Season change hocche. Translation: It is because of season change. Ask a Bengali why his nose is running or why he is substance-abusing on Crocins. The answer will most likely be “Season change.” No one questions the logic by which seasons change every day of the year, or how one perceives the changing of season in a place like Kolkata, or for that matter, how exactly does any change of season bring about different maladies. No one asks. Because they themselves are too busy being sick. From season change.

Moshaari tangano hoyeche? Translation: Have you deployed the mosquito net? Bengalis may not believe in God. But they sure do believe in the magical powers of the mosquito net, the closest they can come to possessing Harry’s Invisibility Cloak. If a nuclear device is ever dropped on Kolkata or a meteor decides to hurtle towards us (unlikely an event that is, since cosmic bodies, following the example of industries, avoid this part of the world), Bengalis will, without breaking a sweat, go into their mosquito nets, convinced that the bomb or meteor will bounce off like a stubborn mosquito. Now if it could only have protected us against season change…

Bokachoda..Translation: Moronic Fornicator.If there is one Bengali word a non-Bengali knows, it is this. The iconic swear-word is the Bong F-word. Depending on the context and the way in which you say it, it can convey anger, wonderment, sadness, disappointment, arousal, excitement or joy. As an added advantage, you can take out the “Boka” and attach different pre-fixes (“pagla” [mad], “chagol” [goat], “chomchom” [a sweet]) behind the “Choda” and each combination becomes a lethal swear-word, a perfect example of code reuse. So great has been the influence of this word that one of the first websites in India to be banned (the owner was also arrested) was bokachoda.com (around 1999) for its anti-CPM and sometimes anti-Bengali vitriol.

Horlicks kheyecho? Translation: Did you drink your Horlicks? That Horlicks is the secret behind the sturdy Bengali constitution is well known. What gets less attention is its contribution to the copyrighted Bengali male seduction technique. While many think that the awesomeness of the Bengali man’s kiss comes from practice acquired through a lifetime of slurping hot tea from a saucer, the truth is slightly different. It is Horlicks. As Prasenjit, the doyen of Bengali movies, has said.

Two actors, who don’t know each other and have to do a liplock that can stretch to 11-12 minutes. So between the takes I would go to her and say, “Have one biscuit or some Horlicks”

Yes. Horlicks and a thin arrowroot biscuit. Their mixture of carefully balanced nutrients provides stamina for lip-lock-outs . Furthermore, sharing a cup of Horlicks and biscuits, like oysters and wine, sets the mood for intimacy. And accept it, there is nothing a woman likes more than the intoxicating mixture of undissolved Horlicks clumps and Marie biscuit fragments off the lips of one’s paramour. (For further proof of the impact of Horlicks on the Bengali pysche, please see this [clip in Bengali])

Oh ma/ Baba re Translation: Oh mother/Daddyy. Nyakamo. The eyelid fluttering, back-arching, “I am a woman but yet a girl” faux-femininity that Kolkata Bengali females are famous for. And nothing says “nyaka” more than the “Oh ma/Baba re” at the beginning of every third sentence, almost as if every moment of existence is too much of a burden for these lovely ladies. Broken nail. Bad hair-day. Domestic help late for work. Terrorists massacre thirty. For everything the response is canned. “Oh ma/Baba re”.

Sob USA-te export howe jacche. Translation: Everything is getting exported to USA. In the Bengali dictionary of causology, the imperialists/USA were usually held responsible for everything bad, from rising prices to Mohun Bagan losing to Salgaoncar. (Now of course the imperialists have been replaced by Maoist/CPM, as per dictat of our great and glorious leader.) The black hand of unbridled capitalism was seen everywhere, particularly in the rising prices of essential commodities like hilsa fish, shrimp and mangoes. According to Bengalis, prices would have remained at the 50s level (1850s) had it not been for greedy “bourgeois” merchants exporting all these essentials to the US. Pretty logical I felt. Till I came over to the US where I find fish from Costa Rica and mangoes from Mexico, leading me to wonder, “Where do all those exports vanish?”

Dada ki party koren? Translation: Do you party sir? In other parts of the world, the word “partying” brings up images of beer boots, wet Tshirt contests, sandwich dances and overall debauchery. In Bengal, partying means sitting on dusty wooden chairs below large pictures of Marx and Lenin and discussing the fate of the Sandanistas and setting the question papers for the Board exams. In the 80s and the 90s, the “Party” meant the Communist Party of India Marxist and whether you were “in” or “out” of it determined whether you were “in” or “out” of the pyramid scheme of privilege that the “Party” was. Now of course the value of the “Party” variable has changed. Nothing much else.

Apur Sansar

Jhinder Bandi: If the Tamils have their Rajani vs Kamal Hassan, the Bengalis had Soumitra vs Uttam. Who is the better actor? Who is more drool-worthy? The verdict is still divided, just like whether ilish tastes better with shorshe (mustard) or as a patla jhol (thin curry). Tapan Sinha’s adaptation of The Prisoner of Zenda, “Jhinder Bandi” pits the two demi-gods against each other in Douglas Fairbankian sword-play, with Uttam as the hero and Soumitra as the anti-hero. Who won this battle of performances?  Many think it was Soumitra.

Abhijaan:  Soumitra would go on to make his career playing the Bangali male ideal. In “Abhijaan”, definitely Ray’s darkest film, he goes absolutely against type to play an angry uber-macho Rajput cab-driver, who lives on the edge—whether it be speeding his cab on unsteady highways, walking on the wrong side of the law or getting involved with risky women. One of Soumitra’s most intriguing roles, purely because of how outside his comfort zone he is, “Abhijaan” highlights one of the most important attributes of a true artist. The courage to take a risk.

Saat Paake Bandha: One of the best non-Ray Bengali films of the era, sitting perfectly at the cusp of popular and arthouse, Ajoy Kar’s “Saat Paake Bandha” is a fascinatingly mature deconstruction of the break-up of a marriage . Cast opposite the legendary Suchitra Sen, a formidable actress herself and the one given the meatier part, Soumitra still manages to steal the show as the vulnerable, unyielding husband, too proud to compromise, even as the beautiful relationship he has his with his wife dissolves . Possibly, his most nuanced performance in a non-Ray film, he makes you feel for him and his internal conflict.

Charulata: Satyajit Ray’s greatest work. Soumitra plays a character modelled on Rabindranath Tagore, and if that is not challenge enough, the focus of the film is firmly on Charulata (played by Madhabi Mukherjee), the bored wife of an emotionally unavailable zamindar, whose lonely life is thrown into emotional tumult by the arrival of her husband’s brother, “Thakurpo” Amal. Playing a somewhat self-absorbed l‘homme fatale, nonchalantly unaware of the effect he has on women as he flits poetically about with dreams of Mediterranean in his eyes, this is yet another tour d’force from the master thespian.

Akash Kusum: A tragi-comedy about the lies we say for love, a show-case for freeze-frames and other Truffaut-inspired cinematic techniques considered “edgy” for the times,  and an extended Marxist metaphor for class-struggle, Mrinal Sen’s “Akash Kusum” is an eternal favorite for Soumitra-fans. Here he plays an urban, lower-middle-class Bengali man who borrows the trappings of affluence from his rich friend in order to impress the girl of his dreams. Many of you have seen the comparatively feeble Hindi re-make, “Manzil”, that finishes with Amitabh Bachchan reading a book titled Physics and winning back the object of his love. More bleak is the Bengali original wherein the tragedy of a man, trapped by birth and circumstance and yet brave enough to reach for the sky and accept the reality of his glorious failure with a last longing look, is brought out brilliantly by Soumitra.

Kapurush: An under-appreciated Ray classic, Soumitra plays a largely unlikeable hero, spineless and timid with a streak of absolute selfishness, who abandons his strong-willed girl-friend once and then, after a chance encounter, tries to win her back. It is a very difficult role, as Soumitra, like a master painter, takes the stereotype of the Bengali romantic hero and daubs it with strategic strokes of grey. A must-watch.

Teen Bhuboner Paarey: A rather standard issue story of the curative power of love, this is essential for the Soumitra experience purely because of how effectively he discards his cerebral serious image to embrace pure commercial cinema. One of his biggest commercial hits, it had amazing music, sizzling chemistry between him and Tanuja and Soumitro essaying the role of a wise-cracking chengra chele” (rough translation: bad boy). And yes he also dances the twist. He would go on to do a few more light frothy romantic comedies like this (“Basanta Bilaap” comes to mind where “Miss 1976″ Aparna Sen sings seductively about her “statistics” while Soumitra goofs around disguised as an old man), ,making out-and-out commerci al movies another vital part of his oeuvre.

Sonar Kella: Soumitra plays Feluda, the iconic Bengali detective. He plays it so well that he essentially kills the character—none of the actors who have tried to play Feluda after him could fill his shoes. The original is just too overpowering. Here the g reat man is timing personified—whether it be his significant silences, the sarcastic wisecrack thrown carelessly, the contemplative arch of the eyebrow or the whipping out of the pistol. Sonar Kella is all fun, and there are many fine reasons for watching it, none greater than of course Soumitra’s rugged suavity.

Aatanka: “Apni kichu dekhen ni”. You have not seen anything. A hellish vision of urban dystopia in modern-day Kolkata, Tapan Sinha’s terrifying “Aatanka” has the finest of Soumitra Chatterjee’s later performances. As the idealistic school-teacher whose family is plunged into an unending nightmare after he witnesses a political murder committed by an ex-student, Soumitra’s character becomes a metaphor for the Apu-generation, old and disillusioned in the 80s, their post-independence optimism replaced by bewilderment at a world whose unrelenting evil they can scarcely comprehend. Truly an acting masterclass.

[This post also appears here at IBNLive]

Not that I support the fatwa on Salman Rushdie, but for the first few seconds of my Saturday morning, I wanted to become the Ayatollah. That is when I realized that they had re-made arguably Ray’s finest movie “Charulata” as “Charulata 2011″ (reminiscent of Disco 82, Hope 86 and Mother 98) , a cross between the original and Jism, with gratuitous displays of Rituparna’s back, as bare as Bengal’s industrial development parks, and sexy displays of Arjun Chakraborty’s face, as poetic as a mis-shapen Nalengurer sandesh.

Wait, you say, how can you condemn “Charulata 2011″ when all you have seen is the trailer and read some articles about it? Because the trailer says it all, from Mohit-Suri-Mahesh-Bhatt-inspired “erotic” visuals to Rituparna’s execrably-accented Bangla voiceover to a  guitar-playing Bangali Ron Jeremy, this cries “desecration” in every frame, more so when one recalls the smoldering underplayed sensuality of the original.

Yes maybe Didi was right. Everything is a CPM conspiracy—-the rapes in moving cars, “Charulata 2011″, the genetic mutation called Jeet and songs with poetic Jeebu-Daish- lyrics like “Lady Killer, Romeo, Pakka Playboy, Romeo, Flirting Master Romeo….Sunday dilam Sheela-ke, Monday dilam Monake..” (I “did it” to Sheela on Monday, “did it” to Mona on Tuesday).

And now that the full scope of the CPM plot has been revealed, why stop with desecrating Charulata, oh Kolkata “intellectuals”? There are so many Ray movies that beg crying out for re-interpretation.

A Telugu-masala production, “Apu 2012″ with Apu being an angry Bengali man (played by Deb) who, after having his elder sister raped, his father killed and his mother bored to death, beats up goons to the tune of “Challenge nibi na sala” and “Lal Juto Paaye Khokababu Jaaye”?

An adult version of “Parash Pathar” where a government clerk discovers a magic stone that gives him instant erections, which he then uses to get “a head” till it gets swallowed by his secretary?

A Rituporno-remake of Jalsaghar where the aged zamindar discovers his wife was having an affair with the thumri singer before he realizes he is actually transgendered himself?

A Q-directed re-telling of the Gupi-Bagha fable (G-AND-U) but with the happy duo transformed to gay rappers who pen vulgar post-modernist lyrics ?

Why not a Bratya Basu version of “Ganashatru” where a “socially aware”  intellectual opposes a sinister CPM plot to build an automobile plant, the only deviation from the original being that it will have a happy ending wherein our hero becomes a minister?

How about “Abhijaan” becoming the story of a Formula 1 driver, Talladega Nights inspired?

What about Anjan Dutt—has he not seen the potential of remaking “Mahanagar” from the angle of the anglo-Indian salesgirl (who will renamed Maryanne Marie) and the allusion to the Wall Street crisis of 2008 in the bank failing (which leads the heroine to transform from housewife to working professional)?

How about Aparna Sen reinterpreting the “Ghare Baire” story as that of an idealistic Naxal-supporting husband who lets his wife (played by Paoli Dam) spread her….wings…with his “India shining” capitalist friend while communal riots, triggered by the Hindu right, sweep the country?

Why does not Gautam Ghosh join hands with Zoya Akthar and re-remake Abar Aranye, his sequel to “Aranyer Din Ratri”, but this time about three wannabes who journey deep into the jungle to discover their feminine sides while dancing to “Senorita” with a tribal lady, played by Simi Garewal Galadrial, the ageless Lady of the Forest?

Yes indeed. Why not? Now that we Bengalis have spent a generation strutting about, waving our glorious cultural heritage as proof-positive of our exalted status while producing little of value, it is now time to go and move on to the next phase. Where in the guise of creative re-interpretation, we pee on the greatness we have inherited.

Bravo.

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]