The other day I was in our nukkad Post Office in Hyderabad buying stamps to affix onto the packets of the latest Ishani booklets.
The PM passed on stamps of two denominations and I was gazing at them rather nostalgically as it turned out that they carried pictures of two famous Calcutta Personalities.
The young chap behind me, dressed impeccably, nudged me gently. And I gave him a little elbow room. While transacting his business he looked at my stamps curiously and asked:
"I know THIS lady...but who is this gentleman?"
THIS lady whose life-size statues I see at a couple of high-profile places in Hyderabad, rather put the streets of Calcutta into the consciousness of even Hyderabadis by the Color TV transmissions of her high profile Funeral...
....Mother Teresa...
"Satyajit Ray" I mumbled for this gentleman.
"Who, who, who?"
I bypassed his Viva Question and shifted to the nearby table for my gluing.
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Instead of who, who, who; I started asking myself why, why, why...
A half century ago, at 17, studying at our University, 4 years before I landed in Bengal forever by sheer unbeknown chance, I was one of the local experts on Bengal...she was all over the place...huge pictures of her illustrious sons (and our daughter-in-law) in Offices, in text books of science, history, literature, religion, medicine, and newspapers...
.....Ramakrishna-Vivekananda, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Rabindranath Tagore, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, various Boses (SC, JC, and SN), Banerjees and Chatterjees, Vande Mataram, and of course Satyajit Ray...these were the talk of our elite group discussions, debates, chitchats...those who read in poor Telugu Translations Devdas, Vipra Das, Shreekanto, Charitraheen, Parineeta, Hungry Stones, Kabuliwalla, Gora, Shipwreck and sundry other novels, flaunted their knowledge on their sleeves and sleevelesses...much before THAT lady settled down in Calcutta Consciousness.
And this chap of 25 or so, well-fed, well-read and well-dressed asks me who, who, who...
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After getting my violin down and fiddling on it and snorting my Sherlock Holmes thing for an hour, I came to this logical conclusion:
"The complete blackout of things Bengali over half a century from the AP consciousness can be traced to the invention and perfection of that self-destructing weapon called BB (Bangla Bandh), which alone was ironically passed on to AP....tomorrow is Telengana Bandh and ny son has to travel to Nellore..."
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Invented during the sixties, sharpened during the seventies, BB was perfected during the eighties of the last century.
A typical exercise of BB in its perfected form goes like this (I know..I had to go without Meals, Tea and Cigarettes):
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In order to pay the salaries for its workers from its impoverished Treasury, the Government of Bengal raises the Sales Tax on salt by 1 percent...the new price of a packet is Rs 1.01 instead of Rs 1.00.
The next day 50 lady workers trailed by 50 drones storm the Bastille and castle the concerned Minister in his Office in a Bengali Operation called Gherao, a lovely contribution of Bengal to the English Lexicon.
After 4 hours of deprivation and desalination the Minister faints, leading to a mild lathi charge by the Government Police...
The next day the Opposition calls for a BB.
By now Calcutta knows the drill and Aniket, getting bored playing chess at home and reading Mocking Bird for the tenth time, comes out on to the streets of Calcutta to join the ongoing Cricket Matches held all over the megalopolis.
The miffed Government lays the blame on the Center for diverting all Calcutta Revenues to Bombay and calls for a Government-Sponsored BB the next day.
Aniket plays his tenth innings...
But this is the right opportunity for the Ruling and Opposition Parties to test their relative strengths. So, pitched battles are fought with petrol bombs all over Calcutta during the Lunch and Tea breaks in the nukkad Cricket Matches....
The next day Funeral Processions for the killed Party Workers are held leading to more violence and a BB the very next day.
Then it is the Puja vacation that stretches from Panchami to Bhai Phota, which means for the cognoscenti a clean one-month shut down of Calcutta including the Bastille....
And you will find knowing Bengalis vacationing on LTC in as obscure a place as Vizagh which has nothing worth seeing but the sweat, tears and blood of gps who was laid low there 30 years ago...
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During the third week of a wonderfully wintry sunny January this year, myself and my wife found ourselves in the backseat of a car driven by my driver-friend Venkat traveling on the 6-lane superhighway from KGP to Cal to catch the afternoon flight to Hyderabad.
The metamorphosis of Bengal Highways charmed me and I was extremely pleased that things in Bengal have turned around for profitability and productivity.
Suddenly our car came to a halt...all the 6 lanes of the highway were closed to traffic..miles of vehicles piling up on both sides...
On inquiry it turned out to be the Netajee Birthday and a massive celebration was going on that spilled all over the town, perhaps the HQ of Netajee's Backward Block...
None of the vehicles was given any leeway by the Organizing Party Workers till the Birthday Party would be over in an hour...
Our Driver Venkat turned back and asked me to lie down and lay my head on my wife's lap and groan, clutching my chest....
Playing the possum being my specialty, I obeyed at once and groaned like nobody's business while my wife shed a stream of glycerin tears...her specialty....
I overheard Venkat talking to the Party Worker: "Heart Patient...aachey..."
A narrow by-lane was opened to us (like the Sea that parted sometime ago in the Good Old Story) and we reached the Airport in the nick of Reporting Time.
I asked Venkat if he had to grease any palm...
"Naa sir..this is Bengal...not AP...."
....I rest my case...
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