1. Ami Chini Go Chini [Charulata]: When Rabindranath Thakur meets Satyajit Ray meets Kishore Kumar, greatness is guaranteed. There are reams that can be written about the movie and this song in particular, about Kadambari Devi (the story “Nashtoneer” on which “Charulata” is based being inspired by Tagore’s relationship with her), and Victoria Ocampo (the song “Chini Go Chini” written by Tagore’s supposedly as a paean to her with her) but for now, I shall ask you to listen.

2. O Go Nirupama [Anindita]: I just love how the  “I couldn’t care the less about you” meaning of the song is counterpoised by the sheer romance of Kishore-Da’s voice texture.

3. Ei to Hethaye [Lukochuri]: Perhaps the most perfect romantic song.

4. Singh Nei Tobu [Lukochuri]: Is this the first rap song in Indian cinema? Kishore Kumar’s full versatility on show here—the dancing, the acting, the clean singing and of course the comic timing. Immortal.

5. Ek Poloke Ektoo Dekha [Lukochuri]: Yet another song from the same movie. What to do? Such is its awesomeness.

6. Bidhir Badhon Kaatbe Tumi [Ghare Baire]: Rabindranath Thakur meets Satyajit Ray meets Kishore Kumar once again. Magic is inevitable. Note the total absence of accompaniments. As an aside, Kishore Kumar, I have always felt has been under-appreciated as a Rabindrasangeet singer.

7. Sei raate raat chilo []: Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

8. Ei to Jibon [Ogo Bodhu Sundori]: Mandatory song after a few pegs down. Especially if there are Lolas and Lulus in the audience. Yep. Mandatory. Or you ain’t a Bengali.

9. Aaj Ei Dintaake Moner Khathaye [Antorale]:Song for the last day of school. Always. (Please ignore the Bangladeshi video barbarity)

10. Ek Taanete Jemon Temon [Troyee]: What’s not to love? Mithun-da. Kestho Mukherjee. The green light streaming from the back. The time-dilation effects of ganja. A take-down of “Dum Maro Dum.” Awesome fun.

Pujo is perfect. But then as my geography teacher would say, perfection can always be perfected. And I know exactly how that can be done. Everybody just has to listen to what I have to say and follow through accordingly. Of course, I need to couch my “to-do”s as requests and gentle suggestions, since people are more likely to listen to me that way.

So here they are, my ten “requests” to the world, made with the noblest of intentions, which if honored would make this, the most joyous of seasons, even more joyous for everyone.

Well if not for everyone, at least for me.

1. When you claim that I gave your club chanda (subscription) last year and hence am obliged to double the amount this time because of inflation, please do take the trouble of copying the name correctly off the door name-plate while forging my “signature” on to last year’s receipt stub. Bad spelling makes me slightly cross, even more so when you try to convince me that it is I who cannot spell my own name. And oh yes. When my neighbor, the brave skinflint, slams the door on your face without paying his hafta…err….homage to Ma Durga please remember to ask which of the cars in the garage is his. I am sick and tired of you slashing the tires of my car in retaliation.

2. I know that for the community of pickpockets, Pujo is to them what the IPL season is for Indian cricketers.  Which is why I do not grudge them their rights to make a living but can I request these honest men to not misuse my credit card after picking my pocket? Just take the cash and please throw away the plastic. It’s not losing my hard-earned income that bothers me but the nightmarish prospect of dialing the customer service number of my credit card company to report the loss and fight the fraudulent charges.

3. When someone gets lost in the crowd and you, as a Pujo organizer, need to announce his name over the loud speaker, do not use his real name. Always and I repeat always refer to him by his nickname, the more embarrassing it be the better. Anyone who has been a fool enough to get separated from his group in a pandal, deserves to have the world know that he is “Panchu from Paikpara” or “ Bhonda from Bikrampur”. Honestly.

4. The organizers of the Pujo at Maddox Square need to put padding on the bamboo poles that hold the pandal up. For some reason I have yet to fathom, young men there, typically in the evenings, just seem to walk without looking ahead. As a result, they often bump their heads against the bamboo supports.  What surprises me is that the beautiful women, who flitter about nearby at the same time, seem to do just fine.

5. The people who supply food during Pujos, staying awake night after night, indeed do a yeoman’s service and I do not want to sound ungrateful. So please do not get me wrong when I request them to not sell boiled rice and call it biriyani, label sweet bread as cake, and present living organisms inside the stuffing and call it “special” mutton roll.

6.  I totally endorse the practice of having separate lines for men and women in pandals. My only problem is that the young men, who man the Puja committees, are almost always found managing the “leddiej” line leaving the young brats and early teens in charge of the Dada’s queue. Nothing wrong in that of course. It’s not that young boys  cannot manage a massive crowd.  The problem is just that I never much cared to be called “kaku” or “jethu” in a public place, which is what these little tykes inevitably refer to me as. Now thirty-four years old, I don’t mind it so much but when I was twenty-one, this quite riled me up. Respect for age is all fine but this is too much.

7. Totally understand the urge to be different but can we do away with the post-modernism in Durga idols please? I think you know what I mean—-the missiles and the doves and the other expressions of non-traditionalism. I realize the need to be novel but aren’t some things best left unaltered, if only so that our link with the past may be maintained? Thank you. What? You want to make the face of Mahish-asura look like Greg Chappell? Oh do that by all means. And make the buffalo look like John Buchanan while you are at it.

8. The desire to win a “sarod somman” is understandable—-after all who wouldn’t want to get their name in the papers and a few more footfalls? But for that, please do not suppress your natural urge to play Himesh songs full volume. Personally, one of the fondest memories of Pujo I have is of me, fresh in Class nine, feeling totally adult and badass, firing my cap bondook (gun) while pandal-hopping with my friends.  Each place we went to was playing the very same song, “Dekha hai paheli baar sajaan ki aankhon mein pyar” from Sajaan. Sheer joy. Yes I understand the need for tradition —after all was I not arguing for a bit of it a while before? So let’s just make a compromise. Shehnai during the evening and if the urge is too strong, a bit of jhinchaak in the mornings. Sound good?

9. Commercialization and corporate sponsorship of Pujo is welcome, more so if it gets us common people off the hook for “voluntary contributions”. And that of course I realize means more obtrusive advertising at the Pujo venue. But can we all decide not to put advertisements inside the pandal itself like for example not have Kola Bou “being brought to us” by Banana Republic”?

10. A final request. I know that we often don’t have the best things to say about Kolkata. And for very good reasons too. But can all of us agree that for these four golden days in autumn, despite the traffic snarl-ups and the bad food and the pickpockets and the insensitive people who delight in stomping your feet, there really is no other place in the world we would rather be ?

One of the many instruments used by politician extraordinaire Jyoti Basu to cement his total hold over Bengal was the cultivation of the so-called Bengali intellectual. A brain cadre for the party was incubated in every educational institution of the state, from junior school right up to the universities, where every appointment was vetted by the party and one got in only if one’s CV was typed on red paper supplied by Alimuddin Street (the party HQ). Anyone who did not toe the party line was deemed not academically sound and shoved out. The “private” intellectuals i.e the ones who were not on government payroll—-painters, poets, novelists, theatre-workers, singers, film people– were mollycoddled through the organization of party and government soirees (Sports Minister the late Subhash Chakraborty was the point-man for this), handing out of committee chairmanships and in general through devices that made them feel important and wanted.

In exchange, they acted as the mouthpieces of the Left Front supporting the government volubly through each disaster, be it the raising of admission age for students in schools or the abolishing of English at the primary level. When their silence was asked for, like during atrocities like Bantala and Birati, they would develop a debilitating attack of collective laryngitis. Considering the average Bengali’s awe of erudition, the fetishistic worship of  the state’s so-called glorious cultural traditions and their steadfast refusal to acknowledge the alarming atrophy in the quality of public intellectuals,  this was one of the most powerful PR weapons that Basu had.

Buddhadev Bhattcharya, in his hyperactive initial days of wooing aggressive foreign investment, forgot to nourish these brain bacteria. Mamata Banerjee, whom I have always maintained is Jyoti Basu version deux, however did. With their rather strong crimson roots (after all that’s what got them their bully pulpit), the brain mafia of Bengal were not favorably inclined to Buddha’s cavorting with the enemy of the classes (i.e. industry). Mamata on the other hand with her disruptive brand of populism was a person after their heart. Of course intellectual empathy was not the only thing that connected them to Trinamool. Parliamentary tickets, like the one given to tuneless singer Kabir Suman, and well-paying “cerebral” assignments on the taxpayer tab handed out to Trinamool-loyal artists (after all the power to dole out these incentives is one of the main reasons Didi wants the Rail ministry for herself) have cemented the association.

So it was not surprising that the rent-a-brains would, even after the responsibility of the Jnaneswari Express blast was accepted by the PCAPA (People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities), would call it a CPM conspiracy in essence toeing Mamata Banerjee’s line. After all bills do have to be paid even if it be at the cost of blood. This again is not new since  the Illuminati of Kolkata have, over the past few years, become mouthpieces of Trinamool, often for their own corporeal gains, and are willing to use their easy media accessibility to peddle untruths and half-truths.

One of the biggest lies that these intellectuals have spread with the help of sympathetic media is that the PCAPA , under the leadership of Chhatradhar Mahato, is an independent organization that is distinct from Maoists.

” It’s important to make a distinction between the two (Maoists and PCAPA). The PCAPA is a democratic protest movement”  Aparna Sen, famous director who shot into the headlines for her march into the jungles to meet Chhatradhar Mahato (head of PCPA), said in an interview to Outlook.

This line, adopted by the intellectuals of Kolkata as their white shield, has acted as their consistent justification for raising money, giving sympathetic press or extolling terrorists like Chhatradhar Mahato in song, as Babar Suman ,  Trinamool Member of Parliament (now disgruntled with Trinamool) , did with his execrable ditty “Chhatradhar-r Gaan” (The Song of Chhatradhar)

Technically, the PCAPA and the Maoists are organizationally separate. The PCAPA came into being after the West Bengal police and the CPM goons, known to work in coordination with each other, came down with a heavy brutish hand on the local population after the failed attempt on the life of Buddhadeb Bhattacharya at Salboni in 2008 by the Maoists. So while the Maoists have always been a presence in the area but largely as an army of outsiders, the PCAPA was a new home-grown grassroots movement, spun my media and the intellectuals as “an army of politically independent tribals, distinct from Maoists, who have  genuine grievances against the State”.

There are a few falsehoods buried in this spin. The  first is the “political independence” part. Chattradhar Mahato, the head of PCAPA, was once an active member of the Chhatra Parishad, the Congress’s student wing, till he became  Trinamool Congress, when it eclipsed the Congress in political importance.  In a way he is as independent as the “independent citizen’s committees” that have sprouted up in Kolkata over the past two years , like mold on a stale bread, baying for industry-friendly Buddhadev’s blood, committees manned by disgruntled Naxalites of the 70s and assorted crumb-grubbers with a college degree.

In terms of the goals that drive them, Chhatradhar is however slightly different from the traditional Maoists. While the latter want the establishment of a Cambodia-like regime in the classical tradition of the Maoist ideal, Mahato merely wants power in the traditional scheme of things. That is why he is ready to talk to the government from time to time and obscenely eager to come out and talk to press and hog headlines, a trait that proved to be his undoing when West Bengal police, masquerading as journalists from abroad, got him to come overground at which point of time he was arrested.

Chhatradhar’s primary political activities have centered on killing all prominent CPM supporters in the region and in consistently demanding the removal of police posts in the area, so that he can emerge as the king with the power of life and death. Indian Express (May 30) reports on the activities of the PCAPA in the area which includes extorting fees from school teachers, truck drivers, poor villagers and local industries who are in addition asked to throw out all CPM workers and hire PCAPA workers at double wages or else. Not quite the heroic champion of the oppressed and upholders of democracy that those who write ballads in his name would like you to believe.

The other falsehood is that the PCAPA and the Maoists are different beasts. While their goals may be slightly different, they share personnel, weapons and training and work in close liaison with each other. With this massive  terrorist attack and their open targeting of non-state actors, there is really no justification to treat them differently and collaborators of PCAPA should no longer be able to allowed to get away with the “These are not Maoists but a democratic protest movement” excuse.

The PCAPA have realized that their cover is blown which is why they have called the Jnaneswari Express incident as a “silly mistake” of the galti se mistake ho gya type. It is one thing to  hold a policeman Atindranath Dutta hostage and rob a SBI branch of 9 lacs because their so-called cause (releasing tribal women arrested by the police) can be depicted as heroic. But when you murder in cold blood one hundred forty one ordinary non-state individuals in an attack that cannot be justified by any immediate provocation (industrialization and other assorted capitalistic evils), it becomes difficult for some intellectuals, who still care about appearances, to bring out their pompoms.

During the original Naxal unrest of the 70s, when Kolkata reverberated with the sound of gunfire at night, Naxalites were seen by the public as heroes—-brilliant college students brimming over with idealism. One of the things that tarnished the image of the golden boys was the brutal slaying of the benign vice-chancellor of Jadavpur University Gopal Sen inside the university campus. Once similar incidents of wanton violence had exhausted the goodwill they once had, it became easier for the police to go after the Naxalites.

In the same way, incidents like Jnaneswari Express have the potential to turn the tide of public opinion against the PCAPA and reveal them and their backers for what they are—–thugs and terrorists of the lowest order.

This time, however, the mood was different. Dark clouds had once again gathered and despair had spread far and wide. Nano is gone, taking with it dreams of Bengal becoming a manufacturing hub. Construction lies stopped in large parts of Rajarhat after the Vedic Village fiasco and amidst turf wars between a resurgent Trinamool and CPM. The CPM leadership, under severe siege, has stopped all development work because they do not want to give Mamata another opportunity to mobilize support before the elections and are instead concentrating on the worst kind of populism, to wean back minority votes back from Trinamool. Illegal hawkers, who had made the footpaths hell in the 70s and the 80s and who had been uprooted in the 90s, have once taken full control, forcing people to walk on the streets and clog up the city’s arteries. A large cut-out of Shahrukh Khan, sweating with what is supposed to be passion, sits near the Metropolitan Bypass with a golden helmet in his hand, looking like a gigantic sweaty man taking a dump by the road with a lota in tow, served as a reminder that even sport is not going to provide respite to a tired city.

And towering over all of them are gigantic images of megalomaniac Didi folding hands with her slogan “Ma Mati Manush” (Mother, Earth and Human), prepared to set fire to Mother, Earth and Human so as to become the Chief Minister. Flapping their dark wings are the Nazgul, Kolkata’s ‘intellectuals’, an euphemism for jobless theatre-workers, disgruntled college teachers, washed-out film actors, beaten-up ex-Naxalite wastrels and tuneless songsters,  many of whom slighted under CPM rule with small plot-hand-outs from the Chief Minister’s quota in Salt Lake have gravitated to Mamata Banerjee if not for anything else but the opportunity to sing and perform in Railways organized jamborees.

If anything captured the spirit of total administrative paralysis it was the fire in one of Kolkata’s most loved landmarks, Flury’s in Park Street, Kolkata’s historic eatery district, that happened while I was in the city. Twenty-six people died as the administration took three hours to bring in hydraulic ladders, firemen, each of them above forty-five (because recruitment has been frozen), were seen running about, lacking the requisite training to use the ladders (since they evidently havent done fire drills in a while). Spare a thought for the firemen also because they were forced to enter a building full of smoke with handkerchiefs on their noses, because there is no money for masks.

What makes this  even more tragic was that there was a fire station on that street itself but it didnt have a working lift and so lifts had to come from far off. While this running about was going on,  people were leaping to their deaths, choosing to put their faith in miracles rather than in the West Bengal government.

And if this is the state of affairs in downtown Kolkata then one can imagine the bandobast for normal people living in other parts of the city, in the suburbs and in the villages (Only exception being Salt Lake which is where the ministers and the government-land-allotted intellectuals stay—the ladders were located near there coincidentally). The final icing on the cake. West Bengal is perhaps the only state (this I am not sure) that actually has a Fire Minister, a man who was seen the next day shamelessly absolving himself of all responsibility for the sorry state of fire services. Disgusting !

Perhaps what summed up Bengal’s problem most appropriately was a poster I saw in honor of dead comrade Jyoti Basu. Below the picture of the late patriarch was a line that encapsulated his greatest achievement in the eyes of his fans—-”Ajibon Communist” or “Communist for life”.

West Bengal, like Basu, had also stayed “Communist for life”.  And the outcome of that is there for all to see.

On a cold January in 2010, the same man took his last journey. The mood, as Hindustan Times reports, was markedly different. Glaringly so.

But the crowd that gathered outside Advanced Medicare & Research Institute, the  hospital where Basu was admitted on January 1, seemed smaller than the one that had gathered for his acolyte Subhas Chakraborty a few months ago.

At 3:05 in the afternoon, when the hearse carrying Basu’s shrunk frame emerged from the hospital, the crowd shouted “Jyoti Basu zindabad.” It failed  to turn into a roar, one befitting the stature of the man whom they had voted for a record successive five times in office.

As  the  24-car  convoy wailed and roared through Salt Lake, Basu’s address for the 20 years, the calm neighbourhood maintained its stiff upper lip. None lined the houses on either side of the route, nor was a curious bystander in sight.

Just across the road from the hospital soccer-crazy people were going to Salt Lake stadium, where the FIFA world cup trophy was on display.

A couple of labourers kept hammering the boards of a make shift gate at the stadium with a loud and continuous thud.

Some youngsters even confessed to have stopped by to catch a glance of filmstar Mithun Chakravarty who had come to the hospital at noon.

Kolkata, the city of emotions, had failed to open up its heart for the man who was its most famous resident for decades

Jyoti Basu had been effaced. The people remained no longer with him.

It is difficult for someone like me, who grew up in the shadow of his rule, to remain unemotional about Jyoti Basu. His name would be taken when the power went out. So would it be taken when stuck in a CPM maha-micheel (grand procession)-induced traffic jam or at home during a ‘spontaneous’ Bandh. As it would be invoked every day in the morning when looking over the newspaper, eyes running over stories of flight of investment capital, police malfeasance or while hearing infuriating stories of deserving candidates being passed over in academia and administration because they did not belong to the ‘party’. This perhaps explains why, barring a few exceptions, the coverage of Jyoti Babu’s death has been so negative (an example here and another here), that is even more surprising given our cultural  proclivity for speaking softly about those that have passed on.

However in the middle of all the angst and villification, one would do well to remember that it was not Jyoti Basu who physically blocked the thoroughfares during work or who stayed at home, snoozing happily during a Bandh day. It was not Jyoti Basu who, overwhelmingly voted for his party, year after year. While it would be easy to say ‘CPM rigged elections’ the truth remains that for three decades, the CPM genuinely had the overwhelming mandate of the people of Bengal. It was they who validated everything Jyoti Basu did.

There is no getting around the fact that Jyoti Basu’s reign, as supreme and uncontested as it was, persisted only because he managed to tap into something very close to the heart of his subjects. And that was the overtly  emotional core of the Bengali, the romanticization of poverty and passionate support for those perceived as underdogs. Some leaders bring out the best in their people. Jyoti-Babu unfortunately brought out the worst.

People not of the state would perhaps marvel at how much of Basu’s speeches concerned Cuba, US imperialistic designs, Palestine and Israel, CIA plots to destabilize the country and the evil designs of the capitalist class and how eagerly people lapped it up, quite oblivious to the decrepitude of his neighbourhood or the fact that there had been no development in the state for years. Calling himself Sarboharar neta or the leader of the dispossessed, Basu was able to spin Bengal’s poverty as a bizarre ‘badge of honor’ —capitalists avoided the state because here, we people, principled and ‘awake’ as we are, do not put up with their exploitative shit and Bengalis are jobless because the Center is furthering the World Bank’s /Dr. Evil’s agenda.

And people bought this. Hook, line and sinker.

Encroachers on private land became revolutionary heroes, our local Bangali Sandanistas.

Illegal Bangladeshi migrants were excused with the “Oh they are poor people crossing the border to serve as plumbers, masons and odd-jobs-men. Surely we cannot be as dis-compassionate as to slam the door in their faces”.

CPM goons running unlicensed shops that sprouted on city footpaths, forcing people to walk on roads and blocking genuine shops, came to be glorified as ‘poor people just trying to make a living.’ with any attempt to displace them being perceived as ‘big business influencing public decision-making’.

Of course Basu’s reign was not built on just touchy-feely. It was a masterful enterprise built on the infiltration of the party into every aspect of the administration and the democratization of corruption whereas everyone in the party was allowed to benefit from the fruits of power, no one too much that it became an embarrassment and no one too little that he felt slighted.  And when the ‘soft’ approach did not work, there was always some other means available to make people see the party way.

Another of Basu’s pillars of support was that he was a bhodrolok, classy and understated, not crude and crass. Bengalis felt pride that our Chief Minister, unlike his fellow chief ministerial colleagues, did not have hair sticking out his nostrils, knew which wine went with lobster,  was impeccably turned out  in white dhoti and kurta, did not play chaddi-phad Holi, did not get weighed in gold at public functions and did not expect ministers to roll on the ground and touch his feet as a gesture of obeisance. Now chief ministers who expected their sycophants to write their names in blood may have been doing a better job at administering than our man, but that was irrelevant for Basu’s constituents.

Of course in conversations, people grumbled about Basu, made jokes about his summer trips to London and the Bengal Lamp scandal with the rider that such small things happen in politics—at least our Jyoti-babu does not take kickbacks in millions from arms contractors or get caught smuggling watches.

The first major blow to Basu’s emotional connect with his subjects happened during the ill-fated Operation Sunshine, an attempt to clean up the hawkers who had illegally set up semi-permanent structures on the footpaths forcing people to walk on the road for years, causing traffic snarl-ups and accidents. Concentrated primarily in Sealdah and Gariahat, two places coincidentally where there were powerful Congress hawker’s unions, it was a PR disaster for Basu. As bulldozers razed to the ground illegal constructions, people were aghast, not at the fact that such operations had been allowed to continue for years but because their beloved Jyoti Basu was behaving like a capitalist, kicking the stomachs of poor people.

It was at this point of time, with the game on the line, that a champion went for the ball. While the police backed by CPM muscle laid siege to Gariahat crossing (I stayed nearby so I saw this firsthand) and with the Congress, typically outnumbered and vacillating, one woman rushed right into the action almost daring the police and the CPM to bring her down. Who was this courageous lady in white, standing up for the underdogs and rushing into the paths of bulldozers, the same lady who had her head split open by CPM goons years before, undeterred and brave?

Bengal was to find out soon.

Mamata-didi, Jyoti Basu’s bete noire, became his biggest disciple in terms of following in exactly his footsteps. From then on, it was she who had the inside track to the Bengali heart faithfully regurgitating the rhetoric and disruptive mode of agitation that had served Basu so well in his struggling days with the Bangla Congress and SS Ray. With Basu’s successor Buddhadeb’s attempt to at least partially break with the Jyotian tradition and bring investment, development and other cusswords into the state, Mamata’s Jyoti Basu avatar became even more potent. There was one aspect in which she lagged—-she lacked Basu’s urbane educated appeal (which is very important in Bengal). She realized this and that explains her much lampooned ‘PhD from East Georgia’ (link), her attempts to sing “Aaye Mere Bhoton Ke Logon” in her “My bhoice is bhary choked” appearance on Saregama and her adventures in poetry [Link], efforts that would make Wordsworth ‘stop here and gently pass’ (Sample: Until and unless we change such politics, Politics will be lost in its own whirlpool of politics).

But then with Nandigram and Singur and with the total endorsement given to her by worthies like Mahasweta Devi and other assorted intellectuals, Didi has filled up that lacunae.

She is now finally ‘there’. Ready to step into the shoes of the man who, with absolutely no democratic challenge to his authority, for twenty-three continuous years ruled a state. A state that has still not changed its fundamental character.

And so while one may think that an era has ended, the truth remains that it is just beginning. Again.

Jyoti Basu is dead. Long live Jyoti Basu.

I belong to the generation that grew up in the Red shadow. I hated it. Not that I understood much of politics as a young kid, but it does not take much of political antennae to detest hours of power-cuts (“load shedding”) which uncles would say was Jyoti Basu’s gift (There was an amusing political poster in those days –it had a picture of Jesus Christ (Jisu) saying “I will take you from darkness to light and then a picture of Basu (rhymes with Jisu..well kind of) saying “I will take you from light to darkness”). If long hours of darkness before Half Yearly examinations and during Chitrahar was not torture enough, it was even more infuriating to see far more reliable power supply being provided to “government quarters” where some “officials” stayed and even to the club-house of the neighboring “local boys” since they drew power from multiple sectors, under the full patronage of the local administration. I realized soon enough that in CPM rule, there were two kinds of people you did not mess with, two kinds of people who are never wrong—–those who had strength by virtue of position and those who had strength by virtue of numbers. And since a middle-class family like mine did not have either, we were consigned to listening to commentary of cricket matches on our trusty transistor.

As I grew up, the pernicious nature of Left rule became even more evident. The local sweet-shop was taken over by striking CPM workers, got red-flagged, their mishti gujiya started having a sour taste, their customers vanished and then the store fell into ruin, a microcosm of the state of industry in Bengal. A plot of land my parents owned got encroached over by “local boys” with the police turning their backs because they belonged to the “party”.  With impending Madhyamik examinations (Class 10 exams) I came to understand how entrenched the Party was into the education system and how their anti-English anti-”elitist” agenda jeopardized careers, and how the sanest advice that was dispensed would be “Leave the state. Leave the state’s education system.” From scraps of adult conversation I understood how land in Kolkata’s then-hottest township “Salt Lake” was allocated. And how jobs and appointments were doled out in the land of the Left—from the peon at the door to the Vice Chancellor, from the police constable to the professor.

Then came atrocities like Bantala and Birati. There was widespread outrage. Some isolated protests. Some votes lost.

And yet the Left stayed in power as impregnable as ever. “They can never be defeated in the villages” said an uncle who had strong Leftist sympathies “They have done so much work there”. Said another who was not impressed “Work my foot. They seized land from those who had it and gave it to their cadres who vote out of gratitude.” Another uncle who agreed with him said “They rig elections. Scientific rigging they call it.”

There was truth in all of this. And I had seen scientific rigging myself albeit in a very watered down form where CPM “workers” would coax “bhodrolok” to go home by making them get sick and tired of waiting (and then their vote would be cast by a fourteen-year old voting thirty times in a day) by making them stand in the blazing hot sun and by jamming the queue with fraud voters whose sole purpose was to hold things up. It was well known that in the suburbs and in the villages, the Left techniques were ,to put it politely, even more coercive. But even then I did not understand fully why the CPM had no opposition in Bengal. After all ballot boxes were snatched in other parts of the country, there were areas in India far more lawless than in Bengal .

But everywhere power changed hands.

Why not here?

As I see the Left fort crumble today, I ask that question again. In a different way. What happened suddenly? What changed?  Surely elections can be rigged even now. If villagers were so dead afraid of the CPM-police combine in the 80s and 90s why is the entire Left machinery in retreat today, scared to go into vast areas of the state they still rule? People in the rural regions were well used to Left corruption, having seen decades of how bricks, cement and sand would mysteriously arrive at the local CPM dada’s house and how government purchasing favored local boys even when they were selling at many times the market rate. So there is nothing earth-shaking they are seeing now that they have not seen before.

Mamata and her branch of politics has also been here since the 80s and though the Congress-TMC combine consolidates opposition support, it must be remembered that Mamata was once Congress and that there was just one opposition party in Bengal.

What’s new all of a sudden?

Certainly the Naxals are more powerful than ever before providing more sophisticated weaponry to disaffected sections of the population. Certainly many of the old CPM “boys” have changed parties. But that is not the cause merely a symptom of a more basic malaise.

I will not claim I understand everything. At least not now. Maybe perspective will be needed before a fuller analysis can be done. However what I can say is that one of the main reasons, if not the principal one, for the revolution is because Buddhadeb Bhattacharya is no Jyoti Basu.

How he compares to Jyoti-babu as an administrator and a CM may be a matter of debate (I would say Buddha-babu is streets ahead). What however is undeniable is that he never quite had Jyoti-babu’s political acumen and more accurately his knowledge of the psychology of his state.

Jyoti-babu understood the secret to staying in power in Bengal. That of keeping up appearances of being the “little guy”. The underdog. Bengalis, even more than macher jhol and Ganguly, love the ideal of the dispossessed, the simple and the honest fighting against the big bad wolves. If I had a paisa for everytime I heard a Bengali say “So-and-so could have been rich/famous but chose not to” I would have been one of the Ambani brothers. This peculiar aversion for success is what explains why Bengalis are Leftists at heart, why they love nothing more than to see big corporations bite the dust even when it means that their state falls even further behind, which is why they will put their feet on their axe for the sake of “idealism”, misplaced and suicidal it may be.

Jyoti babu knew this and how to play to it. When the Bakreswar power plant got stalled due as much to his government’s intransigence as the Congress central government’s intentional neglect, he painted it as the battle between David and Goliath with drama like “Bangali youth will sell blood to finance Bakreswar” which the state totally lapped up. When industries closed in the State and capital fled, he said “Good riddance ! They want to exploit us and we won’t stand for it”. Bangalis applauded—yes that’s showing those fatcats ! After all as a teacher of mine, with well-known party affiliation said one day with barely concealed pride ” Aare baba. We are not Gujarat”. In personal life, he too never went for the ostentation of a Jayalalitha or a Laloo. People never rolled at his feet or drew his pictures with blood. Appearances of humility were always maintained.

People grumbled about the Left. But when it came to election day, they would still vote for the “little guys”, even though calling them little in Bengal would be like calling Tuntun size zero.

This is where Buddha dropped the ball. In his rush to accomplish “something”, he became associated with the “bad guys”—multinationals, business houses, the ones who grab land and eat babies for lunch. Suddenly Bengalis were able to shake off their ennui, suddenly all the malignancy of the Left became evident to them, suddenly the penny dropped.

When party hacks robbed people in broad daylight, occupying  land and property that did not belong them it was “Oho poor people what can they do !” When a retired man whose life-savings had been put inside a plot of land had to see it taken over by the community boys wanted to use it as their football ground,  people said “Oho poor boys where will they play?” When family businesses built up through generations of labor and sacrifice were taken by force of muscle, people said “Oho poor workers why should they be deprived?”

Every act of strongarm, every act of violence and intimidation was kosher because the perps were “little guys” or portrayed as such.

But now when the same thing happens (actually not really the same because the Tatas were buying at above market prices from the actual owners who held the titles and not just breaking legs and burning huts [a more detailed analysis here]), the same people discover “property rights” . This is because evil corporations and the big guys are now in the mix.

And who is caught helping them in their capitalist plans of world domination?

CPM.

As Mukul discovered fake Dr. Hajra’s evil intentions in “Sonar Kella” only when he shot at the peacock ( “Tumi dushtu lok” [You are an evil man]), the people of Bengal have finally stumbled, with similar naivete, upon the villain. Ironically at a time when it has been the least villainous it has been in decades.

I have said this before also on my blog. Mamata is the new Left. The new Jyoti Babu. The new champion of the downtrodden. Who has remembered that one golden rule, the second part of which Buddha had forgotten.

That there were two kinds of people you do not mess with, who are never wrong—–those who have strength by virtue of position and those who have strength by virtue of numbers.

And so the fall of the Left comes close. The Huns are at the gate and Atilla is roaring. The Goths are running loose in the countryside liberating vast tracts of the empire. The Red Legion, depleted and morose, are coming out holding their Communist manifestos and preparing for their last stand.

What I had always wanted to see is now at hand. Yet I feel no pleasure. Instead I am overwhelmed my sadness. Not because Buddha’s Left was good. But because what it is to come will be far far worse.

It is just because we Bengali men do not have a Raj Thackeray in our midst that Telegraph can get away with this. In an ideal world, we would have an army of MNS  (“Moonmoon and Nirad Chowdhury Shoinyo”) supporters throwing smelly “shoontki maach” in front of Telegraph offices till the said reporter apologized and the paper retracted this insulting article. But since most Bangalis have no energy left over from burning buses and singing along with Babur Suman to protest on the things that matter, namely the vilification and the emasculation of the Bongosontan, nothing like this will happen.

Given that,  let me make my humble attempt to frisk this piece as a representative of those who have been so ridiculed.

A significant number of contemporary Bengali men, unlike their forefathers, condemn fish. Excepting ilish, for the men love it too. “I don’t have fish, only ilish,” many men have been heard confessing in a tender moment. Since they love ilish, they will not care if others do so as well.

Now I know that there are a few Bengalis, the same minuscule minority who detest Sourav Ganguly and support Salgaocar in football, who say “ami maach khai na” (I don’t eat fish) and may be prejudicial when it comes to fish. But I can say, no assert, as a representative of the contemporary Bengali man, that just like our forefathers we not only love ilish but also swear by chingri (shrimp) and kaankra (crab), worship our bhetki and bhola maach, lust for small tengra maach cooked with brinjal and salivate over pabda, parshe, pomfret and rui, in the same manner that we do over Roopa Ganguly.  The day we cease to do so, Bengal will become like Gujarat in that there will be development and industry. Since that is not so, it shows that we still love our fish. Of all types. QED.

There is also some other innuendo that Bengali men are petty enough to hog the “peti” pieces and more specifically leave the “stricken with thorns” gada pieces to the women. Alas the author knows not the pleasure Bong men derive from munching on fish bones  though yes sometimes they do have a nasty habit of getting into the windpipe. If you ever see a Bengali man silent, then that’s possibly the reason why he is so.

A similar Powerpoint presentation will explain why the leg piece of the chicken is also reserved for the man at the table. There is an additional reason here. Growing Bengali boys, who keep growing into growing Bengali boys, need more “protein”, which is good for the “brain”. The “brain”, when encased within the head of a boy, is a collective Bengali obsession. Nurtured by his parents, Horlicks and chicken legs, it will be a potent weapon when he grows up: it will be the highest point reached by a man with a steady, decent job, besides being the embodiment of sex appeal. A Bengali man draws women towards him with his “brain”.

Again I do not see where the problem is. According to legend we like to believe, millions of years ago, when the Great Enlightened One (whom we Bangalis call Jyoti-Babu) made the universe, he asked the Bangali man which organ would be like to be made robust and strong. To his surprise, the Bengali man, perhaps to be contrarian, said “My brain”. And from that time onwards, Bongo-sontaans have stayed away from the light in their dark studies solving “sums” from KP Basu and KC Nag and studying the intricacies of gerunds from Wren and Martin while every other children of man have gone about exercising their powerful organs in more pleasurable ways.

Given the choice that the first Bangali man made, what is the problem if he likes his Horlicks and has a Maltova Mom and has a fondness for chicken legs—why should that be a matter of derision? What is the problem if the second most sold medical product in Bengal is the brain tonic Brainolia (the first being Livosin which no self-respecting Bengali with his chronic stomach problems would ever be caught without).

And before I forget. The chicken leg. Every waking hour the Bangali man leads a meek apologetic life, being flattened like sardines in a sweaty public bus, working low-paying jobs under non-Bangali masters, forced to endure the increasing insignificance of our state to the rest of India. Beaten and bruised throughout the day, when he sits for his dinner, his equally bent and ancient stainless steel plate becomes his castle and empire. There he wants to sit, like a king for ten minutes, his hand balanced on the side of the plate caressing the grains of the rice like a tender lover as his hand sensuously gets wet with the watery daal. It is then that he expects and demands that his chicken not be a size zero Kareena Kapoor bird. Is that too much to ask ?

But men actually look down on women for chewing fishbones. Or for eating green chillis on the side with their meals

Bengali men do not have green chilllis? Really? Dear Telegraph author, what kind of Bengali men have you been interacting with? Do you not know that the first quadrant of the Bangali man’s plate, right next to the leboo (lemon) and salt is the region we call “Sri Lanka” ? (Lanka is Bengali for chilli)

Many men still make that slurping sound as they eat. They sneeze, cough and yawn louder.

Here is a question I want to ask the author. Has he/she ever experienced the pleasure one gets from draining the tea from the cup into the saucer and drinking it with a noisy contended slurp? Note the double-standards dear readers. While the newspapers sex columns will advice the female reader to vocalize her pleasure, the standard are different when it comes to men. Cause if a Bangali man, deriving carnal pleasure from his lau-sukto so much as makes a contented slurp then it is derided as downmarket, sloppy and so very “issshhhh”.

In public, they admire Nandita Das. In secret, they want to be Salman Khan

Please do not generalize. I for one do not admire Nandita Das one bit. For me there is only one. Nandana Sen. And as to our desire to be Salman Khan, thank your lucky stars it is a “secret” desire—-if we started taking our shirts off at every opportunity the sight will not be pretty I tell you.

Once they would only be doctors, engineers or IAS officers. Now they will be MBAs. The rest is “same to same”.

Perhaps this is the only place where the author speaks the truth. Bengali men have two dreams in life—-to lord over others and to not do any real work. Getting an MBA allows them to do both.

Romance means lots of poetry and sublimity

Again this is shown as a negative. Evidently things would be better if we said “chalti hai kya nau se baraah” rather than quoting from Neru-Da, Nero-Da (any bald-headed intellectual) Deri-Da and the great Dero-Da (the bearded one—-Rabindranath Tagore). If indeed this be the case, women only need to say it. We will be equally comfortable singing “Challenge nibi na sala, panga nibi na sala” if that is what is needed to get the Suchitra Sens today all warmed up.

Which doesn’t take away from the fact that few Bengali men look good in jeans and a tee. For the same reason, they seem to be rolling on the dance floor. From where they are often not picked up. Understandably.

Don’t make me laugh. Bengali men do not know how to dance? Two words. Tito De. I challenge Prabhu-Deva to do Sukhen Das’s belly dance in “Hoyto amake karu mone nei” or Hrithik Roshan to execute Tapas Paul’s “Jai Baba Phootballnath” jig in as graceful a manner. If there is anyone who can out-dance a Bangali man it is one Gauranga Chakraborty better known as Mithun-da. Oh wait I forgot. He too is a Bangali.

For a video demonstration of the Bangali male dancing style, I ask you to watch this.

They think growing hair on their upper lip will make them more “manly”.

Yes right. All Bangali macho men have hairy upper lips—Uttam Kumar, Soumitro, Biswajit, Tapas Pal, Bumba-da? Right? Wrong. Let me say dear Telegraph writer, if you are looking for a region where the mustache is worshipped you are in the wrong part of the country.

Dressed as they are in their executive suits, they are often sighted at a sweet shop gorging on langcha, mishti doi or telebhaja at the para shops, looking guilty, before returning home from work.

While men from other parts of the country would go for comfort to a female friend, this act of eating sweets and oily fries is the most egregious expression of rebellion against marital authority that a Bangali man will show.  Yes that is the sad plight of the Bangali male. From the mid 30s onwards, the Bangali body, not a marvel of engineering at the best of times, starts developing some problems arising out of a lifetime of sugar coursing through its veins both from rosogolla as well as from Subinoy Roy’s syrupy Rabindrasangeet and also from more than a bit of cholesterol accumulating in its plumbing not to speak of the whale blubber that cover the six-packs.

This is when their Bengali wives start “monitoring their diet”. Which shorn off the euphemism essentially means that they impose a regime of healthy eating at home through a series of measures even the Stasi and the KGB would find excessive. And it is to break those strict controls that scores of Bangali men stand in front of mutton roll shops or “mishtir dokaan”, furtively looking over their shoulders, as they bite into a chomchom or a Kobiraaji cutlet with the guilt and a fear of a married man going to a house of ill repute.

Now reading this piece, one would be surprised that this is the case. Cause according to the learned author, Bangali men totally dominate their women giving them the bad pieces of fish, making them do the dishes, being boorish and chauvinistic. Nothing can be further from the truth. In a Bangali family, it is the lady who cracks the whip and while the husband may be granted the odd bit of license like getting the gossip page of the newspaper first thing in the morning, on the things that matter the Bong woman is firmly in control. Of course the Telegraph plays up to stereotypes of the coy and submissive Bangali wife, oozing with sensuality and all eye-fluttering femininity. In reality, the Bipasa Basu thing is only an act and within a few years of marriage, Bangali women reveal their true selves and become a Mamata or Matangini Hajra.

Which brings me to the last line of the article.

The Bengali boy’s mother thinks he’s “flawless”. He secretly agrees.

The truth is slightly different. The Bangali’s “mama’s boyness” which is being lampooned here is essentially a concomitant of his being afraid of women. Before marriage, he is mortally scared of his mother as he is forced to, whether he likes it or not, to become a “khokon sona” . Then he gets married and a power struggle ensues. The wife is pissed at the son’s unquestioned subservience and the mother’s insistence that the son, being a reflection of the mother, is perfection personified—a sentiment reflected in this Telegraph piece.  What it misses (mischievously no doubt) is the mother’s perspective as she rues how  her son has become “distant” and “different” after marriage. Very soon brass utensils are being banged a bit too loudly, poisonous glances are being exchanged, mother tells son to “stand up and take control” (i.e. listen to your mother) while the wife says “How long are you going to let others take your decisions for you? Be a man” which is Bangali woman-speak for “Worship my every word”.

Torn between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (which is which I leave to the judgment of readers) the Bangali man sits at the dinner table, looking down at his plate, morosely biting into the chicken leg or the “peti” fish piece with the weight of the world on him, from the peasants of San Salvador and Singur to whether he should wear the punjabi his mother presented him (but wife says “It’s …mm….okay) or the Chinese collar shirt wifey insists looks smart on him (but mother looks and says “Does not bouma’s brother also have one of these?”) for Ashtami dinner.

And it is at this poor Bangali man that the Telegraph author unleashes his/her sarcastic bile , grudging him his only diversions—a bit of extra meat or fish or the privilege of massaging his pot belly or of liberally applying talcum powder to avoid “ghamachi” (prickly heat), a disease he hates even more than the common cold.

Shame on you. Chi chi. Khoob dushtu tumi. Very naughty you are.

[Picture courtesy Abhik Ranjan]

Durga Pujo.

Jostling amidst insane crowds. Craning necks trying to catch a glimpse of the protima (the idol). Getting my feet trampled by 200 lb mashima from Titagarh. Having my behind worked over by the pickpocket expecting his pujo bonus. Consuming boiled rice sold as “biriyani” and canine meat as mutton roll. Being awash in the bleary-eyed punch-drunkenness that comes not from good old bubbly but from the positive energy that pervades the air.

Not for me.Not any more.

Settled across the Atlantic in Obamaland, a “family man” no less, things are very different.

Very much so.

Durga Pujo is now a social event, something that no longer knots the stomach in expectation, something that no longer quickens the heart. No it is not. It is  just yet another diversion on an autumn weekend (Lord Rama may have done “akaal bodhon” but the NRIs go one step further—”weekend bodhon”) when you bring out that kurta (“Punjabi” we Bangalis call it) get into your Honda Civic, consult Mapquest and drive to the venue (usually a temple or a school rented out for the purpose).Once there you nod your head, fold your palms and smile vacantly at assorted strangers, do a few “stop and chat”s, take a Patel shot in front of the protima to be sent back home (“What did you do during Pujos?”), stand in the line for the  food and then drive back, stop at Giant Supermarket to pick up milk, bread and turkey slices for Monday lunch and sink down in front of the TV, just in time for Dateline NBC.

Of course this is just my experience. I am sure many people thoroughly enjoy the whole rigmarole of the  NRI Durgapujo, especially the Bangali Association types, the “organizer”s who bark the orders and the “performers” who put on the programs and the “editor” s who compile the Pujo brochure.

It’s just that I am not one of them.

Not that I don’t enjoy anything. Far from it.

For instance there is the unalloyed joy I derive from reading the “supposedly intellectual” Bangla “poems” (my sure shot formula for enjoying those lines of airy nonsense is to do the old Jadavpur edit i.e. inserting rhyming swear words every third word. Trust me it gives a whole new meaning for even the most moronic juxtaposition of words). Then there is  the sheer assault on sensibilities otherwise known as “singing by local talent”, an euphemism for the wife/daughter of one of the Pujo’s chief patrons given the privilege of hogging the mic before the “guest artists” come on to the stage. Not to forget the vicarious pleasure of watching energetic Bangali bhodrolok and bhodromohila trying to be “Punjabi” hep by dancing in a ring-a-ring-a roses pocket full of poses style to the tune of Bhoomi’s “Barandaye Roddur”.

But all this gets boring after a few minutes as I sit on a chair surrounded by other men, whom I just got introduced to (but who all know each other quite well) as they discuss mortgage refinance rates, proposed H1B legislation, Green Card retrogression, spelling bees and IRA accounts. Totally out of it, I overhear scraps of female spousal conversation—animated discussions of  mothers-in-law, house decorations, saris and jewelery, where in Germantown do you get Pabda fish and why their kids just cannot speak a word of Bangla.

To break the tedium, I look desultorily over the room—–I see kids running around and harried fathers running after them while some of the other born-in-the-USAs stand in front of a table and enjoy a typically Bengali meal of chicken pizza and Mountain Dew, brought especially for those kids who just cannot eat Bangali food (Jaano to amar Khokon-sona na just cannot eat any bhaat babaah….how so naughty. He wants only peeja and McDeee).

And around this time, my mind starts wandering blotting out the surroundings as I get transported to another place. Another time.  Of that Pujo where a friend got lost from our group of seven and announced on the public address system that his six friends are lost in Muhammed Ali Park (yes such was his self-confidence that he was convinced that it was not he who was lost but the six other people who were with him).  And of that time when another friend was accosted by an irate father for staring at his daughter and his fumbled attempt at conciliation consisted of saying ” What is the problem sir? This is Pujo. You are here to look. I am here to look. Let us both look.”  And this other Pujo when I had a mutton cutlet and ate something that was slightly alive inside it.

My reverie is interrupted by a Pizza-chomping kid running into me, excusing himself with a quick “Sorry uncle” as he keeps hopping about. Giving him a benign avuncular smile I realize I have been engaging in the stereotypical nostalgia for ‘good old times’, the kind typically engaged in by the “uncle” types, those whom we used to keep at arm’s length many years ago, the ones who while they rail at the world changing refuse to recognize the fact that they themselves have changed.

Yes yes I know.

But surely you will accept that I am allowed this indulgence.

Because after all it’s that time of the year.

Durga Pujo.

On a lazy Sunday,  Misses (or as the traditional Bengali bhodrolok would say “songsar” or the more bourgeois would say “phemily”) and I were discussing the dying traits of the traditional Bangali and his culture (pronounced kaalture), traits that would be lost in a generation or two as he becomes globalized into that mythical beast known as the “Bong”, assailed by the integrating and homogenizing influences of cosmopolitanism.

Here are few that we identified.

Shopping For Fish:  Note I do not say the love for fish—which I believe will persist for some time. What I however believe we are losing is the sense of sheer joy that people of our parents’ generation and those above partook in the experience of procuring fish for the family.

Bengalis were never an overtly religious community. The closest they came to a regular communion with God was their weekly expedition to the fish market. Make no mistake. This was a ritual. First there was the proud walk to the market holding a bag (“tholi’). This would be followed by a slow survey of the cornucopia of aquatic edibles, as the expert spotted the will-be-rotten-soon from the fresh specimens by expertly pressing the belly of the fish, glancing at the color of the gills and the eyes all the while smiling to oneself at the mistakes of the novice shopper Barin-babu who does not know the significance of a fish that has its belly full of eggs and Banerjee who is unable to distinguish genuine Padma-r Hilsa from the local variety.

Then there would be a lengthy comparative shopping/ bargaining process where the bhodrolok/mohila would wag his/her finger and through a mixture of threats (I will stop buying from you) and entreaties ( come on I am your old customer, make your profit from Barin-babu not from me) that would impress a hostage negotiator, fix the price. Finally there was the observation of the fish cutting process where the Bengali Zen Master had to make sure that the fish was being diced into appropriate sized pieces (too big makes it difficult to cook and too little means it breaks in the pan) while at the same time keeping an eye out on the rapscallion fish vendors, who were known for their legerdemain by which they would tamper with the weights or make prime-cuts that had been paid for vanish somewhere near the folds of their lungi.

Bengalis arent proud of their wealth because they have none. Bengalis arent proud of their physiques either again because they have none. But they were always proud of their fishy skills and Bengalis of past generations would discuss their fish market conquests with the same enthusiasm (“Where do you get good shrimp nowadays–all the good shrimp gets exported to the US”)  and one-up-manship (You paid Rs. 50 for a kilo of hilsa —well I paid Rs. 48) with which today’s generation discuss their cellphone models.

That pride is gone today as a new generation slowly and surely migrates to supermarkets and packaged fish with even those who are still forced to go to the fish market treating it as a horrible chore that needs to be dispensed with as quickly as possible. Consequently, the savoring, the languidness and the pride that used to be associated with this almost mystical activity is now slowly dying away.

Tea: Accepted that drinking tea (cha) doesnt face imminent obsolescence like the expedition to the fish market. But its pre-eminent position as the discussion-fuel of the Bangali has been challenged by the ever-rising popularity of the coffee which once upon a time used to be the exclusive prerogative of”South Indians” as an uncle would say. When people now drop in, the host asks “Tea or coffee”? A generation ago it would be “two teaspoons of sugar or three” with tea being assumed to be the beverage of choice. Not convinced about the demise of tea? Ask 10 under-30 Bongo-sontans and Bongo-tanayas whether the word “Makaibari” rings a bell or “Barista”? I am sure most of you will come to the same conclusion that I have.

An Obsession With Catching The Cold:  The Bengali is always catching a cold or the flu, at least much more frequently than any other lingual group in the world. Critics say that is all nonsense and just an excuse to avoid work but to be honest the Bengali does not need an excuse to do that since shirking work is his birthright.

So yes. It is true. Bengalis do have a genetic susceptibility for viruses and bacteria which explains why we have CPM and the Trinamool Congress and why we are forever sneezing and sniveling and running up a temperature, blaming it on what we call “season change”.

The Bengali has historically been well aware of this limitation of his constitution.  That is why he used to fortify himself against the cold, even if it as mild as the Kolkata one, in such a heavy-handed manner that non-Bengalis could barely suppress their mirth. First there was the ubiquitous monkey-cap, black or brown in color, with which the Bengali would cover his head making him look he was on an expedition to the Antarctic than on a quiet stroll in the park on a November morning in Calcutta. Then there was the muffler and the turtle-neck sweater protecting the neck and torso from the depredations of Mother Nature. If one was going out for a picnic to Calcutta Zoo (which is where 80% of family expeditions finished up), the Bangali almost always carried a thermos flask with hot tea and oranges for the Vitamin C.

The women, unfortunately, did not have the luxury of the monkey-caps but had voluminous shawls and sweaters that kept them warm together with heavy woolen socks that protected their feet (since cold evidently attacks from the feet). During the winter, windows were usually stuck tight with the first breeze of spring (bosonter haowa) considered specially treacherous, known not only to bring out romantic poetry but also snot from the Bangali nose (Rabindranath Tagore reportedly tried to rebel against this trait of the Bengali to isolate himself from the environment by keeping his windows open during the extremes of summer and winter but then again there are certain changes even he failed to bring.)

Today’s generation of Bengalis have become more “fashionable” and scoff  at wearing the monkey-cap and the woolen socks publicly. But they are still as afraid of the common cold as their predecessors were and don’t be surprised to find them surreptitiously wearing three heavy cotton vests beneath their shirts and thermal underwear beneath their trousers as they look over their shoulders from time to time to check if their biggest enemies are creeping up behind them.

Namely capitalists and rhinoviruses.

A Healthy Disregard For Allopathic Treatment The Bengali spends much of his lifespan in pain—either doubled up from stomach convulsions or sitting on the potty passing stool or having ice-cold napkins pressed to his forehead. But there was one thing old-timers avoided like the plague even in the midst of all this pain—allopathic medicine. As a matter of fact, the ultimate macho Bangali line used to be ” I do not believe in allopathy” with those who took Crocin or Enteroquinol being considered wimps of the first order.

For the Bangali Sunny Deol, any disease, from cough to cancer, could be cured by neem/basak leaves, karola (karele) and “chirotar jol” with the potency of the “medicines” being directly proportional to their vile taste. Every Bengali mashima (aunty) was an MBBS in plants and herbs while Bengali meshomashai (uncle) knew everything there was to know about homeopathy. This meant people went to Dr. De’s allopathic clinic round the corner for two reasons–1) death was imminent or 2) a fake health certificate was needed to explain why someone fell ill on the very day of the Mohun Bagan-East Bengal match.

Today’s kids are however different. Having lost their faith in the remedies of old and slavishly following the West, they rush to the allopathic doctor at the first sign of trouble, whether it be a slight rumble in the stomach or a temperature of 99F.

Adda Again it is not that Bengalis do not get together and talk today or will cease to in the future but the defining characteristics of what was the Bangali adda (community chat sessions) is gradually dying out under the ceaseless attack of modern life and bi-yearly performance evaluations at work. Much as we Bengalis want to cling onto our glorious pasts and our four-hour workdays, the breakneck culture of today makes it impossible for the Bangali to come home from work at 3 pm, take a relaxing siesta, have a cleansing bath with Margo soap, wear a “photuya” and “pyjama” , slip on a hawai chappal and walk over to the community tea shop or to the “rock” of a house (an elevated unroofed portico) and have a relaxing discussion with fellow Bengalis over tea and alur (potato) chop.

There is much romanticization of the adda of old as if the topics of discussion were almost always Socrates and Camus and Trotsky and Tennyson. It was not. Much of adda was idle gossip about whether Uttam Kumar was really going out with Supriya and whether neigbhourhood  Minu who had run away with the taxi driver will ever be able to get a decent husband. [Satyajit Ray's "Agantuk" has a discussion on this with Rabi Ghosh asking "Rabindranath ki adda diten?"(did Rabindranath engage in adda?)]

Just to make things clear once again.  The concept of adda and gossip is as alive as ever and will always be with technology like the internet allowing it to expand its scope beyond the boundaries of geography. However what is steadily dying out is the languid late-afternoon community gatherings and the face-to-face meetings as  Twitter, email and SMS take their place.

Maidan Football Ask any Bangali old-timer about cricket and the chances are he will tell you that it is a pansy game played by imperialists. Not that the Bangali did not love cricket. After all in 1976, more than 40,000 came to the Eden Gardens on the fifth day morning to watch Bishen Singh Bedi bat as India crashed to a loss to Tony Greig’s England. But the passion generated by cricket was nothing compared to that generated by the baap of all games—football. More specifically local club football played at the Kolkata maidans.

The bitter rancor between Shias and Sunnis pales in comparison to that between old-time  East Bengal and Mohun Bagan fans with migrants from Bangladesh (Bangals) constituting the support base of the former and the traditional denizens of West Bengal (Ghotis) comprising the latter. Offices would empty during East Bengal-Mohun Bagan games and those unable to leave work would huddle over radios and transistors at their tables as all life would come to a standstill. There would be heated debates during and after the game with hands reaching for collars and with even bricks being thrown after particularly acrimonious referee decisions. The first game of the season used to be a social occasion. Goshto Pal and Chuni Goswami had their place in the pantheon of Bangali Gods along with Subhash Bose, Rabindranath Tagore and Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar. And grandfathers would get all teary-eyed and emotional as they would recall how in 1911 Mohun Bagan taught a colonially suppressed nation “to believe” when they defeated the “sahebs” to lift the IFA shield, an act the British never forgave the city for leading to the shifting of the capital to Delhi (All historians would disagree with this being the reason why the capital was shifted but try telling that to an emotional Mohun Bagan dadu).

For today’s generation of Bangalis however, cricket has knocked football off its pedestal. Blame it if you will on the steady decline in the standards of Maidan football or on the jazzy marketing strategies of cricket or the arrival of a certain man from Behala. Even those who still love football follow Manchester United rather than Mohun Bagan and obsess over which club Cristiano Ronaldo will be playing for as opposed to Baichung Bhutia. As a result of this lack of interest, Maidan football is slowly dying out and with it a hallowed Bangali tradition.

Elocution (abritti) and Rabindra Sangeet In College Fests: Tough for the young uns to believe today but the abritti competitions and the rabindra sangeet concert were some of the most well-attended events in Kolkata college socials during our parents’ generation with artists like Chinmay Chattopadhyay enjoying the kind of adulation reserved today for a Lucky Ali or a Shan.

But then the “social” became the “fest”. The old flowery elocution style with the trembling voice went out of fashion. Rabindra Sangeet is now considered too boring for the “masti public” since it doesnt get the crowd head-banging and grooving in the same way that Bangladeshi rock bands with their profound songs like “Frustration. Ami hote chai Sensation. Jiboner Expectation gulo sudhu baaki roye jaaye” [Rough translation: Frustration. I want to be a sensation. My life's expectations remain unfulfilled] do. Which is why they are no longer financially viable in the corporate jamboree that college fests have become.

One can still take a look at how things used to be if one goes to college reunions, whose organization is typically dominated by generations past. Here elocution and rabindra sangeet is still the accepted mode of entertainment as the oldies sit awash in their memories.

And bachelor Debu-da wonders how his life would have been if he just had the courage to put the rose in Debolina’s Geetobitaan in 1966 as he wistfully looks at the 250 lb giantess that is the Debolina of today. However in his mind’s eye he sees only the Suchitra-Sen lookalike of 1965 which is how he remembers her.

Yes. The Bengali is changing. Fast. Not always for the good. But somehow I do not think that the romanticism that is wired into our DNAs, that Debu-da part of us, can ever be wiped away.

And for that strangely I am thankful.

 [ Caption: "Ami Miss Calcutta 1976" Ms. Sen---she is talking to a Maoist. With a red band on her head. Yes Ms. Sen, we may not know your "statistics" (Context: this Bangla song---ekhono to keu jaane na amar statistics) but we sure know how "independent" you are.]

Over the past three decades, the Left Front’s Red fortress in Bengal had acquired its aura of impregnability based on the Party’s  absolute stranglehold over rural Bengal.  While anti-incumbency, outrage at lack of development, atrocities like Bantala and Birati  might have lead to the loss of a few seats in Kolkata and some impassioned editorials in Anandabazar from time to time, it remained so insignificant in the electoral scheme of things, that the Politburo Pilots merely shrugged them off as not something worth getting their tea cold over. This confidence stemmed from the strategic infiltration of the party into all the institutions of rural life —panchayats, police, business and district administration– all of whom could be expected to work synergistically to keep the rural populace “in line”.

And most importantly the confidence came from the strength of the Left Front’s cadre. Drawn initially from the “sarba-haras” (those who have nothing) and provided sustenance through aggressive land reforms achieved through a combination of legislative and extra-constitutional means (armies of landless laborers putting up red flags on the land they cultivated shouting slogans like “Langol jaar jomi taar” [The person who draws the plough owns the land]), the party apparatchik became the Left front’s eyes and ears on the ground as well as their muscle. A quick way to identify the party bosses: just look for the shiny new “pukka houses”  and there you have them. Over the years, the old feudal order in the village was replaced by this cadre raj, many of whom had graduated from being peasants to “contractors”, who lorded over the population with their rule backed up by the legal immunity granted to them by the compliant state administration.

The recent incidents at Lalgarh should be seen primarily as a desperate attempt by those left outside the ambit of the Front’s largess to lash out at the oppression unleashed over the decades by the cadre-police combine. From its violent targetting of party offices and party “key men” to the insistence of the villagers for the SP to rub his nose in the ground in front of everyone  their intent is obvious.

Payback.

Payback for the humiliation, the summary arrests and brutality.

This is of course not the first time that villagers have tried to revolt against the Party. But in 2009, with the twin blows of Nandigram and Singur, the consequent migration of a significant part of the Party’s strongarm to the Trinamool, the ceaseless attack on the party not only by its traditional opponents but also by its long-time intellectual support-base for whom Buddha-babu and his cavorting with capitalists has been socialistic anathema and finally a series of electoral setbacks , the Left government has been the weakest it has ever been in the last three decades. Add to that the steadily growing power of Maoists who have brought AK47s to a region where the cadre have traditionally fought with machettes, country-made revolvers and home-made bombs and the opportunistic support provided by the Trinamool and only then one begins to realize why the local population, manipulated by the Maoist leadership, have backed themselves to essentially declare a revolt against the state government and the party infrastructure, which some may argue is one and the same thing in Bengal.

In order to understand why the violence has been so sustained and brutal in Lalgarh, one has to look at the historical traditions of the district of Medinipur (now divided into two) of which Lalgarh is a part. From the times of Aurangzeb when the village of Tilkuti in Medinipur invited the Emperor’s wrath for constructing a Hindu temple in direct contravention to his decree through to the Chuar tribal revolt in the nineteenth century and the independent Tamluk government which effectively set up a parallel administration (the rebellion being voluntarily ended on Gandhi’s request) in parts of Medinipur in 1942 to Nandigram in 2007, Medinipurians have been known for their strong streak of independence and a healthy mistrust for centralized authority.

Given this context, it is no surprise that the strongest challenge to the Left government’s authority has come from this district. In the case of Lalgarh, the seeds of the present violence was laid when a high-powered landmine blast triggered by Maoists nearly assassinated Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya at Shalboni near Lalgarh while he was returning after inaugurating the JSW Steel Plant in November 2008.  With pressure to bring the culprits to book, the police then launched a repressive crackdown on the region detaining, humiliating and harassing the local population, many of whom were suspected of harboring Maoists or being active conspirators in the bomb blasts. This heavy-handedness provided the perfect fodder for local Maoists to inflame the local population and incite them to perpetrate violence against the local Left cadre. With the cadre in retreat, the Maoists then followed up with a chest-thumping “stop us if you can” march to Kolkata where the protesters brought to the city to a standstill and engaged in acts of vandalism.

The demands of the “people of Lalgarh”  or more precisely the Maoists that are pulling the strings have been removal of police posts from the region and stopping of night-time raids, demands that have been met by the state government. In essence, what that has done is that it has further weakened the rule of law in the region, a region where a steel plant is to be constructed, and energized the Maoists whose recruitment in the region has by all accounts been stepped up as it seeks to entrench itself from Tirupati to Pashupati.  The potential fallout of this on the state’s investment climate, especially after what transpired in Singur, is likely to be grave. Mamata Banerjee, whose contribution to making Bengal an attractive venue for investment is well known, is also caught in a quandary. Though she has endeavored to extract as much political capital out of Lalgarh as she possibly can, she has stopped short of walking shoulder to shoulder with Maoists, possibly because she realizes that should her dream of sitting on the Bengal throne be realized she would have to handle the consequences of absolute anarchy should the Maoists have their way. To her embarrassment, the agitators have called her bluff threatening her with boycott (i.e. no votes) unless she “breaks her silence”, with the accusation of staying silent being something Ms. Banerjee is usually not accustomed to hearing.

And so Lalgarh remains on boil caught in a ceaseless cycle of Maoist terror and retributive violence by state police with  a part of the state spiraling down into anarchy in the near future looking to be a very real possibility.

Bengal bleeds as a result. It bleeds red. All shades of it.

But then again, what’s new?