[Warning: long post]
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.
[ 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”.
That’s Claudia Ciesla, the lady in the news recently. No that’s not why I posted the picture.
It’s seldom that in a picture with 2 ladies and that too when one of them is as fantabulous as Claudia that my eyes wonder over to the gentleman in the center, playing the role of a don.
But in this case, what else can one do?
March, Year of the Lord 2009. [Link]
“If Trinamool Congress comes to power, we’ll show what is called development. Tell me why East Midnapore’s vast coastline, Digha, cannot be turned into Goa? Or northern Bengal cannot be developed like Asia’s Switzerland, when we’ve all resources available in these regions?” Mamata told a press conference in Kolkata.
“Kolkata is an international place and it will be transformed into London, if Trinamool Congress comes to power,” added Mamata.
March, Year of the Lord 2013.
Goodbye. Tata. Farewell. Auf Wiedersehn. Goodnight.
Adieu. Adieu. To you. And you. And you.
Vamoose Mera Anmolya “Ratan”. Don’t forget to carry your ugly industrialist designs with you. And please take along Infosys and others with you too. We don’t need your kind here. Didn’t you hear what we just said? Adieu. To you and you and you.
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