me at length. He was an erudite man, I discovered. The light friendship we developed that evening when we were drunk continued in times when we were both sober, unlike what had happened in Chaplin’s City Lights. 

I don’t recall who I went there with, but I clearly remember that Ganesh, a familiar Bihari rikshaw puller, was a fellow drinker that evening. I remember Ganesh’s presence because suddenly, he burst out singing a familiar Tagore song, Badal baul bajay re ektaara. Bauls are a sect of wandering minstrels in Bengal; the song is about a baul cloud playing the ektara, a one-stringed instrument, as the matted hair of the sky darkened the world at the onset of a storm. The song was a tad incongruous under a cloudless winter sky lit up by a trillion stars above and a hurricane lantern below, but Ganesh sang it beautifully. His diction was a little rustic, but the tune was perfect. It was one of those unforgettable snippets of time that remains with you for ever.  

A few weeks after the Goalpara rendezvous, my friend Dibyen and I were on a bus on our way to Jaydev Kenduli on the bank of Ajay. The local people believe—without evidence—the village Jaydev Kenduli is the birthplace of the thirteenth-century poet Jaydev, who composed Geet Govinda, a landmark on the Bengal literary landscape, in Sanskrit in the 13th century. Jaydev Kenduli is also a religious centre with old temples and several ashrams where thousands of bauls congregate in the Bengali month of Poush (December-January), at the end of which a fair is organised over three days. The fair is actually a carnival of bauls, and it was also believed the best of Indian hemp was found there in happy abundance. 

Dibyen, my partner in minor crimes, was thrilling company. A charming fellow, he had interest in almost everything in life. (He is very much alive today. The past tense just indicates I’ve lost touch with him!) He and I wanted to get a taste of baul songs at their authentic best. We also looked forward to smoking grass. 

As it was the last day of the fair, we just about managed to find seats on the last row of a bus, which filled quickly. Soon, before us was stood a solid mass of human bodies, mostly male, some of whom were smoking. Because of the freezing draft, the windows had been shut. The cocktail of smoke and human smell created an interesting ambience in the bus.  

About half an hour into the journey, I had nodded off when there was a sudden commotion. It seemed everyone was jumping towards the front and left of the bus. Fortunately, any force applied within a moving bus doesn’t have an impact on the bus as a whole, thanks to what Sir Isaac Newton called his Third Law of Motion. Otherwise, the bus would have overturned. What was the matter, had a pickpocket been caught? When I asked someone, the excited man said in the local dialect, ‘Bitichheleto bidi keche go!’ (Oh Dear! That female is smoking!)

Dibyen and me wanted to get to the bottom of the matter, and what did we see? The troika mentioned at the beginning of this story had seated themselves comfortably on the corner seat beside the driver. And Dhriti, in faded jeans and a white shirt, was calmly smoking a bidi, the indigenous cigarette made of unprocessed tobacco and leaves. she was gracefully unaware about the commotion her simple act had created. … Incidentally, that was the last time I saw Dhriti. For some reason, she would leave Santiniketan a few days later, never to return. 

*

 

Darkness descended soon after we walked from the bus stop to the river bank. Ajoy is a mighty river during the rains, but in the winter, water was nowhere more than waist-deep. The wide expanse of sand with a few slender streams were waiting for the holy dip to be taken by a few thousand faithful a few hours later. In the tenebrous twilight on the fairground dotted with trees, shacks, and small eateries, there were thousands of people. All of them  except a few like us were children of Rural Bengal. And there was something else. 

As I grew up in post-Partition West Bengal through years of refugees, floods, draughts, and near-famines, I thought I had seen poverty, but that evening I realised that I hadn’t. Everywhere in the fairground there were shallow holes of say six by two feet, crudely dug and covered with hay, twigs, and leaves. I had seen nothing of its kind before, and at first, I couldn’t understand what purpose they might serve. The penny dropped after a while. They were temporary homes, not of the bauls who stayed at the ashrams, but of  the beggars, who had gathered there in hundreds hoping to cash on the pilgrimage-induced generosity in the minds of the people taking the holy dip. In the biting cold of the Birbhum riverbank in mid-January, they had made themselves the most wretched homes one could imagine. But those wretched of the earth were a side-story in the carnival of music. 

The soul of the fair was in the many circles formed by bauls in colourful clothes, who were singing with the accompaniment of an instrument with just one or two strings, and sometimes, keeping the beat by holding ghungroos in hand.  Except for the singer, others were smoking grass from earthen pipes, which were passed on to the next person after a l-o-o-o-ng, unhurried puff. The pipe went around; the air was heavy with the captivating aroma of hemp. 

After walking aimlessly for a few hours, when Dibyen and I were tired, we sat down in one of the circles and received the smoky prasad when our turn came, no questions asked. We listened to songs by rustic voices that recreated the smell of the Bengal earth and sky. In the dark new moon night, anything outside that circle of holy bliss meant nothing. Gradually, the world beyond receded from our consciousness. What bliss!

The singers were poor men rich in happiness. The exact opposite of the money-rich-time-poor young business officials of our time. The night grew older, but no one noticed.  <>

 

Bengaluru / 22 July 2022

 

Kolkata – a natural bulwark against divisive politics?

I was fortunate to meet James Bradbury, a PhD student from Manchester University, when he was doing field studies in and around Kolkata a few years ago. Within a few months, James became reasonably proficient in Bangla and made lots of friends here. Clearly, he was learning not just from printed letters; he was trying to understand the city through experiential learning.

Today, I happened to re-read one of his essays. On 14 September 2020, James wrote this about Kolkata: 

“Once the seat of power in colonial India, Kolkata has once again moved to the center of the nation’s political life. Now, it is integral to a struggle to define the Indian nation. What engenders this struggle in the first place is arguably Kolkata’s living repository of experiences, memories, and ideas—everything that the city preserves and that contradicts the BJP’s political agenda. This political tradition is kept alive in the chatter of the city’s coffee houses, tea shops, and campuses, and lodged in the collective memories of independence, displacement, resettlement, and renewal.

“And it is indeed fragile. As the BJP’s electoral juggernaut rolls eastward, it will inevitably alter Kolkata’s political culture: Hindu nationalism will play a greater role in coming years, stirring up underlying religious tensions and politicizing questions of citizenship and belonging along the border. But this vision of India will also face a natural bulwark in the refugee megacity, where some voters and activists will stubbornly adhere to their time-honed ideas and reject attempts to rule them by sowing divisions. Kolkata may, in this process, rekindle some of the rebellious energy that has characterized its history. In its midst, it continues to shelter ideas that were important to India’s nation-making past, and which are likely to re-emerge in one form or another to shape its future.”

The result of the recent election in West Bengal has flummoxed pundits of all persuations. Except for Prashant Kishore and – I can say now – James Bradbury, NOBODY could foresee the future in such clear terms. Kolkata has indeed rekindled “some of the rebellious energy that has characterized its history.”

As a social scientist, James Bradbury shows tremendous prescience to predict what has been happening in Bengal today. Take a bow, James!

I would strongly recommend that you invest a little time to read it. If you do, you shall get some clarity about the history of West Bengal and also a partial answer to the question why a state with such a large population of Hindu refugees uprooted by Muslims have always kept communal political parties like the Hindu Mahasabha, Jan Sangh, and now BJP, at arm’s length. Happy reading!

Here’s the link to the essay. 

21 May 2021

The Poet of Famine

 

The revolutionary Bengali poet Sukanta Bhattacharya, born on 15 August 1926, died before he was 21.

The Wikepedia contains a brief page on him. It summarises his life accurately though inadequately in the following words:

“As a poet as well as a Marxist he wielded his pen against the Second World War, the famine of 1943, fascist aggression, communal riots etc. His poems, which describe the sufferings of the common people and their struggle for existence, look forward to an exploitation-free society.”

In a poem in his collection of poems titled The Passport (ছাড়পত্র) Sukanta wrote,

“Yet, the inevitability of starvation

Spreads through me terrible blight.

I am a poet of famine – in my nightmares

I hear footsteps of death every night.”

(তবুও নিশ্চিত উপবাস

আমার মনের প্রান্তে নিয়ত ছড়ায় দীর্ঘশ্বাস –

আমি এক দুর্ভিক্ষের কবি,

প্রত্যহ দুঃস্বপ্ন দেখি, মৃত্যুর সুস্পষ্ট প্রতিচ্ছবি!)

The self-proclaimed “poet of famine” possibly died as a result of starvation, of tuberculosis, two months and two days before what would have been his 21st birthday (and the Independence Day of a new republic), at Jadavpur T. B. Hospital in Kolkata.

Sharing my translation of an iconic poem of Sukanta. Its last line has also become a catch-phrase in Bangla.

I do not know who the great prophet was, who Sukanta addressed in this poem. Could he be the greatest poet of Bengal who had spread a message of love and beauty through his life? Rabindranath Tagore had been 66 when Sukana was born. The Bengal Famine that killed three to four million people happened two years after Tagore’s passing. It is impossible that Sukanta was uninfluenced by Tagore. Rather, like every educated Bengali, his social sensibilities and intellectual development would have been deeply influenced by the seer.

To the Great Prophet

Great Prophet! The hour of poetry is over,

Let our book be prose from cover to cover.

End the rhythm of words and rhyme,

The hammer of the prose – the call of our time!

The softness of the verse I shall tell,

Poetry, I must bid you farewell;

In the land of the hungry and the dead

The full moon is a lump of burnt bread.

 

 

হে মহাজীবন

হে মহাজীবন, আর এ কাব্য নয়

এবার কঠিন, কঠোর গদ্য আনো,

পদ-লালিত্য-ঝঙ্কার মুছে যাক

গদ্যের কড়া হাতুড়িকে আজ হানো!

প্রয়োজন নেই, কবিতার স্নিগ্ধতা–

কবিতা তোমায় দিলাম আজকে ছুটি,

ক্ষুধার রাজ্যে পৃথিবী-গদ্যময়ঃ

পূর্ণিমা চাঁদ যেন ঝলসানো রুটি।

 

Translated on 2 March 2021

 

A minor protest-march

Manas Bhattacharya

[While our reckless rulers have been rattled by unprecedented protests by farmers against the new farm laws which many experts believe will destroy our agriculture, the Sikh community in Kolkata organised a protest march on 29 November 2020. Here is a citizen reporter’s account of the march posted on Facebook on 30 November 2020. The original Bangla post follows my translation. The pictures were taken by the author and my friend.]

Born in this city and grew up in this city too, but until today, I didn’t see a political rally by Sikhs. Quite certainly, some Sikhs would have marched in processions individually, but a political protest organised by the Sikh community? I couldn’t recall one.

Yesterday, 29 November 2020, there was such a protest march in Kolkata under the banner of Kolkata Sikh Sangat to express solidarity for the historic farmers’ rally in Delhi, which has been demanding repeal of the recent farm laws. That protest has made a strong impact on our collective consciousness as the protesters have surrounded the capital.

I reached the designated place, that is, the Gurdwara in Harish Mukherjee Road in time. Near the entrance, an elderly Sikh gentleman was offering everyone tea. Although the tea I drink at home is without milk and sugar, I quite like the sweet Punjabi tea made with rich milk. I accepted a cup.

As a crowd was gathering, some young Sikh girls began raising slogans, “Modi teri tanashahi nehi chalegi, nehi chalegi!” (Modi, your dictatorship must end, must end!) I no longer needed the cardigan; took it off. The crowd around the sloganeering girls was growing bigger. The decibel level of the slogans too went up.

After some time, when the procession began to move, I saw a group of students from Jadavpur University. I came across some familiar faces I had seen in anti-NRC rallies. Came across fellow Muslim warriors. Yes warriors, we are indeed in the middle of a war – however minor our role in the war might be. Every individual participating in a protest march, every bystander who is encouraging the rallyists, every Indian who sits before their TV set in intolerable anger in the evening, every one of them is a comrade in this war against fascists. But in this rally, 90% are Sikh children, young and elderly men and women. The elderly are all in sparkling white clothes.

While the procession moved on, a TV journalist was speaking with several participants. What TV channel? I saw the name of the channel on their microphone, “Akaal Channel”. I had never heard the name. On my mobile phone, Mr Google told me it is a channel based in London. Great! People from different countries will watch our protest!

I too spoke to people randomly. When different generations of a family participate in a rally, it adds a new dimension to the protest. The enthusiasm of the young Sikhs was to be seen to be believed. Some of them said they were in a protest march first time in their life. They were laughing, jumping, and raising slogans in Hindi, English, and Bangla. And slapping, hitting with lathis a straw effigy of Modi which they were carrying to be burned.

In Central Avenue volunteers had kept water bottles on a table under the banner of “Umeed Foundation”.

How many people were there in the march? Not many, my guess is around three thousand. I don’t know who is going to adorn the ruler’s throne in Bengal next year. But after speaking to a number of young and old Sardars in the rally, I realised, not one Sikh vote will go to BJP in West Bengal.

Translated on 1 December 2020

একটা ছোট্ট মিছিল

===========

এই শহরেই জন্ম। এই শহরেই বড় হওয়া। কিন্তু আজ পর্যন্ত এই শহরে শিখদের কোনও রাজনৈতিক মিছিল দেখিনি। ব্যক্তিগতভাবে কোনও শিখ কোনও মিছিলে পা মেলাতেই পারেন। কিন্তু শুধু শিখ সহ নাগরিকদের মিছিল? নাহ, মনে পড়ছে না।

গতকাল, ২৯ নভেম্বর, সেইরকমই এক মিছিল হল কলকাতায়। কলকাতা শিখ সঙগঠ্ (sangat)- এর ডাকে। কৃষি আইনের বিরুদ্ধে লড়াইয়ে দিল্লি ঘেরাও করে রেখেছে যে ঐতিহাসিক কৃষক আন্দোলন, তার সঙ্গে সহমর্মিতা জ্ঞাপনের মিছিল।

নির্দিষ্ট সময়ে পৌঁছে গেলাম জমায়েত স্হলে, হরিশ মুখার্জি রোডের গুরুদ্বারে। গুরুদ্বারের প্রবেশ পথের পাশে টুলে বসে এক প্রবীণ শিখ ভদ্রলোক সবাইকে চা দিচ্ছিলেন। বাড়িতে লিকার খেলেও পাঞ্জাবিদের ঘন দুধের চা মন্দ লাগে না। নিলাম এক কাপ। ভীড় বাড়তে কয়েকজন অল্পবয়সী শিখ মেয়ে খালি গলায় শুরু করলো স্লোগান। মোদি তেরি তানাশাহি নেহি চলেগি নেহি চলেগি। দেখলাম আর প্রয়োজন নেই, খুলে ফেললাম সোয়েটারটা। স্লোগানরত মেয়েদের ঘিরে ভীড়ের বৃত্ত ক্রমশ বড় হতে থাকে। ক্রমশ বাড়তে থাকে স্লোগানের আওয়াজ।

একসময় শুরু হল মিছিল। এবারে দেখলাম যাদবপুর ইউনিভার্সিটির ছেলেমেয়েদের। দেখলাম NRC বিরোধী মিছিলে দেখা হওয়া পুরনো মুখ। দেখলাম ব্যানার নিয়ে মুসলমান সহযোদ্ধারা। হ্যাঁ সহযোদ্ধা, কেননা এটা তো যুদ্ধই, যতোই হোক না তা খুব খুব ছোট্ট ফরমে। গোটা দেশের সমস্ত বিরোধী মিছিলের প্রতিটি মানুষ, মিছিলকে উৎসাহ দেওয়া রাস্তার পাশে দাঁড়িয়ে থাকা দর্শক, প্রতিদিন রাতে অসহ্য রাগ সহ্য করে টিভির সামনে বসে থাকা দেশবাসী, তাঁরা প্রত্যেকে ফ্যাসিস্টদের বিরুদ্ধে যুদ্ধের সহযোদ্ধা। কিন্তু মিছিলের নব্বই শতাংশ শিখ -- বালক বালিকা, তরুণ তরুণী, যুবক যুবতী, প্রৌঢ়। প্রৌঢ়রা সব সাদা পোশাকে।

মিছিল শুরু হতে এক টিভি সাঙবাদিক অনেকের সঙ্গে কথা বলছিলেন, অন ক্যামেরা। কোন্ টিভি? দেখলাম চ্যানেলটার নাম অকাল। Akaal channel. এই নাম আগে শুনিনি। মোবাইল খুলে দেখলাম এটা লন্ডনের চ্যানেল। বাহ ভালো। আমাদের মিছিল দেশ বিদেশের লোক দেখবে।

আমিও এর ওর সঙ্গে কথা বলছিলাম আর দেখছিলাম। তরুণ পাঞ্জাবিদের উদ্দীপনা দেখবার মতো। জীবনে প্রথমবার তারা মিছিলে। আর যে মিছিলে বাপ বেটা একসঙ্গে, সে মিছিলের তাৎপর্যই আলাদা। ওরা লাফাচ্ছে, হাসছে, জোরে জোরে কথা বলছে আর স্লোগান দিচ্ছে হিন্দিতে, ইংরেজিতে, বাংলায়। এবং পোড়াবে বলে সঙ্গে নেওয়া খড়ের মোদিকে সোল্লাসে থাপ্পড় কষাচ্ছে, লাঠির বাড়ি মারছে।

সেন্ট্রাল এভিনিউতে রাস্তার পাশে Umeed Foundation-এর ব্যানার টাঙিয়ে জলের বোতল টেবিলে সাজিয়ে বসেছে স্বেচ্ছাসেবীরা।

কতো লোক হবে মিছিলের? বেশি নয়। আন্দাজ কমবেশি হাজার তিনেক। আমি জানি না এই রাজ্যের মসনদে কারা বসতে চলেছে। কিন্তু উত্তেজনায় ভরপুর এই ছোট্ট মিছিলে অংশ নিয়ে বেশ কিছু নবীন ও প্রবীণ মানুষের সঙ্গে কথা বলে একটা জিনিস মালুম হল: এই রাজ্যে যতো শিখ আছেন, যতো -- তাঁদের একটা ভোটও বিজেপির ঘরে যাবে না।

Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram

Raghupati, Raghu for us, was my classmate for years during my undergraduate studies at Santiniketan. He was a colourful fellow with many special qualities. I haven’t come across too many people who are more capable. And more complex.

If I may digress from Raghu for a moment, during the last 25 years I’ve been writing the stories of my life, I have written only one anecdote on someone who I had to say something unpleasant about. It is unsurprising because memory works like a sieve and removes unpleasant incidents and people. Yet, some problematic people defy the memory filter and remain, by the sheer strength of their personality. Raghu is such a person.

I won’t tell you how Raghu looked, whether he was tall or short, slim or pudgy, handsome or otherwise. One of the finest Indian writers in English, RK Narayanan, would never describe the physical attributes of his characters. He believed looks didn’t matter, at least in most stories. Narayanan is one of my gurus, but I don’t quite agree with him on this point. However, to hide the identity of my friend, I would follow Narayanan’s style today. I haven’t met Raghu for almost 40 years, but I’ve heard from common friends about his spectacular success in business. And although he has made crores, he’s the same down-to-earth Raghu of yore. The doors of his two palatial buildings in Kolkata – I am told – are always open to old friends. Some of them who visit the city on various errands stay in Raghu’s house for days together. Raghu doesn’t have the time to talk to them these days, but he has never been stingy about hospitality. I spotted Raghu’s business acumen early and knew he would make it big. How did I know? That will come later. And before I come to that, here’s an outline of Raghu’s personality. He was great company, exceedingly intelligent, and a compulsive liar. Raghu was also ever-smiling and easy to deal with. But behind his happy-go-lucky exterior, he had a mind of steel. Unknown to the rest of the world, he was a local leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist), CPI ML for short, commonly known and dreaded as Naxalites. There were other shades of Naxalites, but the CPI ML was particularly vicious. Under their – if I may say so – insane leader Mr Charu Mazumdar, they decided that the easiest way to bring in a just, egalitarian society and to remove all the socio-economic problems would be to kill rich people one after the other and also, policemen. To put a sheen on the act, they didn’t call the process killing or murdering. They would say it was “annihilation of class enemies”. Unfortunately, they couldn’t reach the big fish, so their targets were small money lenders and nasty landowners who treated poor people shabbily. They also killed policemen, but hardly any senior official among them. The elderly physician Dr. Radha Krishna Sinha was rich, but he didn’t satisfy the other requirements to be annihilated by Naxalites. He was popular in our small town and was known to be a generous man who helped the poor. Once, in a bitterly cold winter morning when we returned from our departmental excursion to Ranchi, we heard that Dr Sinha had been “annihilated”. During the trip, Raghu had been with us and regaled us with his wit. Much later, I came to know – to our horror – that he was the mastermind (or one of the masterminds) behind the murder of Dr. Sinha. He had gone on the excursion only to have a watertight alibi. His luck ran out after some time and he was arrested. And tortured in jail in the normal course of business. He lost several months of college in the process. However, before our final year exams, he was released on bail. Although he hadn’t had the requisite attendance, the university allowed him to take the final year exams “on compassionate grounds”. This happened during the summer vacation that year, shortly after which our exams were scheduled. I was in Kolkata then. Raghu telephoned me at home and said, ‘Do you know what you should do when the police beat you?’ ‘How would I? I’ve never been beaten by anyone except by father.’ ‘Keep this in mind, it might come in handy someday. When they hit you, you should cry out as loudly as you can. You should say “Babare, maare, more gelumre, banchao!” (Dad! Mom! Save me, I’m dying!) or anything you wish, but you must holler as loudly as you can.’ ‘How does it help?’ ‘It makes your pain much more bearable.’ Raghu didn’t call me with the altruistic motive to train me how to deal with police torture. He wanted me to help him out with preparations for the forthcoming exams. It was decided I would cut short my vacation and return to hostel. He too would join me there. When no one else was around, I would help him and we both would prepare for the exam in the quiet solitude of an empty hostel. I too thought it would be a good move. Besides, I was exceedingly fond of Raghu. The prospect of spending time with him was not a minor attraction. On the appointed day, there was no Raghu. His family – they lived in a small market town – was well-off, but those days, personal telephones were unthinkable except in cities. There was no way I could get in touch with him. After waiting for two days in the empty hostel, I became a little worried about Raghu’s wellbeing. Had he been picked up again? I took a train to where Raghu lived. Although I hadn’t been to his home earlier and had no idea where it was, I could easily find out his digs, such was his fame. Well, digs wouldn’t be the right word to describe the evidently wealthy man’s three-storey building in gaudy colours and the usual embellishment of lotuses (or was it flying swans?) carved out on the parapets of the balconies. The gate was stout and enormous. (Did Raghu’s old man too fear annihilation by Naxalites?) And no calling bell. After I made sufficient noise, a naked man in just a loincloth poked his nose out of the narrowly opened gate. When I asked for Raghu, he said, ‘Raghu Babu is not home.’ ‘Where is he?’ ‘Gone to attend a wedding.’ ‘When will he be back?’ ‘Don’t know, maybe a week, maybe …’ I returned to our hostel, had food at “Boudi’r dokan” (Sister-in-law’s eatery) nearby and spent the rest of the vacation studying alone. In the end, I was thankful to Raghu. That year, I did reasonably well in the exams, by my standards. Keeping people waiting was something Raghu specialised in. Years later, he called me up one evening, I had no idea how he got my phone number. I was working for a bank in Kolkata then and Raghu had some problem with his bank which he wanted to discuss with me. There was a sense of urgency in his voice when he said, ‘I must talk to you face to face. Are you home?’ He hung up after saying he would be in my place in an hour. I didn’t expect him to come, an expectation he duly fulfilled. But a few days later, he did come to my office later to get some professional advice. That was the last time we met. By then, Raghu had breached the commercial boundaries of his tiny hometown; he was a civil contractor and a somewhat well-known businessman in the district. He had his ways of dealing with people. For example, according to an apocryphal tale, once he bought a second-hand car, got it refurbished and drove it to the wedding reception of the daughter of a local Public Works Department (PWD) executive engineer. While leaving, he left the keys and papers of the vehicle with the government official and got home by rickshaw. His rose spectacularly – I was told – specialising in bridges and fly-overs. He built some major fly-overs before the 1982 New Delhi Asiad. However, among his many hits, there were a few misses too. A bridge built by him across the River Kopai collapsed. But unlike her more well-known cousin, The Bridge on the River Kwai, nobody dynamited her. The local people were furious and wanted to lynch the contractor, that is, our Raghu. The powers-that-be quickly arrested him and kept him in jail for months, which incurable backbiters said was only to save Raghupati Banerjee’s precious life. Raghu had come a long way from his revolutionary past and joined the ranks of small-time dubious businessmen with flexible conscience who are an integral part of the power structure in Indian small towns. He had moved to the other side of the equation. In the beginning of this story, I said I would tell you how I knew – early in his business career – that Raghu would be hugely successful. To make my point, I’ll have to take you back to 1973 or 74. We were doing Masters then. Raghu had dropped out after graduation. He had been in and out of jail since our failed rendezvous and the Naxalite movement was dying. He had also fallen in love with a beautiful and bright girl, Neera, a few years our junior. We had a brutal government in West Bengal then, which was handling Naxalites in four different ways. The first group was killed by police or their goons in cold blood or otherwise. There’s no official estimate about the number, but it’s widely believed around 5000 young men and women, who included some of the finest of our generation, were eliminated. The second group, to which belonged a majority of the Naxalite activists, often suffered torture in jail and managed to destroy – completely or partly – their future prospects. After a point, they drifted away from the self-annihilating movement and found various ways to deal with life. As their stories are unspectacular, their sacrifices have been unrecorded and almost completely forgotten. A third, much smaller group, the offspring of people with power and deep pockets, were bundled off to Europe or America for higher studies and rehabilitation. The fourth and last group was encouraged to set up businesses locally and given financial support and bank loans. Raghu belonged to the fourth set. Raghu’s story began with an annual excursion, and it will end with another, in a way, completing a circle. Our physics department students went to Darjeeling that year. Raghu wasn’t with us. He had left both studies and the revolution and just begun small-time civil contract work in his hometown. But he would often visit our campus, primarily to catch up with his girlfriend. It’s often said, “The journey is more exciting than the destination.” The saying was literally true for the 70-kilometre from Jalpaiguri to Darjeeling, which the tiny, narrow-gauge “toy trains” would cover in four to five hours. The beautiful blue train had only three coaches with big windows without the usual iron gratings. It would move slowly, particularly while going uphill. There was a bitumen road beside almost all along the railway track. Getting off and on the running train was great fun for us. As normal brakes wouldn’t work on steep inclines, there was another toothy rail in the middle, parallel to the rails. If for some reason the train had to be stopped on an ascent or descent, the engine driver would lower a gear which would catch the toothy rail. When the gear was jammed in addition to brakes, the train couldn’t but stop. Also, for some reason, not one, but three trains would leave the New Jalpaiguri station one after the others. I was on the second train, standing at a door. We crossed one of the many picturesque rivers on the way, along a jangling bridge with no girders. I looked at the steam far below, from the banks of which children waved at us wildly. The winter sun was dipping on the horizon and the Himalayas looked gorgeous in the orange glow of the setting sun, while the aging train struggled on a steep incline. Suddenly, I heard some noise ahead and looked up. The train in front was sliding back uncontrolled; gaining speed every moment. The engine driver was shouting and gesticulating madly to the driver of our train. After a minute or so, our driver too jammed the brakes and started reversing. I jumped off and saw the third train had stopped on the rickety bridge we had just crossed, a few hundred metres away. If it remained stationary, our train would crash on it right on the girder-less bridge and it was scary to imagine the consequences. The people who had got off our train started shouting to the passengers, asking them to get off, because they could see the danger that was only seconds away. Soon, people started jumping off our train. Some managed it neatly, but most of the ordinary people jumped in the wrong direction because they had never studied physics or the laws of inertia. I saw human bodies dropping like sacks of potato. The budding physicists of our group had no such problem, almost all of them were off the train without much trouble. However, two girls among us had nasty falls possibly because they were wearing sari. One of them was Neera, Raghu’s girlfriend. I do not remember how our group completed the journey, but I didn’t, that day. Neera and Preeti – both of them had head injuries – had to be rushed to the nearest hospital in Kalimpong in hastily arranged taxis. They were admitted immediately. As someone had to be there to look after the injured girls and deal with emergencies, I stayed back in Kalimpong until their parents arrived two days later. Fortunately, they were safe by then, each with dozens of stitches on their head. * The down Darjeeling Mail reached Bolpur early in the morning a week after the accident. As we were leaving the station, I saw a beaming Raghu, a little late, but eager to meet his girlfriend after a week’s separation. Clearly, he hadn’t got the news. I took him to a nearby tea stall and broke the story gently. Dumbfounded, Raghu looked at me for a long time through the steam over our tea cups. The silence, which was beginning to be a little unbearable, was broken by a deeply thoughtful Raghu, speaking more to himself than to me, ‘I am getting some tarpaulin sheets at a throwaway price. I don’t need them right now, but should I buy them for the future?’ It was my turn to be dumbfounded. After hearing that Neera was out of danger, the pragmatic businessman in him had turned his attention completely to more worldly matters. Soon he asked me to join him. I said, ‘Raghu, you won’t find a more useless business partner, I can guarantee that.’ ‘I know, but you can write and speak English.’ Therefore, I got the first job offer in my life thanks to the pernicious long-term effects of British colonialism. I asked him, ‘After working for so many years to emancipate the wretched of the earth, how do you find yourself in a position where you have to exploit workers?’ ‘You’re dead wrong. In business, you can make money without exploiting anyone.’ I was almost as astonished as Karl Marx would have been, ‘Really? How?’ ‘My first contract was to construct a road. Underneath the surface, I just put third quality bricks instead of first quality, as required by the contract papers. And made a huge profit without exploiting anyone. Do you get the point?’ I knew Raghu had a bright future. [Gentle Reader, Except for the Visva-Bharati Physics Department and our excursions, every other character and detail given here are imaginary. Any coincidence with anyone dead, alive, or in coma is completely coincidental.] Monday, 26 October 2020 

[Photo of the Toy Train courtesy Wikimedia Commons. By Arne Hückelheim - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12719221 / The other picture is by me]

Reinventing Memories: Anup

 It was during the winter vacation at our university in the early 1970s. While returning from somewhere to our university township one evening, I was to change bus at Keernahar, a tiny market-town. When I reached there, the last bus had left.

Small market towns in the Bengal countryside have something forlorn about them. By the time I reached, darkness and dew were descending on the almost empty bus stand, that is, an old brick-and-mortar shed which had been taken over by some beggars and vagabonds after dusk. Some of them were in fact fast asleep. The bus stand also had a few small eateries and stores selling biscuits, cigarettes, torch cells, and other life-saving equipment.

There were a few people around and the shops were shutting down. Soon, the crepuscular darkness turned the place into a black-and-white watercolour painting when a few dim Edison-era electric bulbs were turned on here and there. The store-keepers and the passengers from the last buses were clearly getting ready for sleep, but the market place had been sleeping already. It was a page from a Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay story which would be written later.

As I was drinking my super-sweet milky tea sitting on a bench made of bamboo staves, a gust of freezing wind blew in from Darjeeling. I realised that my light cardigan was no match for the frosty Birbhum winter night. I also knew I had nowhere to go.

There were no hotels in places as tiny as Keernahar and even if there had been, they wouldn’t be of much help; I had less than five rupees on me. (I don’t recall exactly how much cash I had, but I certainly remember that I had just about enough for a meal and the bus fare.)

In such places, the standard operating procedure was that stranded travellers would spend the night sleeping on a tea-shop bench. However, the easy camaraderie that had been a part of rural Bengal was coming to an end. Earlier, people would gladly let in a stranger and allow him to spend the night in their outer veranda, if not in the home itself. But in the time I am talking about, before wheedling a free lodging for the night at a tea shop, one had to establish that they were no thieves, nor a Naxalite running away from police. I guess I didn’t look like a professional thief, but given my age, I was a high-risk candidate for the second category.

I suddenly recalled that a boy two years our junior in the physics department lived in Keernahar. I didn’t know him very well. But I knew he lived in Keernahar. I asked the owner of the tea stall if he knew Anup Kumar Roy who studied at …. The shopkeeper, who was very unlike the usually talkative Bengalis, just grunted. I took another glass of tea and thought.

In about ten minutes, Anup appeared, picked up my bag and said, ‘Come home, Santanuda.’ It seemed someone overheard me enquiring about Anup, and given the proximity of people in our villages and small towns, the message had reached him soon.

It was the beginning of a deep friendship. Anup took me to his home which was a very old and very huge red-brick building. It would have been built by a wealthy zamindar long ago. By then, the mansion had been partitioned into a few independent dwelling units – which too were very big – and Anup’s family lived in one of them.

Anup was a brilliant student. After doing his graduation, he went to Calcutta University to do his Masters in electronics. Then he began working for the Electronic Corporation of India, a company people knew for their excellent TV sets.

By then, I too had been posted in Calcutta and Anup, a bachelor then, was one of the regulars in the set of close friends who would often gather in our obscenely large flat in one of the main thoroughfares of the city. We discussed and solved all the problems of the world and spent glorious weekends together. The most significant difference between then and now is that the future didn’t look so dismal those days. We had dreams in our eyes.

Sadly, my peripatetic profession took me away soon and I lost touch with Anup. Many years later, we briefly met at the Dum Dum Airport. I was about to board my first flight out of the country, and Anup was there to receive his wife, who had been living in the US. That was 25 years ago. We never met again.

I don’t know why I thought of Anup this morning. Memory plays queer tricks on us, doesn’t she?

Friday, 16 October 2020

 

 

 

 

 

Remembering them …

  Poem and Painting by Soumya Shankar Mitra

Remembering Suzette Jordon of Kolkata, the young woman of Kamduni, Nirbhaya of Delhi, the little girl of Kashmir, Manisha of Hathras, and every other girl and woman of my ill-fated country who suffer terrible indignity at the hand of power, and with apologies to Subhash Mukhopadhyay …

However far I might go, 

A phallic symbol of power, 

The clenched fist of a rapist 

Walk alongside.

 

However far I might go,

Walk alongside me

The lecherous look of the protector,

The pathetic defences of the ruler,

The wary eyes of the neighbour

The impotent verdict of the judge

The dance of falsehoods in the crematorium.

 

However far I might go

Along the pitiless guttural path of survival,

A pair of bloodstained footprints of God

Walks alongside me …

However far I might go …

 [Translated by me on 30 September 2020, I have changed the heading.]

The original poem follows >>>

 

 রেপ-কথা

 সৌম্যশঙ্কর মিত্র

 (কলকাতার সুজেট ,কামদুনির তরুণী,কাকদ্বীপের বালিকা, দিল্লীর নির্ভয়া, কাশ্মীরের বালিকা,হাতরাসের মনীষা আর আমার দুর্ভাগা দেশে প্রতি দিন যে মহিলারা ক্ষমতার আস্ফালনে ধর্ষিতা হন তাদের সবার কথা মনে রেখে আর প্রয়াত সুভাষ মুখোপাধ্যায়ের কাছে ক্ষমা চেয়ে এই কবিতা ও ছবি পোস্ট করছি।)

 

আমি যত দূরেই যাই

আমার সঙ্গে যায়

ক্ষমতার উথ্থিত লিঙ্গ

ধর্ষকের মুঠির সন্ত্রাস৷

আমি যত দূরেই যাই

আমার সঙ্গে যায়

রক্ষকের লুব্ধ দৃষ্টি

শাসকের খঞ্জ যুক্তি

পড়শির সন্দিগ্ধ চাহনি

বিচারকের নির্বীর্য বিধান

মিথ্যার শ্মশাননৃত্য৷

 

আমি যত দূরেই যাই

আমার সঙ্গে যায়

অস্তিত্বের নির্মম কর্দমাক্ত পথে

ঈশ্বরের সারি সারি রক্তমাখা পায়ের ছাপ৷

আমি যত দূরেই যাই----