************************************************************************************************************
The last few posts have been my tirade against the evil modern civilization. Indeed I was moaning about its dehumanizing touches.
The reason for this is not only that I am an old and crazy lout but also because I lived most of my life in Bengal, and most of it when it was under the Red Rule.
Bengal was the heaven where civilization meant:
"Plain living and high thinking"
unlike the rest of India where it is now the other way round.
Bengal was known not for its moneymakers but for its writers, singers, actors, dancers, movie makers, painters and sculptors...not to speak of the first IIT that was established in India where the cream of the country read and taught.
The only part of India that left its indelible mark on me during my age of innocence was Bengal; and its Bengalis.
I first heard of Swami Vivekananda and Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Netajee Subash Bose in my childhood at my home. And as soon as I entered my university at Vizagh I heard of writers with unfamiliar names like Saha and P Ray and Chatterjees and Banerjees, to say nothing of Tagore and Sharat Chandra Chatterjee and Satyajit Ray.
And on landing up in Bengal in 1965 I found it the cheapest place to live in the whole world. I guess it still is.
It banished, by and by, all its polluting industries and drove the rest away.
We at IIT KGP were happy with cycle rickshaws and pushbikes for most of our time there. The only car that was visible on our roads was the Ambassador and it refused to die, till recently.
And the best shop in Gole Bazaar then was the Bata. We used to go there just to relish its ambiance. Shop-floor assistants welcomed us and made us sit in luxurious swinging cane chairs, and sat in front of us on the floor and massaged our feet tenderly. It was pure joy. And then it started fleecing its customers. And it duly went down under the impact of our left-front's civilizing influence...first the cane chairs vanished and then the shop-floor hosts and then the shoes (including, once again, their Ambassador), and then the shop itself...
Living got cheaper and cheaper in Bengal, and Calcutta turned out to be the cheapest city in the world. The EMUs arrived duly and travel got dead cheap between KGP and Cal. And the romantic trams which resisted all evil influences to render them into museum pieces. Metro came and it became the best and cheapest mode of mass transit.
Even when Gudur got its rickety 3-wheeler autos, KGP roads remained untouched and unpolluted by them.
South India started getting more and more dehumanized even in its kitchens. Its favorite idlis ceased to be made by tender hands of loving ladies.
First came the electrical Mixies and they replaced the stone-grinders squatting comfortably in our backyards. It was soon found that speckled stones were irreplaceable and then came the Coimbatore wet grinders with rolling stones in them but driven by motors that made them go round and round like spinning tops. And the good old bronze idli-vessels with appetizing waists vanished and were replaced by staid pressure-cookers that whistled and bustled and aluminum idli stands that sank and sat in them as if in a steam bath.
Idlis got untouched by human hands...
Nothing of that criminal sort happened with the rosogollas made in Harry's at KGP by our good old snake-charmer-dadu. Milk still was boiled on hot coals and split by its hoary process and the broth water drained by good old red gamchas. There was a touch of appealing eternity in watching the entire process. And the price of a rosogolla remained the same although suitable adjustments were made in its size and content to counter the unholy inflation.
Bengalis, like me, still looked for government jobs, and when the revolutionary spirit of a KGPian bobbed up and he went on to set up his own group of industries, his good old dadi was reputed to have rebuked him:
"Does anyone with an ounce of sense in his head quit a well-paying job with a pension?"
And I am sure the Writers Building was the last place of its size and temperament that resisted computerization and its attendant evils. Writers must be writers:
And the Durga Puja pandals of Hyderabad which I never miss visiting remind me of the pandals of IIT KGP of a couple of decades vintage...the bhadraloks and the bhadrmahilas look as cheerful as ever, and so do their cuisine and the ambiance although the evils of Hyderabad like its pollution, sound and unsound, do pop up occasionally...like the hordes of its cars without car parks.
And when I look at the World Cup Football matches that are telecast live these nights, I remind my son that the Indian guy who comments so fabulously played for my favorite Mohun Bagan once.
If, like me, you want a lifebelt in this fast-sinking world, it is sold in Bengal...by its unsinkable Duckback...
**********************************************************************************************************
The last few posts have been my tirade against the evil modern civilization. Indeed I was moaning about its dehumanizing touches.
The reason for this is not only that I am an old and crazy lout but also because I lived most of my life in Bengal, and most of it when it was under the Red Rule.
Bengal was the heaven where civilization meant:
"Plain living and high thinking"
unlike the rest of India where it is now the other way round.
Bengal was known not for its moneymakers but for its writers, singers, actors, dancers, movie makers, painters and sculptors...not to speak of the first IIT that was established in India where the cream of the country read and taught.
The only part of India that left its indelible mark on me during my age of innocence was Bengal; and its Bengalis.
I first heard of Swami Vivekananda and Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Netajee Subash Bose in my childhood at my home. And as soon as I entered my university at Vizagh I heard of writers with unfamiliar names like Saha and P Ray and Chatterjees and Banerjees, to say nothing of Tagore and Sharat Chandra Chatterjee and Satyajit Ray.
And on landing up in Bengal in 1965 I found it the cheapest place to live in the whole world. I guess it still is.
It banished, by and by, all its polluting industries and drove the rest away.
We at IIT KGP were happy with cycle rickshaws and pushbikes for most of our time there. The only car that was visible on our roads was the Ambassador and it refused to die, till recently.
And the best shop in Gole Bazaar then was the Bata. We used to go there just to relish its ambiance. Shop-floor assistants welcomed us and made us sit in luxurious swinging cane chairs, and sat in front of us on the floor and massaged our feet tenderly. It was pure joy. And then it started fleecing its customers. And it duly went down under the impact of our left-front's civilizing influence...first the cane chairs vanished and then the shop-floor hosts and then the shoes (including, once again, their Ambassador), and then the shop itself...
Living got cheaper and cheaper in Bengal, and Calcutta turned out to be the cheapest city in the world. The EMUs arrived duly and travel got dead cheap between KGP and Cal. And the romantic trams which resisted all evil influences to render them into museum pieces. Metro came and it became the best and cheapest mode of mass transit.
Even when Gudur got its rickety 3-wheeler autos, KGP roads remained untouched and unpolluted by them.
South India started getting more and more dehumanized even in its kitchens. Its favorite idlis ceased to be made by tender hands of loving ladies.
First came the electrical Mixies and they replaced the stone-grinders squatting comfortably in our backyards. It was soon found that speckled stones were irreplaceable and then came the Coimbatore wet grinders with rolling stones in them but driven by motors that made them go round and round like spinning tops. And the good old bronze idli-vessels with appetizing waists vanished and were replaced by staid pressure-cookers that whistled and bustled and aluminum idli stands that sank and sat in them as if in a steam bath.
Idlis got untouched by human hands...
Nothing of that criminal sort happened with the rosogollas made in Harry's at KGP by our good old snake-charmer-dadu. Milk still was boiled on hot coals and split by its hoary process and the broth water drained by good old red gamchas. There was a touch of appealing eternity in watching the entire process. And the price of a rosogolla remained the same although suitable adjustments were made in its size and content to counter the unholy inflation.
Bengalis, like me, still looked for government jobs, and when the revolutionary spirit of a KGPian bobbed up and he went on to set up his own group of industries, his good old dadi was reputed to have rebuked him:
"Does anyone with an ounce of sense in his head quit a well-paying job with a pension?"
And I am sure the Writers Building was the last place of its size and temperament that resisted computerization and its attendant evils. Writers must be writers:
And the Durga Puja pandals of Hyderabad which I never miss visiting remind me of the pandals of IIT KGP of a couple of decades vintage...the bhadraloks and the bhadrmahilas look as cheerful as ever, and so do their cuisine and the ambiance although the evils of Hyderabad like its pollution, sound and unsound, do pop up occasionally...like the hordes of its cars without car parks.
And when I look at the World Cup Football matches that are telecast live these nights, I remind my son that the Indian guy who comments so fabulously played for my favorite Mohun Bagan once.
If, like me, you want a lifebelt in this fast-sinking world, it is sold in Bengal...by its unsinkable Duckback...
...Posted by Ishani
No comments:
Post a Comment