Mamata’s burden of hope

Chatterjee Mashima can’t wait a day more. A lingering property matter has vexed her for years and in Left-ruled Bengal she made numerous futile trips to both Writers’ Buildings and the chhoto laal bari (the small red building) that houses the Kolkata Municipal Corporation chasing, nagging, coaxing babus to get her job done.

Mashima insists “Mamata boleche kaaj korte hobe, naholey tariye debo, (Work must be done double quick, Mamata has warned or else she’d boot the lazy out). My work will be done now.” Try and disabuse her of her firm faith in the “harbinger of change” and she’s unconvinced. Mashima plans yet another trip to the chhoto laal bari in a day or two.

But the government has just been formed. In such a situation, there normally is a hiatus. A new administration takes charge. Dead wood takes time to sweep out. True, Mamata Banerjee is a doer but even she’d need a while to settle down and get the moribund, creaking administration up and running.

All this means nothing to Mashima. She’s in a tearing rush. “I don’t have anymore time to spare. One foot in the grave, I might be gone any day. The Left government forced my sons out of the city – made economic refugees of them. They don’t have jobs here. Poribartan (change) has happened. Mamata will create jobs. My sons will return to me. By then, I’d better get the mess sorted out.”

It’s expectation such as these that ride on Mamata Banerjee’s shoulders. And, if she means business, the new administration in Bengal better look sharp. That’s because there are thousands of ageing Chatterjee Mashimas in Kolkata alone looking up to her to get their lives sorted out, longing to have their sons and daughters return to Kolkata.

Chatterjee Mashima lives in north Kolkata, a neighbourhood that has refused to change in the last 30-odd years. Her locality still doesn’t have an ATM, there isn’t a shop where credit cards work and the nearest super store is a good five km away.

Worse, to reach that store, Mashima has to get past a chaotic, smelly fish market and a constricted stretch of road that has a rail bridge above. The road is heavily cratered. Once paved with concrete, slabs dangerously stick out as if dislodged in a quake. Trucks piled high with cargo routinely get stuck under the bridge every day blocking the carriageway.

Years ago, a project was started to broaden the stretch. Slums were cleared, a gaggle of stalls selling hot rolls, hooch and “thanda chilled” beer dens and hawkers vending veggies removed, tin barricades erected. Meantime, the local MLA died, a new man got elected, the Left government got a pasting in successive polls before it was finally booted out. Virtually everything changed, barring this killer patch – an eternal work in progress.

That doesn’t bother Mashima. She is sure (or “sanguine” as middle-class Kolkata would insist) Mamata will snap her fingers and a flat new road would be up in days. That’s scary. If the one woman who has brought “poribartan” in never-changing Bengal ever got to know our neighbourhood Mashima, she’d be bathed in sweat, head to toe.

Mashima, though, had been banking on the local Trinamool flag-bearer, the guy with a limp who had replaced the CPM’s neighbourhood do-gooder-in-chief only some days ago. Sadly, he died days before the poll results came.

This man with a limp had spent a lifetime hoping he too would have his day in the sun. He died an unfulfilled man. Trouble is, now there’s a vacuum. The “party dada”, who not long ago, lorded over all and sundry, sorted out landlord-tenant disputes, insisted on a cut from flat sales, forced Mashima to buy a copy of Ganashakti every day has gone invisible. Apparently, he has a job with a private firm and makes it a point to return home late and leave very early.

Mashima is convinced there’ll be a replacement soon. Anyway, she isn’t terribly bothered about a “para” do-gooder anymore. With Mamata in charge, offices would work, babus would come on time and cooperate. They’d be eager to serve. She says she has asked her part-time driver to report for duty and she’d head for the Kolkata Corporation building atS N Banerjee Road on her own. “It’ll work out now,” she says.

In her early Seventies, she dreams. Industry will flourish. Shut factories will open their gates, the wheels of progress will turn. Her sons will once again find opportunities to return to. “Barir bhaat kheye abaar kaaj korte jaabe (they’ll eat home-cooked rice and go for work).” All these years she had a grouse. Every evening, as she sat in her balcony, her eyes scanned the park in front for little feet, cheerful children who’d brighten those sunset hours. She only saw grey heads, tired, longing eyes huddling on benches.

During her daily morning strolls, her fellow walkers only talked of children and grandchildren in faraway lands. Now, they’d return and perhaps join in for a breath of fresh air. Mashima insists there’s hope. Mamata will get it done. And very fast.

Good intent, poor methods

In defeat, what would Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee be telling himself? Surely, he’d be bowing out of office with a sense of deep hurt. He’d be anguished because he had meant well but didn’t quite have the ability or the bureaucratic support to implement what he had dreamt of. Everyone got him wrong.

Buddhadeb would be kicking himself. For, he couldn’t ensure his team and he were on the same page. Had that happened and if everything turned out right, compensation packages for farmers who would lose land for industrial projects would have been better publicized and handled with greater political understanding and sympathy.

The arrogance of claiming to know what’s best for the people of Bengal did him in.

True, Buddhadeb had made all the right noises when he took office. He wanted the sloth to end, the cobwebs to be dusted and urgency in implementation. He wanted to take Bengal to its glory days as the hub of Indian industry and an investment destination – mature, confident and wise.

Looking back at the years Buddhadeb was at the helm, one gets the sense of a reforms initiative gone horribly wrong. To be fair to the man, poribartan (change) did not come with Mamata, it began the day Jyoti Basu relinquished office and left the chair to the relatively young and energetic Buddhadeb.

The new chief minister, a figure of dignity, poise, haughtiness and sophistication, gave Bengal a mantra – “Do it now” – by all means relevant to a state that was sinking steadily into a morass. Industry was deserting and factories were shutting down. The Asansol-Durgapur and Hooghly-Howrah stretches, once powerhouses that contributed handsomely to the country’s economy, had become a wasteland of rusty factory sheds. Machines had fallen silent landing up in scrap heaps and chimneys had stopped belching smoke. Trade unionism had taken a violent turn – militant labourers having lynched a couple of plant managers.

In Kolkata, the bureaucracy had withdrawn into the sleepy corridors of utter inaction. It needed a Buddhadeb to kick babudom into action. For a while his tearing rush worked. The government seemed more purposeful and keen to deliver. Industrialists queued up outside the CM’s Writers’ office.

The CM boldly went against his party line even on issues such as bandhs, insisting that the IT industry that had just about made a tentative entry into Bengal was exempt from all forms of agitation. Buddhadeb’s thesis was industry friendly: No trade unionism in the IT sector.

The urgency he showed and the industrial deals he cut for chemical hubs, economic zones and motor car factories needed meticulous follow up. That diligence was missing. The transmission loss between the CM’s stated position and on-ground action was colossal.

A lot of it got drowned in debates over ideological issues. Fundamental questions such as the wisdom of acquiring arable, multi-crop land for industries came in the way. Ministers began airing divergent stands, muddying the already complex scenario.

Worse, delays and unfocused development work resulted in time overruns, diffused and misdirected schemes being picked for development-starved blackholes. A case in point was Lalgarh, where the CM’s bid to set up steel projects took a hit. In fact, the police repression that led to Maoist incursions into the region took place after Naxalites tried to blow up a convoy of the chief minister. He had gone to the area to lay the foundation stone for one such plant.

As the government realized it was quickly running out of time, Buddhadeb stepped on the heat, and perhaps in a panicky knee-jerk reaction to the brewing storm in Nandigram fell back on his party’s dirty tricks department. The idea was to crush dissent. The police force was used to gun down nearly 14 villagers protesting against the chemical hub project. Some say lawless and brazen CPM cadre in disguise swelled the ranks of the policemen.

Do it now — the slogan that so endeared him to the Kolkata literati proved his undoing. Blinded by a mad rush, he alienated the very people who formed his core support base. The sincerity of Buddhadeb’s intent got tainted and soaked in blood. Then on, nothing went right. Singur bombed. The Tatas left in a huff.

Rebuff on every front pinned the administration down. A proactive government was quickly reduced to one conducting a holding operation. Meanwhile, shorn of his arrogance, the CM humbly admitted his mistakes. But each of these had taken an enormous toll of his government’s popularity. Buddhadeb had by then done the distance between being pro-people and anti-people.

Mamata was the face of the people. The initiative was now with her. On the night governor Gopal Gandhi brokered the Singur talks, it was she who looked aggressive and had a smirk and Buddhadeb looked sullen and defeated.

Hands tied on all fronts, left with no options, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee watched helplessly as the sands of time ran out of his hands. He had his purpose right. His heart was in the right place. He didn’t know how to do it right.

Wings

Easier said than done. That’s the consensus. I have bounced the idea off many – peers, friends, my wife and children. They insist this is their considered opinion. Still, I’d love to give it a shy. Failure doesn’t scare me. After all, the ultimate freedom lies in the right to get it wrong. Or right? Yes, I want to be a househusband.

But that’s not because I have tired of the rat race or because a journalist’s job has left me completely unemployable. Neither is it because my work doesn’t interest me all that much. It’s the sameness. The daily bone-grinding, mind-numbing, spine-crunching monotony.

Why does life have to behave thus? Get up with sand in your eyes every morning. Sip bland tea. Read the headlines (On most days, I find the papers boring and can’t suffer reading page after page of dense black print). Eat oats soaked in milk and fruits for breakfast, have a bath and drive down the road that I had taken barely 10 hours ago while returning home from work. Best not mention what happens at work.

I have narrated my routine to the sane, the sensible and the wise. Mr Sane counselled: “But that’s the way we all live our lives.” Ms Sensible advised: “Don’t do anything impulsive” and Dr Wise reasoned: “Salvation is in rigour. Exercise every day to sprout muscles. Brush your teeth every day to get them sparkling white. Work every day for spectacular success.”

During each of these conversations, I sorely missed the enormous iron hammer I had seen years back at an industrial tools exhibition. I had this irresistible temptation of grinding the Sane, Sensible and Wise heads to pulp. Alas!

At 42, I am half way through life and have a wonderful family. Wouldn’t it be so much better spending the rest of it with my wife and the daughters at home? Caring for them, helping out with the little one’s homework, answering, or at least trying to find answers for their myriad queries? And most of all enriching myself through participation in areas of life where I have never ever gone. And that could mean cooking meals, doing school runs and even cleaning the house up.

Question is what happens to the bills? An easy way of handling that would be to shed dead weight, cut down on the avoidable. Once again, pundits say it’s easier said than done. But being a stay-at-home dad wouldn’t necessarily mean not earning a penny. Surely, there’s a lot that can be done from home. One would need to find a way of doing it.

Did I hear you call me an escapist? A quitter? If that’s the definition, then so be it. When I was born, it was not ordained that I’d have to die on the battlefront with a sword in my hand. Besides, minding the house, wanting to be a dutiful husband and a good dad does not equal taking the escape route. I am convinced. Living life at someone’s mercy for a fist full of rupees is loathsome. Not being able to take the family out on a holiday when they crave for it is nothing short of disgusting.

So, here I am. Decided and free of all doubts. I am off. To live on my own terms.

Wind of change

The elections in Bengal will be momentous. That’s because whichever way the vote goes, it will bring in change.

Everyone says Mamata Banerjee is tipped to unseat the world’s longest-running democratically elected communist government. But even if she loses out in a photo-finish, the West Bengal assembly will have a fresh, young and perhaps purposeful look.

The elections in Bengal will be momentous. That’s because whichever way the vote goes, it will bring in change.

Everyone says Mamata Banerjee is tipped to unseat the world’s longest-running democratically elected communist government. But even if she loses out in a photo-finish, the West Bengal assembly will have a fresh, young and perhaps purposeful look.

And for once, the opposition benches won’t be packed by ineffective, half-interested, sleepy members.

The communists have come up with a list of candidates that’s encouragingly young. It has 151 fresh faces. Many of those who figure in that list say they weren’t even aware that they’d have to contest the polls. As many as 91 sitting MLAs have been shown the door, among them nine ministers. Also, women figure in even larger numbers in the Left rolls.

The Left list sends out a positive message – time’s up for non-performers. In fact, among the nine ministers who won’t get to contest is Manab Mukherjee. He doesn’t have much of a report card to boast of as tourism minister, not to mention several doubtful land deals against his name in Rajarhat. Another case in point is Sandeshkhali MLA Abani Roy. His track record got smudged badly when he messed up relief efforts in his constituency after Cyclone Aila struck Bengal.

That’s all the more reason to take heart from the new Left Front list. Even if half of them sail through, the benches will look a lot more presentable. They will be populated by those who would come in with a willingness and urgency to breathe new life into their stagnating troubled, half-alive state.

For candidates such as these, the elections will be baptism by fire. Many electoral jousts are bound to be hard fought, in many they’d be up against the tide and the odds stacked up against them. If they still make it to the shore despite these adversity and the choppy waters, they would have every reason not to repeat the mistakes of previous fuddy-duddy Left legislators who are often seen as arrogant and self-seeking.

The Trinamool list, on the other hand, is quite a revelation and rather colourful. Film actors, civil society seniors, artists, former bureaucrats form a bulk of it. Whoever knew these people were dying to take the plunge? Nonetheless, this is encouraging. For, the lone battle Mamata has fought for long got a definite momentum and a certain currency only after civil society threw its weight behind her angry agitations at Nandigram, Lalgarh and Singur.

An Amit Mitra or a Manish Gupta in her ranks gives Bengal’s sole anti-Left crusader legitimacy and edge. It convinces that there’s a lot more to Mamata Banerjee than her noisy anti-Left Frontism. A touch of sophistication, informed decision-making ability was wanting in the Trinamool Congress’s profile.

A media-savvy Dereck O’Brien as spokesman breaches that gap. Who would have imagined seeing Hotmail founder Sabeer Bhatia at the Trinamool Congress’s rundown offices on the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass? These are encouraging signs by all means.

Actors and yesteryears tinsel town biggies such as Debashree Ray and Chiranjeet are political rookies. True, they are known for their acting prowess but what account they’d give of themselves in the rough and tumble of electoral politics is far from clear. Bengali filmdom has in the past tended to gravitate towards Trinamool. One is not entirely sure if that has made a world of difference to those who voted them in.

Going by their performance in Parliament, actors-turned-MP Tapas Paul and Satabdi Roy hardly made a splash in the House. Albeit, they might have done a whole lot of good work in their constituencies. Singer Kabir Suman was clearely a bad investment. He is MP from the prestigious Jadavpur seat and has been a consistent embarrassment for his Naxalite leanings and public statements on the doubtful dealings of some Trinamool functionaries.

Despite her Suman blunder and the apparent indifferent performance of the culture brigade, Mamata had no other go but to give civil society a big chunk of representation in her party list. She had to acknowledge the big push she got when the likes of Aparna Sen, Suvaprasanna and Mahasweta Devi spoke fearlessly for her relentless campaign against Left highhandedness. On the positive side, such candidates add zing to a campaign, they draw out people to polling booths, however skeptical they might have become about a government’s ability to deliver results.

On the other hand, former policemen and senior ex-bureaucrats who have spent half their lives in Writers’ Buildings corridors would be in the know of how, where and when government functioning and governance failed. They should come in handy in making sure similar mistakes don’t creep into the functioning of the new administration. An industry pressure group honcho in the ranks is a plus, given Mamata’s run-in with a big industrial house in the past.

Whichever way the wind blows and the ballots go, it’s likely to be advantage Bengal.And for once, the opposition benches won’t be packed by ineffective, half-interested, sleepy members.

The communists have come up with a list of candidates that’s encouragingly young. It has 151 fresh faces. Many of those who figure in that list say they weren’t even aware that they’d have to contest the polls. As many as 91 sitting MLAs have been shown the door, among them nine ministers. Also, women figure in even larger numbers in the Left rolls.

The Left list sends out a positive message – time’s up for non-performers. In fact, among the nine ministers who won’t get to contest is Manab Mukherjee. He doesn’t have much of a report card to boast of as tourism minister, not to mention several doubtful land deals against his name in Rajarhat. Another case in point is Sandeshkhali MLA Abani Roy. His track record got smudged badly when he messed up relief efforts in his constituency after Cyclone Aila struck Bengal.

That’s all the more reason to take heart from the new Left Front list. Even if half of them sail through, the benches will look a lot more presentable. They will be populated by those who would come in with a willingness and urgency to breathe new life into their stagnating troubled, half-alive state.

For candidates such as these, the elections will be baptism by fire. Many electoral jousts are bound to be hard fought, in many they’d be up against the tide and the odds stacked up against them. If they still make it to the shore despite these adversity and the choppy waters, they would have every reason not to repeat the mistakes of previous fuddy-duddy Left legislators who are often seen as arrogant and self-seeking.

The Trinamool list, on the other hand, is quite a revelation and rather colourful. Film actors, civil society seniors, artists, former bureaucrats form a bulk of it. Whoever knew these people were dying to take the plunge? Nonetheless, this is encouraging. For, the lone battle Mamata has fought for long got a definite momentum and a certain currency only after civil society threw its weight behind her angry agitations at Nandigram, Lalgarh and Singur.

An Amit Mitra or a Manish Gupta in her ranks gives Bengal’s sole anti-Left crusader legitimacy and edge. It convinces that there’s a lot more to Mamata Banerjee than her noisy anti-Left Frontism. A touch of sophistication, informed decision-making ability was wanting in the Trinamool Congress’s profile.

A media-savvy Dereck O’Brien as spokesman breaches that gap. Who would have imagined seeing Hotmail founder Sabeer Bhatia at the Trinamool Congress’s rundown offices on the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass? These are encouraging signs by all means.

Actors and yesteryears tinsel town biggies such as Debashree Ray and Chiranjeet are political rookies. True, they are known for their acting prowess but what account they’d give of themselves in the rough and tumble of electoral politics is far from clear. Bengali filmdom has in the past tended to gravitate towards Trinamool. One is not entirely sure if that has made a world of difference to those who voted them in.

Going by their performance in Parliament, actors-turned-MP Tapas Paul and Satabdi Roy hardly made a splash in the House. Albeit, they might have done a whole lot of good work in their constituencies. Singer Kabir Suman was clearely a bad investment. He is MP from the prestigious Jadavpur seat and has been a consistent embarrassment for his Naxalite leanings and public statements on the doubtful dealings of some Trinamool functionaries.

Despite her Suman blunder and the apparent indifferent performance of the culture brigade, Mamata had no other go but to give civil society a big chunk of representation in her party list. She had to acknowledge the big push she got when the likes of Aparna Sen, Suvaprasanna and Mahasweta Devi spoke fearlessly for her relentless campaign against Left highhandedness. On the positive side, such candidates add zing to a campaign, they draw out people to polling booths, however skeptical they might have become about a government’s ability to deliver results.

On the other hand, former policemen and senior ex-bureaucrats who have spent half their lives in Writers’ Buildings corridors would be in the know of how, where and when government functioning and governance failed. They should come in handy in making sure similar mistakes don’t creep into the functioning of the new administration. An industry pressure group honcho in the ranks is a plus, given Mamata’s run-in with a big industrial house in the past.

Whichever way the wind blows and the ballots go, it’s likely to be advantage Bengal.

Moroccan voices

I set foot in the world of the Arabs when I accompanied my wife to Morocco a couple of years ago. Not many Indians make the Mediterranean country their destination, but Shah Rukh Khan and Amita Basha (Amitabh Bachchan) are respected in that country.

I am one rare Indian who has had the honour of seeing Insaaf Ka Tarazu on TV sprawling on a soft bed at Fez’s plush Royal Mirage Hotel, not to mention the Incredible India ad campaign playing on Discovery Channel. The one thing that struck me about the hotel when my wife and I reached there after a train ride from Casablanca was King Mohammed VI’s life size portrait.

The oil painting was that of a man who looked hospitable and warm. The woman at the reception was high praise for him. In sing-song broken French-and-Arabic-laced English she conveyed her reverence for the monarch. She was smart, liberated and fashionable in fitting western clothes.

On the train, we met Aziza, an elegant woman who wore a floral silk head scarf, high heels and a well-tailored suit. She intrigued me. She appeared deeply religious and remained engrossed in the Holy Quran for long as the train sped through barren expanses.

An hour or so later, she looked at us and smiled warmly. She spoke rudimentary English but made an effort to strike up a conversation. Aziza introduced herself as a teacher at Fez University. Casablanca was her home, she said. She took the train to Fez once a week, stayed over for three days, finished her classes and returned.

Her husband too was a teacher, but he worked in Casablanca. They have two children. Her father was a senior officer in the king’s army. Aziza, in her late forties or early fifties, didn’t have much to say on the king. He was a distant figure who hardly mattered, she said. Her life was about her family, her train rides to work and attachment to her faith. That’s not to say she had a closed mind. She was modern and clued in. “There’s no contradiction between these worlds,” she explained munching biscuits.

For many weeks after we had returned, Aziza remained in touch, writing e-mails, struggling with her limited vocabulary. I remember her telling me: “The king seems benevolent in photographs strung up everywhere – at train stations, coffee shops, super-stores. But not too many problems in life.”

But at a Fez supermarket called Asima, the shop assistant at the billing counter was an unabashed admirer of the monarch. He spoke gushingly about SRK’s great friendship with his ruler. This guy had picked us out from the long queue, readily identified us as people from the land of Bachchan and SRK and cleared our payment on the double. No one objected.

I pointed to another massive painting of the beaming king dangling precariously from the ceiling. Feigning ignorance, I asked him if that guy up there was the owner. “He is not. But he is. He owns everything in this country. He is our king,” he answered reverentially. He had never seen the king save on TV, but knew all about his friendship with “Basha” and SRK.

Morocco, like any other Saharan country, has few people who seem to live unhurried, peaceful lives. Fez, Casablanca and Marrakesh are modern cities full of smart people who are proud and protective of their nation. At Marrakesh, I had cheekily chucked a plastic bag on the road. A cabbie saw me do it, picked it up, wagged a finger at me “never do it again”, he warned and kept it in his taxi.

Neighbourhoods have mosques with tall spire-like minarets painted in green but religion didn’t appear to overwhelm popular lives. The minarets blended easily with the gentle skyline.

Having said this, I must acknowledge I talk of the general feel we got. We had barely scratched the surface. At this level there were no telltale signs of trapped anger or those of a nation under pressure cooked conditions.

The king, even if he were authoritarian, appeared distant and more of a photo frame person for most. Some of those we got to talk had realized they’d live despite him. Others had reasons to live venerating him.

Nonetheless, Mohammed VI appears to be clued into the reality. His father gave him a Moroccan education so that he could learn his country better. He calls himself the first servant of his people and says his father told him that the biggest thing was “to last”. This probably was another way of telling the young king never to take the Moroccan people for granted. In the same breath he reminds that to govern is not to please.

Wonder how the bloody turmoil rocking neighbouring Libya has been playing on the minds of Moroccans and impacting their monarch. There have been news reports of ripples and after-shocks being felt in this beautiful country as well – but how serious? Only time will tell.

My green patch of insolence

I live at Indirapuram, some 30 km from Delhi. It’s largely a residential area with manhattans, reasonably wide roads and a mix of shacks selling everything from potatoes to printers and plush malls that sells all of this and more under one roof in airconditioned comfort.

The view from my eighth floor flat is remarkable. Through a wide tunnel – two tall apartment blocks restricting the view on either side – I see India in transformation. Along the boundary walls of our housing society runs a blacktop road with neat white lane markers. Across, stands a seedy two-room “international school” for neighbourhood kids and shops selling BlackBerry phones and bicycles. A cardiologist has set up shop as well.

Beyond are the shrinking boundaries of a village. Once upon a time, this must have been a reasonably big settlement of agrarian people. Now only a few single storey asbestos-top homes stand guard around a defiant patch of green farmland that serves as a daily reminder of the Indian urban monster’s fearsome onward march. Just beyond, the menacing vertical structures scramble the skyline. On lonely nights, when it is quiet, neon signs blink in the distance.

The view is particularly inviting on rainy days. The circular green carpet looks greener. The uneven walls of the homes hemming it wear a patchy, soaked look. The asbestos roofs glisten. Around 11 am on weekdays, a gong is routinely hammered at the “international school”. Men and women, presumably teachers, scurry around as children rush to class with bags, books and dreams.

The view is somewhat similar to a panorama I had seen at Solan and for some strange reason remains etched in my memory. Tumbling buildings, some yellow others fading, obscene half-finished structures, humble single-storey dwellings and a similar green patch wrestling one another. Throw in a couple of rolling hills and bone-biting chill and a perfect picture of hills under siege would emerge.

The eighth-floor perspective is distant and not all real. Get off the tower and wade into the chaos. The noise, dust and grime intimidate. A roadside florist bravely sells real chrysanthemums and plastic bouquets beside a garbage mound, cars zip, honk and wrestle, hole-in-the-wall shops, electrical wires dangling lose, flies, broken uneven pavements, tin roof shanties where construction workers live and people coming in waves – urban India in all shades.

Gloomy narrow lanes branch off from the main street and head up to the speck of rural insolence that still holds out against the crushing march of urban India. Tenements that came up years ago line these choked arteries. Most of these have transformed into property agents’ offices, photocopying centres, couriers, garment stores and groceries. These had come up when the city monster had invaded the area first.

Flanking the near side of the road is a wall of malls, stores selling big brands and multiplexes. The conquest of these areas is complete. Proliferating colonies and tall apartment blocks have erased all traces of the flat expanse of open farmlands and villages.

This has happened over years. The city like a thick slithering cover of flaming hot lava has burnt up everything, pushed boundaries and enveloped all that has come its way.

Just a lone patch of defiance fights to survive.

Hero in a Nero act

As a young journalist in Calcutta newsrooms, I have seen my peers fight over a photograph of Muammar Gaddafi. These debates weren’t about spiking the monster’s pictures but over how big and over how many columns they ought to be carried.

Gaddafi wasn’t the only one we agonized over. There were others. Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega was a newsroom favourite. Xanana Gusmao of East Timor was another. Saddam Hussein was irresistible. A foreign news agency had creeded photographs of the erstwhile Iraqi leader standing on a podium in an Arab headgear holding a gun and intermittently firing in the air. He was addressing a rally.

A cut above them all was Fidel Castro. Calcutta still loves him and it is as if he were one of their own. A great Fidel picture was a page maker’s delight. In those bromide days, the pick of newsroom subs cropped Fidel photographs. Art-room pasters took extra care to ensure proper display.

True, many among these much admired men were demagogues, as is being proved now. But for us, Gaddafi was one hell of a gutsy guy who had the power to hold the world in thrall and to cock a snook at the preachy West. He had the supreme confidence and style to travel to New York and pitch his Bedouin tent in front of the UN headquarters. His defiance was admirable. Among us were colleagues who had copies of his Green Book.

Bengal has had a tradition of falling in love with tall Arab leaders. Kazi Nazrul was an unabashed admirer of Kemal Pasha and wrote a full length poem on the great Turk’s exploits. Gaddafi was never a patch on Ataturk but he had a huge fan following. Kemal Pasha had done the right things. Gaddafi clearly hasn’t.

Calcutta loves characters with a quirk and a couldn’t-give-a-damn streak. The city connects with boldness and defiance.  Bengal has also had a fling with non-violent, anti-apartheid guru Nelson Mandela. The city received him first at Eden Gardens after he was freed from prison. A full house turned up to applaud him. Calcuttans found his journey different and his story engrossing. He remains a revered figure.

Nevertheless, it is more than clear now that the affection the city showered on some world leaders was misdirected, at least that’s definitely so in Gaddafi’s case. In a city where many strove to spell his name correctly and many more struggled to pronounce it the proper Arab way, there is disappointment.

The man they thought stood for his people had turned the gun on them. Their hero is in a Nero act. Gaddafi no longer looks smart and charming. Now, newsroom-wallahs in Calcutta eagerly front-page his photograph. But for a different reason. He’s the Butcher of Benghazi.

Tiger’s tale

The first big present my parents gave me as a child was a transistor – a little rectangular box that went by the name of Philips Tiger. It was bought only after Baba and Ma were entirely convinced that giving me such a gift won’t amount to pampering.

One Sunday evening father drove us in his old station wagon and pulled up in front of the only shop in our little town that sold radios, transistors, fans and lights. India wasn’t hooked to the TV set those days. Radio was the big thing.

Baba told Lalji, a man with a bulbous nose, a massive belly and a broken voice what he wanted to buy his younger son. “Iskey liye Tiger-hi theek hoga, (Tiger will be fine for him),” Lalji decided as he dexterously slipped his thick, hairy hand into a showcase window. His fleshy, round fingers curled around the delicate, grey rectangle and plucked it out of a maze of wires, plugs and lights of all sizes and shapes.

In our days gifts were seldom expensive. Books were common. A football or a cricket bat was the outer limit. But a transistor? Unimaginable! My gift was as valuable as an iPod or a laptop. I was possessive about my Tiger. I slept with it under my pillow, had it on the dining table when I ate breakfast, dinner and lunch and even took it to the loo. Tiger and I were inseparable.

The wonderful thing about Tiger was that it was ever ready to talk and sing to me. Box its ear and the chatter box would come alive. At home, though, they encouraged, goaded and coaxed me to listen to BBC or the news bulletin in English over All India Radio. The idea was for me to pick up a clipped English accent. But my interest was in Vividh Bharati, a station that played Hindi film songs and hosted sponsored radio shows.

My parents hated Vividh Bharati. It was filmi, “non-serious” and “non-intellectual”. Binaca Geemala, OK for brainless wonders, was certainly not meant for me. “Amin Sayani is a great charmer, no doubt, but how does he add to a kid’s knowledge base,” father argued. Nobody told him Sayani’s mission in life was not to impart wisdom to Indian kids. He was an entertainer.

But beyond Sayani’s fantastic sing-song baritone, the very fact that Radio Ceylone broadcast Binaca Geetmala was absolutely fascinating. I knew Ceylone as an island nation where they didn’t speak Hindi. Why would a radio station there broadcast the country’s hottest Bollywood music show? Defied logic. Secretly, I asked my peers about it but none of them had an answer. Asking a senior the question would be sacrilege. After all, only paka bachchas (precocious kids) were hooked to Vividh Bharati.

Elders did not seem to have a problem with one other channel called Yuvavani. Unlike Vividh Bharati, this wasn’t a “dumbed down”, adults-only channel because it played western pop songs. It had that English flavour. The anchors were good. They spoke decent, grammatically-correct English. You could learn a thing or two from them. As long as entertainment had some value – it did not matter even if the connection was remote – nobody would complain.

But Vividh Bharati programmes had the reputation of being a tad silly and some of them did sound like modern-day Kyunki… tearjerkers that play on TV channels. Still, if you wanted nonsensical fun there was no option but to tune into this taboo channel.

Every night, I smuggled Tiger into my bed, covered it with my big white pillow and tuned in to Vividh Bharati after the lights were turned off. Saturday afternoons were booked for Shonibarer Barbela. The compere added a seductive, orgasmic drag to the name — baarbelaaaaah she would trail off. A gong would sound immediately thereafter. Despite the announcer’s Don’s-moll flourish, the programme sponsor was one big dampener. It was a phenyl-maker. Worse, its offices were at the smelly, god-only-knows-where Chidam Mudi Lane. What a colossal letdown!

If memory serves me right, the promo of a new play in town called shanai (shehnai in Hindi) followed immediately after Barbelaaaah. It had a strange hyperbolic punch line, which roughly translated said shanai in reality means she nai (he isn’t there). The show host never tried to be creative. She played the same tapes over and over again and the dialogues were mostly the same as the previous week. After a while, you could rattle it off backwards.

Legitimately and in full public view, I tuned into Vividh Bharati only on Sunday afternoons when the same Amin Sayani of Binaca fame hosted the Bournvita Quiz Contest. It was one cracker of a show and the contest traveled from town to town. Even though it was a radio show, we always awaited its arrival in Kolkata. This quiz, perhaps India’s first, was a brainteaser and I sat down with pen and paper jotting down the questions and answers. If I had the answer to a question, a particularly tricky one, it won an immediate parental approval. Often, by the end of show time, I had the entire thing on my notebook, quips, questions, jibes and jabs included.

The 7 o’clock khel samachar on Vividh Bharati was a must-listen. It was a 15-minute bulletin and an addiction. The newsreader lingered, ambled and delayed announcing the result if India had performed badly in hockey or cricket. But her tenor would be a dead giveaway.  Tiger got me hooked to cricket as well. It was on this transistor that I heard of Kapil Dev scoring 175 against Zimbabwe, Gavaskar and Vishwanath scoring their many centuries, Chetan Chauhan’s disappointment at never getting to reach triple figures.

Once in a while, I felt the urge to tune into BBC. But Tiger seldom managed to connect. Even if it did, the reception was bad and the announcer seemed to be in a studio bang in the middle of a war zone.

Tiger remained a friend for years. One day the voice died.

Brain washers bite dust

The West Asia turmoil reminds me of a Satyajit Ray classic. Hirak Rajar Deshe was the story of a cruel, quirky despot who presided over a mythical country – Hirak Rajya — that had a big diamond mine that ran on slave workers whipped to death by the thuggish king’s men.

The magnificent singer-drummer duo Goopy and Bagha land up at Hirak Rajya and get a taste of the mad king’s evilness. Secretly, they use their magical powers to stoke the fires of dissent till it turns into a full blown people’s movement. The tyrant is overthrown. The film closes with hundreds of citizens tying long ropes to a gigantic statue of Hiraker Raja and pulling it down amid slogans of Dori dhorey maro taan, raja hobey khaan khaan (tug at the rope and the king would be in pieces).

Among the many tricks Hirak Raja uses to keep his subjects in check is mind control. He has in his court a scientist who is comical and diabolic at the same time. He runs a fearsome laboratory.

The lab is a terrifying place because it has a brainwashing machine – the mogoj prakhyalan yantra. A slew of rhyming slogans are loaded onto it and these invariably end with Hiraker Raja Bhogobaan (the king of Hirak is god). And no two mantras are identical. There is a set for students, another for teachers, yet another for poor peasants defaulting on taxes. The wandering minstrel who sings mellifluously on the sufferings of the Hirak people is brainwashed and shockingly he too ends his numbers with Hiraker Raja Bhogobaan.

It’s a gripping narrative of a teacher who refuses to get cowed down by the king’s arbitrary and draconian misrule. He leads an uprising from a hidden grotto in the hills far from the city after his tol is burnt down, parents assaulted and books burnt. In the end, the king – suitably brainwashed himself – rushes to his statue, picks up one end of the long rope and pulls his own statue down.

If the whole of West Asia has a likeness to Ray’s Hirak Rajya, I do not know. But the way governments have fallen like nine pins suggests one thing. The mogoj prakhyalan yantra (brain washer) has certainly run its course. Despots who have held sway over their people for decades have had to bite dust, their own people having turned against them.

When they seized power, almost all of them had symbolized hope, reform and change. Muammar Gaddafi, a young army officer in Libya, overthrew King Idris in 1969 at the head of what he insists on calling a revolution. In Egypt too, a monarch was ousted pretty much like in Iran. Presumably, all these overthrown kings were Hirak Rajas of their times and popular anger drove them out.

But the replacements these countries turned into were equally tyrannical, if not more. For years, the infamous brainwasher worked wonders. In Libya, Gaddafi’s Green Book was till recently religion. Iran, Egypt and others had their own opiates that dulled the collective pain of people. Systems were not put in place, governance remained a dictionary word and Big Brother America treated the region as one big filling station. Keep the oil tap running and they looked the other way.

In countries such as Egypt, once the swell of public opinion turned against the autocrat and millions swarmed Tahrir Square Hosni Mubarak was history. The one machinery he had built with some care and attention, the army, deserted him and sided with the people. That explained why tank turrets did not spew fire and people clambered on to them flashing victory signs with personnel of the armed forces.

Only the other day in Libya, where a tsunami of public protest is still racing through cities, a pilot tasked to bomb civilians bailed out of his craft and ensured his fighter jet crashed somewhere in the desert sands far from human habitation. He and other soldiers like him have refused to turn against their own.

At the cost of absolute power, the Arab dictators didn’t bother to build institutions and took for granted the unquestioning fealty of their people. Today, Gaddafi appears as a megalomaniac talking as if he personally owns the country he rules by divine sanction.

But like Hirak Rajya needed a Goopi-Bhagha to spark off a revolution, in the Arab world too there must have been a catalyst, a stimulant that gave the simmering subterranean discontent voice and muscle. I suspect information and technology teamed up to play Goopi-Bagha here. Egyptians, Libyans, Tunisians proliferate. You’ll find them all over the world. The internet has over the years streamed thousands and thousands of images of liberal democracies the world over where rights are respected and human life is precious. Dissent is not a bad word and dissenters are not picked up by secret police to be gunned down in some desolate corner of the country. Corruption is punished. Tainted ministers and functionaries are taken to task. Nobody gets a free run.The government is responsible and answerable to the public.

Still, the question one asks is what was about the timing of these conflagrations? Why did these demagogues have to tumble now? What set off the fire? Some experts say the spark was lit by a Tunisian street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, who set himself on fire on December 17, 2010. He was protesting against the confiscation of his wares and the humiliation inflicted on him by a female municipal official. The humiliation part of this story is very critical here. It is when dignity takes a beating that people strike back. Human beings can’t be treated as cattle. They are born to live honourable lives.

This event, experts tracking the uprisings say, captured the nation’s mind and forced an outpouring of anger that swept away President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who held power from 1987 to 2011. The President, who till the other day looked so secure and unassailable, fled the country. The Jasmine Revolution had seen the end of his iron-fisted rule.

Tunisia, otherwise a nation that has clocked around 5% GDP growth, had for long suffered Ben Ali and his family against whom there were charges of corruption and nepotism. A survey recently ranked Tunisia 164^th out of 178 on press freedom. It showed the country as one under an authoritarian government. Suppressed for far too long, popular anger erupted and forced a change in leadership. Hiraker Raja was ripped up from the pedestal he stood on and flung far into the Mediterranean.

Ditto for Egypt’s tinpot dictator Mubarak. He too ran a pressure cooked country where steam was never let out till one day the lid blew and everything flew off the handle. Mubarak, who had looked so handsome and proper till some days ago, cut a really sorry figure and had to fade away into the sunset.

I suspect secretly the Ben Alis and the Mubaraks of this world were secret worshippers of a demon called Adolf Hitler. They set out to control public minds, sway them with bombastic, blustery and blood-boiling speeches, swear in the name of the fatherland and carry out repression in the name of the good of the nation. The nation does get swayed. But only for a while. Then the thermostat snaps and the temperature races to boiling point and breaches tolerance levels. Revolution happens. Hiraker Raja is smashed.

My take on Lalgarh

Mamata Banerjee’s show of strength in Lalgarh on August 9 was an interesting departure in Bengal’s recent political history. For the first time in years, politicians, opinion makers, artists and litterateurs travelled to the hinterland and pitched their appeal to the unsung, neglected residents of the Jungle Mahal.

Whatever the electoral calculations, one thing was for sure Brigade Parade Ground was no longer the sole playfield of politicians. The days of fiery Maidan rhetoric and garnering votes from podiums erected on the Brigade greens were over.

Mamata had some weeks ahead of the Lalgarh meeting addressed a mammoth Martyrs’ Day gathering in Calcutta. But clearly that voice wasn’t piercing enough to reach those who really mattered in the new scheme of things. The Mountain had to move and go all the way to Lalgarh – part of Bengal’s red country remote, backward and abjectly poor.

There was a discernible shift in Bengal politics. When the Marxists were sitting unassailable at Writers’ Buildings, arrogant and supremely unchallenged, the joke was there were two types of communists– Kalo (black) and Shada (white). The dark skinned variant was earthy, spoke little or no English remained in Midnapore or Bankura or Purulia, seldom making it to the levers of power. The fair skinned chap was cherry picked for a seat in the Lok Sabha. He looked smarter, was presentable and spoke better.

It didn’t really matter that the shada communists were often removed from electoral politics. Many among them hadn’t come up the hard way, hadn’t experienced the rough and tumble of the dirt tracks. But they had their utility. They were there to make an impact with their oratory, to hold forth on the party line. They weren’t hard nailed and connected enough. This artificial class distinction emerged as a pattern, the rustic leadership presiding over the agrarian patronage network and the urbane playing elected or selected communist in the House.

Problems arose when and if ever the Calcutta communist forayed into villages. He went in with his insufferable arrogance and talked down to the village folk. He was close to policy makers or one among them. Little did he care for the soundings from the ground.

All that rootless politics got swept away with a string of disasters at Nandigram, Singur, Dankuni, Lalgarh and Haldia. Rural Bengal turned around and said hello, what makes you think you know our story. You don’t. We decide. Not you.

They tore up the Left government’s elaborate plans for chemical hubs, motor car factories, expressways and mega townships. Rural Bengal was no longer soft ground easy to trample.

A different breed of politicians is now on the ascendant – one among them, Mamata Banerjee. She too started off as a city phenomenon in the Congress ranks. But ever since she broke with her parent party and stopped playing vanilla politics, she probably realised the importance of the encirclement strategy –making Calcutta the last theatre of her long battle against the Reds.

The idea was to find a way to delegitimize the CPM – that claimed to be the voice of the peasantry and the have-nots – in the very constituency it drew its strength from.

This has been happening – largely because of the Left’s numerous self goals. Blinded, condescending and corrupted by decades of unchallenged power the Left was convinced it had the best cure for backwardness – industrialization—which in their terminology meant unsympathetic and poorly mapped acquisition of multi-crop arable land for factories.

What they hadn’t bargained for was resounding rejection. Mamata’s army saw an opportunity in this and quickly stepped in. Kalinganagar in Orissa had earlier revolted against a similar heartless acquisition of land but while the national media reported the spark, the agitation never really held on to the headlines it had grabbed for a sustained period of time, probably because the movement lacked a leader as dogged, shrill, theatrical and entrenched as the Trinamool chief.

I’d credit Mamata for firmly putting agitations such as these firmly on the national agenda. The embers of Kalinganagar turned into a raging fire in Singur and Nandigram and recently spread to Uttar Pradesh forcing “iron woman” Mayawati to go soft on the Ganga Expressway farmers’ compensation issue.

Having relentlessly championed the anti-land alienation voice, Mamata is probably among the few parliamentarians we have with a rural texture, appeal and pitch. It’s an image that’s meticulously nursed and nurtured.

This strategy has advantages and pitfalls. The Trinamool boss is perceived to be close to naxalites and her Lalgarh address raises questions of propriety. As a senior minister of the union government, she virtually charged the Indian state with murder when she talked of naxalite leader Azad’s encounter death.

The PCAPA, an organization her party is said to be associated with, has been under the scanner for a while. There have been allegations of the Trinamool providing armed support to Nandigram agitators. There’s a good deal that she has to come clean on.

Mamata’s challenge should now lie in championing the causes she has set out to and yet keeping a distance from them befitting the dignity of the office she holds at the Centre. To her credit, she has been quite open on the naxal issue unlike many others who have in other states hobnobbed with the Maoists and even won elections exploiting Naxalite fears to their advantage.

She has got the pulse right and has thus far been on a winning track. It is also true that in going this way she has pegged her rivals back quite a few notches. Hers is the voice that’s heard in Bengal, not that of the moribund administration that sits in Writers’ Buildings. But even as she closes in on her destination, things look critical than ever before.

Mamata has to quickly find a formula for inclusive, fast-paced development for Bengal where all the stakeholders have a say and share. Factories must be built. Farmers’ interests must be protected. Tribals must not be taken for a ride. Jungle Mahal must be rid of violent elements and returned to its unspoiled state. How would she do all of this and keep everything on an even keel? To say she’d make a London out of Calcutta and Switzerland out of Darjeeling is meaningless hot air. Show us your route map. It’s time.