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.
